Oh, Monday
Oct 3rd, 2011 by heidi
It has been the most Mondayish of Mondays, what with the carryover of feeling nauseated all day yesterday, which meant I didn’t get nearly as much done as I had hoped, save for baking a homemade peach pie (and even that wasn’t quite right, because I forgot the lemon juice, which meant it was a tad overly-sweet). When Sunday is a bit crummy, Monday’s not going to get any better and it hasn’t.
But, I did manage one tiny little mental breakthrough that I need to write down, lest I forget it. I was in the shower, doing my groggy-ugh-Monday waking thing and, for some reason, my thoughts were wandering to shopping with a work friend on Friday – I realized that, back in the day, I could have fit a women’s large too and that I sitll thought of myself as horribly fat. I wondered, as I’ve wondered before, what size I would be now if my dad, mom, and grandmother had recognized that putting on a bit of chub around age 9/10 is normal, given the fact that I started my period less than two years later, and had never started the “oh, don’t eat that, or you’ll get fat!” mantra. What if I had been taught that PE was fun, instead of seeing it as the miserable place where I was clumsy, awkward, and never did anything well enough not to be chosen last? Would I still be a size large? Or just XL?
Anyway, I was suddenly filled with this fury toward my PE teachers. How DARE they take the joy of movement away from me? When I was little I rode bikes. I climbed trees. I walked all over the place. And then I learned to hate my body, to feel like it wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t good enough, and I stopped doing any kind of movement for joy.
Last night, in bed, my husband was telling me about the local swimming pool and mentioned that they have a rope swing that goes out over the water. I said I thought maybe I should go to the pool too and he said that he wasn’t sure they’d let me on the swing. I know he didn’t mean it hurtfully; he’s not that sort of person, but entirely factually, they might not let me on the swing, because I’m fat. Things that I used to love doing as a kid, like scrambling over rocks, or swinging on rope swings…my body is in no shape to do those things, not just because I’m fat but because I haven’t voluntarily done movement in so long that I know I’m out of shape. My lower back has been killing me for weeks now (my chiropractor says there’s a nerve, possibly in the s1 vertebra, being pinched…which…ugh) and I just feel really OLD. I’m only 34 and I feel old.
Damn those stupid PE teachers for taking fun movement away from me. Now I “just” need to figure out how to get it back, so that I stop feeling so sore, achy, and tired all the time.
Anyway, I was suddenly filled with this fury toward my PE teachers. How DARE they take the joy of movement away from me? When I was little I rode bikes. I climbed trees. I walked all over the place. And then I learned to hate my body, to feel like it wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t good enough, and I stopped doing any kind of movement for joy.
YES YES YES.
I hate that that joy was taken from me too. Instead of seeing walking as a way to get somewhere, or a way to relax, it became “Only valid if I walk for an hour” or whatever else. I’m still trying so hard to break myself out of this cycle. I rode my bike to work this morning, and found myself actually looking forward to it. I kind of want to ride my bike to uni as well, but I don’t have time.
I wonder too what it would have been like if my mother hadn’t foistered her own body troubles on me too. Last night we were looking at photos of our family, and there was one of my grandmother when she was my age. We are the exact same size. Dad told me she was always trying to lose weight when he was growing up. While my mother foistered her bad body image messages on me, my grandmother always tried to make me feel good about my body and my weight, probably so I wouldn’t go through what she went through. Two very different approaches from people with the same problems.
Sorry, this got a bit long! This is an excellent post and I really feel like I can relate.
Recovering even a bit of that joy is like flipping society the bird.
Sounds like you had some highly relevant revelations lately!
If you’re trying to recover your joy in movement, but is also quite out of shape, I really recommend you try the pool anyway. You may know this, but it’s really great exercise without being hard on your body, and, even more impotantly, it’s fun!