Lately, I've been going to the gym. Not because I have some focused plan to get healthy and lose weight. Though I do hope to get healthy and losing weight is great since I'd love to go shopping for clothes at a store like a smaller-sized person. I go every morning and I usually spend around 2 hours there. Soon it'll be 3 as my workouts will continue to expand. I can't do much right now compared to some. My lifting isn't so great and it takes me 30 minutes to swim a half-mile, but that's okay.
I go to the gym because I like to go to the gym. I go to the gym because I am fascinated by the physicality and possibility of the human body. I go to the gym because even though I was always a very active child, I was humiliated and mocked, told again and again that I was too fat, too disgusting, and when I tried to play organized sports, tried to participate in PE, I simply could not keep up. Slow and clumsy and fat, I quickly decided that physical activity was not for me. That I hated it. I could not separate the physical exertion from the endless horror and humiliation that was PE and recess. A horror and humiliation that the teachers were either blind to or as helpless as I was to correct.
I go to the gym because I met a man who showed me that it didn't have to be that way. He literally changed my life when he said, "You're an athlete. Forget about all the shit you went through and don't worry about how you got to where you are today. You're an athlete and your body knows it."
I go to the gym because it's my daily adult recess. Recess I never got to enjoy as a child. I cannot stress the importance of that enough. It's a complete reversal of the very mindset that kept me homebound, anxious, overweight, and self-conscious for so many years. See, going to the gym is not about losing weight. It's about healing my body from years and years of psychological and physical damage--some was external and some was internal and getting to where I am now has been very difficult, sometimes painful, sometimes scary, but it's a constant journey.
My sister posted this picture on facebook last night.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Yes, that's me and a difference between fifteen months. The responses from friends and family were very kind and complimentary, but every single one of them completely missed the point. They look at me and they see somebody with "great determination" and wonderful "self-control" and "Will-power" and they wished they could "work as hard" as me.
But I'm not working. I'm not using "will power" to starve myself--I'm not even remotely dieting! I eat what I want and I eat when I'm hungry and I don't give a fuck what anybody says about my habits (Everybody has an opinion about what would work "best" and after listening to those opinions for years I realized "Wait a sec. Why am I listening to them when it's my body I need to pay attention to?").
I'm healing and I'm losing weight in the process because my weight gain was a direct result of a complex problem...I was very ill and now I'm convalescing.
So join me under the squiggly for my story...
Read More