I often do not perceive my body as part of the same machine as my mind. My body is more or less an old clunker that gets its passenger, my mind, from point A to point B, with the sort of love-hate relationship a person has with an unreliable vehicle they've owned for years and would take to the junkyard in a heartbeat if they could afford better.
My body isn't "right," and it never has been. For as long as I can remember, I have had a very poor sense of my size, my relation to my surroundings when moving through space, my weight, and even my appearance. There are times when basic tasks like walking are compromised by the disparity between the body I have and the body I feel. I have a difficult time assessing myself relative to other people and things; my mind believes that I am bigger than I am despite being 5'1" and very petite with very little change in my size since high school.
The fact that the my body does not feel right results in a dysphoria that is compounded by my physical and mental health, as well as my gender identity. I am genderqueer in a manner strongly masculine-leaning, but any attempts to express my gender physically are thwarted by an inherently feminine body. I can work out until the cows come home; it only makes me spindly and wiry, never bulky. I can wear mens' clothing, but the closest I'll come to being gendered correctly is the occasional child mistaking me for a teenaged boy. But I do no consider myself a boy because I am not a child, which is almost as upsetting as being identified as female. I find it as belittling as people who refer to me as "cute" or who call me "sweetie" due to my small and youthful appearance.
It doesn't stop there. I can not look in the mirror and accurately assess my body. I associate curves with femininity and think I have more than I do despite an adult weight that is well below average for my size; for many years, in a combination of skewed body image and intention to harm myself, I starved and exercised myself relentlessly in an attempt to whittle away anything that might give me the look of a woman: breasts, hips. The irony was that it only made me look smaller and more frail, creating a sort of tail-chasing body hate spiral.
Anxiety and obsession also made me a self-mutilator to the effect of significant, widespread scarring on my thighs, breasts, genitals, and arms. I don't have the option of pretending I am mentally well; if I wear anything but long sleeves and long pants, my past (and occasional present) is extremely plain. I can not have a lover without them seeing and acknowledging the damage to my body.
Finally, my physical health is declining, and I am needing to adjust to a body that I loathe both the appearance and functionality of. I am an active person; I need to be an active person, but neurological dysfunction, chronic pain, and other complications sometimes make a body I already deem weak for its tiny stature a further hindrance to me. My response is to put it through the ringer while I still can; many people refuse to believe that I am as sick as I am because I still do so much. They can't comprehend that it is at the cost of going to sleep every night with no possible position to be comfortable in, being persistently exhausted and run ragged.
So, on this one level, I afford my body one tiny inkling of respect: I'm impressed that it has survived me so far. I am torn between marveling at its ability to be inhabited by something so hostile to it, and wanting to frantically pound the "eject" button. Because of this, reading about other people and how they do and don't respect their bodies, how they relate to their bodies, always fascinates me.
TW: self harm, eating disorders, body/gender dysphoria
I often do not perceive my body as part of the same machine as my mind. My body is more or less an old clunker that gets its passenger, my mind, from point A to point B, with the sort of love-hate relationship a person has with an unreliable vehicle they've owned for years and would take to the junkyard in a heartbeat if they could afford better.
My body isn't "right," and it never has been. For as long as I can remember, I have had a very poor sense of my size, my relation to my surroundings when moving through space, my weight, and even my appearance. There are times when basic tasks like walking are compromised by the disparity between the body I have and the body I feel. I have a difficult time assessing myself relative to other people and things; my mind believes that I am bigger than I am despite being 5'1" and very petite with very little change in my size since high school.
The fact that the my body does not feel right results in a dysphoria that is compounded by my physical and mental health, as well as my gender identity. I am genderqueer in a manner strongly masculine-leaning, but any attempts to express my gender physically are thwarted by an inherently feminine body. I can work out until the cows come home; it only makes me spindly and wiry, never bulky. I can wear mens' clothing, but the closest I'll come to being gendered correctly is the occasional child mistaking me for a teenaged boy. But I do no consider myself a boy because I am not a child, which is almost as upsetting as being identified as female. I find it as belittling as people who refer to me as "cute" or who call me "sweetie" due to my small and youthful appearance.
It doesn't stop there. I can not look in the mirror and accurately assess my body. I associate curves with femininity and think I have more than I do despite an adult weight that is well below average for my size; for many years, in a combination of skewed body image and intention to harm myself, I starved and exercised myself relentlessly in an attempt to whittle away anything that might give me the look of a woman: breasts, hips. The irony was that it only made me look smaller and more frail, creating a sort of tail-chasing body hate spiral.
Anxiety and obsession also made me a self-mutilator to the effect of significant, widespread scarring on my thighs, breasts, genitals, and arms. I don't have the option of pretending I am mentally well; if I wear anything but long sleeves and long pants, my past (and occasional present) is extremely plain. I can not have a lover without them seeing and acknowledging the damage to my body.
Finally, my physical health is declining, and I am needing to adjust to a body that I loathe both the appearance and functionality of. I am an active person; I need to be an active person, but neurological dysfunction, chronic pain, and other complications sometimes make a body I already deem weak for its tiny stature a further hindrance to me. My response is to put it through the ringer while I still can; many people refuse to believe that I am as sick as I am because I still do so much. They can't comprehend that it is at the cost of going to sleep every night with no possible position to be comfortable in, being persistently exhausted and run ragged.
So, on this one level, I afford my body one tiny inkling of respect: I'm impressed that it has survived me so far. I am torn between marveling at its ability to be inhabited by something so hostile to it, and wanting to frantically pound the "eject" button. Because of this, reading about other people and how they do and don't respect their bodies, how they relate to their bodies, always fascinates me.