You know when you walk past a shop window and don’t recognise yourself because you’d forgotten that you were wearing your new pink coat or had just lost 4 inches of hair?
I’ve just had one of those moments.
Post pilates leg stretches, and I was so surprised by the leg that I was stretching that I ended up twisting it back to front and forgetting to follow the crucial
“breathe”….
My legs do not look like my legs anymore, and I couldn’t guarantee that this body belongs to me.
This is, I suppose, what happens when you hit a normal weight after having a good two stone of ‘growing room’ for so long. It takes a little readjusting to get used to the fact that things look a bit different and nothing feel quite the same –
So, there’s a strange emptiness, at the moment, because I’m not sure what I think of this new body; and, there’s a slightly surreal disconnection, because the me that I had become accustomed to no longer exists; and, it’s unnervingly quiet, up there, as my head’s not sure which line to take –
It would like, I think, to shame me in to action; but, after nearly two decades, I am somewhat unmoved by the taunts, and the name calling, and the “come on, fatty, you’re late for work.”
And the softly softly approach seems equally pointless; because, the promise that losing weight will “make it all better, love” and miraculously transform my world, has been proved a lie by all the things that it has made worse –
It is used to me cowering under the charge that I have “let it all go” – and the subsequent sleepless nights, and desperate actions, and the panic that won’t stop until the dial goes back into reverse. Had expected that the fear of “getting fat” and losing control and becoming “normal” or “nothing” would scare me into submission; or, that the repulsion which is, I’m afraid, still instinctive, would overpower any rational arguments –
But it also realises that things are a little different now –
Because, this leg, which feels a little bulkier than the previous version, and makes me look twice when it’s being stretched, can also do a lot more than the old one.
And this body, that has strange curves and takes up a little more space, has opened doors that my previous self would not have imagined.
This stomach, that is present, rather than shockingly concave, doesn’t seem to consume my thoughts and feelings so hungrily; and, the outside, which had been the priority for so long, is contending for attention now that there are a few other things going on inside -
And the hushed silence is a strange sign of progress because my head is no longer sure how to respond.
Tags: Body Image, Weight
