Thursday, May 28, 2009

Beginnings


Me:
wreck (\ˈrek\)
something disabled or in a state of ruin or dilapidation; also : a person or animal of broken constitution, health, or spirits
My Project:
rec·la·ma·tion (\ˌre-klə-ˈmā-shən\)
the act or process of reclaiming: as a: reformation, rehabilitation b: restoration to use : recovery

See this picture? THIS is the person I’m trying to reclaim – that beautiful, funny, intense, hopeful young woman. Look at the spark in her eyes. Look at the confidence. She’s happy in her body, though she doesn’t know it. She thinks she looks great – loves her costume, mainly because it consists of a kimono bathrobe she made for herself (she’s very proud because she’s not much of a seamstress) and a bedsheet she took off her bunkbed in the dorm. It’s Carnivale in Rome circa 1986; she’s surrounded by friends and fellow intellectual seekers. She walks miles sightseeing most days, drinks water from drinking water spigots marked SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus), “The Senate and People of Rome.” It thrills her to know that she’s drinking water from the same aquifers tapped into by the Romans, from fountains marked with the same acronym used by the Roman Empire on all its public works. She’s happy, carefree, integrated.

That’s who I want to be, although I hope that, twenty-odd years later, I can recognize my good fortune for what it is and can be a little less neurotic about my body and my looks. Back in high school, I always felt inferior to the cheerleaders who were my high school’s (and probably yours) standards of beauty. I had breasts! How embarrassing! I had hips! Even worse! I had an hourglass figure! Oh no! I didn’t recognize that I was at the peak of my phsyical form, with healthy skin, beautiful hair, a nice body, a sharp mind.

Ah – there’s the problem. I was so cerebral then it was frightening. I’m not sure how I got be so divided from my own physicality, but I seemed to strike a pact with my body in seventh grade or so – “I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone.” I gave my body the fuel it needed to be happy, the minimal exercise it neeeded to be healthy, and then I didn’t want to hear any more from it. For years, this way of working actually worked. I could devote my time and attention to what REALLY mattered – succeeding academically, devoting time to my friends and family, thinking my thinks.
And then it stopped working.
My metabolism slowed down. I aged. I had children and became a stay at home mom. And here I am today. Now that I have become so overweight that I could stand to lose the equivalent of one of those tenth grade cheerleaders I so envied, I’m starting this blog as a way to be more accountable to myself. If anyone reads this, it will be bonus motivation because, even more than I don’t like to fail, I don’t like to be SEEN to fail. Ironic, isn’t it, since I have written my failure to stay healthy all over my body. But these are some of the contradictions I’ll be working through.
Welcome to Wrecklamation.

1 comment:

  1. I think this is fabulous!! I'm on this journey too. Good luck to you. (And me.) I'll definitely be following along.

    ReplyDelete