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After years of bullying her
I exercised more during the four month quarantine than I have since my days as a dancer. Each morning my partner’s roommate peeled me away from my books and Digestive biscuits. We didn’t speak each other’s language. Our conversations consisted of awkward hand gestures, ‘como se dice,’ and shrugging shoulders. But routine was necessary during the lockdown, and exercising with her became a small window of light in a tunnel of never ending days.
My workout buddy was tiny and tight. She’d yelp encouragements as I grunted and fumbled on my mat next to her. I’ve never possessed the mental energy nor desire to kick my own ass, but when a fit Colombian woman shouts “¡Vamos Amy, Métale!” … I summon up the power.
Often after the workouts, she would grab at the soft flesh of her stomach and groan that she was fat. She’d wrap her core in cellophane and reveal it only after we rolled up our mats. She’d need help unraveling herself like a loose thread in an old sweater. Like a modern damsel in distress. She’d leave scents of tiny disapproving comments and hate for her body as we dragged the table back to the center of the room. I noticed them only because I’ve been bullying my thighs and my stomach and my chin for two decades.
It takes a body bully to know a bully.
In my broken Spanish I’d try to reason with her. You take such good care of your body. I would kill for your abs. Why do you say such mean things to yourself? But, it doesn’t matter how attractive others see you, if you can’t see it for yourself.
What I didn’t mention… was the obvious. At least five sizes bigger than her, I was the literal elephant in the room when she struggled to grab fistfuls of her inner thighs after yoga meditation. As we jumped up and down wearing spandex in the blooming Spanish summer heat. While the YouTube instructors told us to take deep breaths and relax, I told myself every terrible thing my workout partner probably thought about my body.
One morning we queued up Yoga with Adriene’s ab-centered workout. We crunched. We hovered. We stretched. I felt proud that after only three weeks of routine, my arms were strong enough to pull me through a chaturanga. At the center of the workout, Adriene asked us to put our hands on our tummies.
“So often we send messages of hate to our stomachs, but we don’t thank them for all the work that they do,” she remarked.
She asked us to give gratitude to our stomachs. To rub our hands over them with nothing but thoughts of love. I’m not fond of commonplace blanket statements. But this one stuck with me.
I’d never said a kind word to my belly. Not once in 30 years.
Our bodies follow us everywhere we go. They carry our minds and our histories tucked up inside of them. They cradle us when no one else will.
Yet, our families feel entitled to comment on them. Modern trends declare whether to embrace our curves this year or to smother them. We were taught how to cover ourselves in middle school when our bodies morphed into something more powerful. When grownups looked at us as if we were dangerous. As if what was happening was disgusting.
We learned that to protect our bodies was to restrain them.
We learned what to hide with paintbrushes and glitter and what to display for viewing pleasure. We took off all our clothes and stood in front of the mirror, crossing out the unacceptable bits with a permanent marker.
We weren’t taught to love our bodies, but to fight them.
I’ve been picking fights with my body since I saw Britney dance on stage with a snake wrapped around her neck. At 11-years-old I was a pile of sticks and bones and Big Bird legs. At 13 my body proved itself untrustworthy. I stuffed it with cotton like they told me to, but still left bloodstains behind. Trails leading back to a place I shouldn’t go.
In high school I quit gymnastics before I even started. From the bleachers I watched the strength and power emitting off the girls’ bodies in the gym. Their confidence as they flipped over their heads and still landed on the beam, like back alley cats. But I also noticed how their legs quaked when they ran full speed. I told myself that it was just science. Their skin held muscles and bones and blood. It allowed them to take flight. But still, I didn’t want to be seen in a leotard. I didn’t want the crushed red velvet to wriggle up my intimate parts in front of teachers and peers. I didn’t want to slide into something so tight and so clingy during a time when my body changed on me each night.
I needed to hide the new hairs and the blood and the lines and curves and dips and bumps that weren’t supposed to be there according to magazines and the older girls… but still arrived despite it all.
The truth is that I’m tired of thinking about my body. I’ve been the bulimic girl and I’ve been the recovered girl. I’ve offered advice and I’ve shared my stories. I’m no longer trying to disappear into a ceramic vase of plastic flowers. I just want to Be. My body carried me through childhood scrapes and bruises. She read the awful words I carved into her burn book. She pulled me close when I was alone and she picked herself off the floor when I slipped up. She forgave me after years of abusing her.
Now, as she’s crossed the bridge into her 30s, I feel her changing again. And I’ve accepted the rites of passage. Drinking a glass of water with every cup of wine. Adding another jar of slick, translucent cream to my medicine cabinet. Sweeping away thoughts of where I should be at this point. Who I should be. I’ve welcomed those changes… but it’s the vessel that I’m stuck on. My immediate reaction is to grab onto these changes in the shower and make plans to run and to ban carbs and to add sit ups every morning.
But as this new year blooms, I’m trying to listen in to what she’s telling me.
Instead of jumping to conclusions and bullying her into a body that doesn’t fit, I feed her yoga. I serve her hot tea on weeknights. And plump, red bell peppers. Morning smoothies on the balcony. I make my goals one day at a time. I think of Adriene and put my hands on the soft folds of my stomach. I take a deep breath and whisper thank you.