Yesterday Glen spent hours digging up saplings of not-insignificant size around a tree by the garage. Years ago he'd brought home quite a collection of rocks from a hunting camp in Georgia. Please don't ask me the specifics of this. Anyway, I really have no idea what he'd had in mind for those rocks but he'd set them around the tree and yesterday, besides digging up the saplings and assorted weeds, he also spent time unearthing the rocks that time and weather had mostly buried. Needless to say, this was a hell of a lot of work. His back hurt so bad last night that he was worried about how it would feel today.
However, he felt pretty good this morning whereas I felt like I'd been hit by boards. When he asked me what I'd done to cause this pain I said, "I lived." Then I said, "I watched the boys do gymnastics." And I limped off to get some coffee.
Anyway, I did not do much today. I took a walk. A barely acceptable walk. But when I got home I thought, "Hell, you did it, Mary. It's okay."
And it was.
I have to wonder if my need to suffer physical discomfort or pain to make me feel okay with myself has to do with the realization I had yesterday about always feeling as if my body is my enemy. This need I have to push myself is real and constant. On the days when I don't do anything physically demanding I feel guilt and shame. I can remember all of the years that I dieted, sometimes in a healthy way, sometimes in a definitely NOT healthy way, and the guilt and shame I'd feel if I ate something I had deemed forbidden. This might be as ridiculous as a tiny piece of leftover cheese toast crust that one of my children had left on a plate.
And I can remember it all starting when I was about six or seven. I was obsessed with the thickness of my thighs when I sat down in shorts or a bathing suit. I'd look at other girls, often skinny little things, and my thighs even then seemed to me to be enormous, gross, fat blobs that were sickening.
I was called fat by classmates from second grade on. I was taunted, I was bullied. My grandmother's friends, many of whom I loved, would give me presents like jump ropes, hinting that if I just got a little more exercise, I'd slim right down! That's what they called it then- slimming down.
And I loved to eat. Food was definitely not just sustenance to me. It was pleasure and comfort. I think now, too, that I was just born with an appreciation for delicious food. It was not so easy to overeat or eat the wrong things in my house in those days. Well, we did eat a lot of bologna and white bread sandwiches but my mother could make a can of Campbell's vegetable soup serve as dinner for three- her, my brother, and me. Desserts were rare.
Thus began my interest in cooking and baking. Which has never left me and as you know, continues to this day.
But I am not sure at all where my body shame originated. Why did I look at my little girl thighs with such self-loathing?
Look at this picture.
Now in truth, I did get chubbier as I got older. I did not slim down until I was in the sixth grade when I had a serious parasite issue in my left foot. How crazy is that? I had to get worms in my feet to get thinner?
Of course there was more to it than that.
good heavens, you were NOT fat by any means! You looked like a healthy, hale child! But....I *get* the stigma of having been teased and bullied..even if unwarranted. My Dad (may he RIP w/o my malice now)....used to swat me on the butt *jokingly* on occaision when I was a child ....because? my butt (I thought) was too big? Not truly inappropriate, sexually.....but I always felt shamed because of it.
ReplyDeleteWas always self conscious of my butt from then on.....then after he had his stroke 8 yrs ago and pretty much lost his mind....he poked me in the stomach one day during a visit and said *you're getting fat*. LOL! Of course I knew his mind was gone....but the remnant feelings of my childhood were very much alive (and he still had that taunting vibe in him).
Those words are hard to digest and work through......but I'm dealing and much more able to let that stuff go (for the most part) now and feel more comfy with my body as it is now at age 70. TMI, sorry...but just had to share. Love the roots on your leaf...always glorious! And I covet that curtain in your bathroom window!
Susan M
That was before I started getting bigger but for whatever reason, I still thought I was fat.
DeleteYour father may not have realized it but he was being cruel. Obviously, it was deeply engrained. I am so sorry.
I am very glad you feel more at ease not, Susan, with that good body of yours.
Mary the work you’re doing here is extremely important. I hope you keep going. I love you to pieces. Thank you for speaking for all of us girls. Love, Rebecca
ReplyDeleteI love you. Thank you.
Deletei told a child today she was perfect just as she was after one of her friends told me in confidence she's being mean to herself about her body. i even wrote it in her notebook. we truly are perfect as we are. it's sad it took many of us all these years to see that vs seeing the images we were sent by the media. xxalainaxx
ReplyDeleteYou are right there, Mrs. M. Right where it's all starting, all going on. I love so much that the friend had the knowledge and courage to come to you about this and I love you so much for stepping in and doing what you did. I so wish I'd had a teacher like you.
DeleteI thought you would identify yourself as one of the girls on either end. Everyone there seems proportionately equal. But then, my entire childhood my father chastised me for being fat. People are what they are! I went to college, walked miles every day around Case Western Reserve's campus, and came home for Thanksgiving sizes smaller, to my complete amazement.
ReplyDeleteBut here's a rock story. My father was a rock hound, and collected probably a hundred peck baskets of rocks he intended to do something with when he retired. When he passed away, rocks untouched, mom had my brothers take them around the neighborhood, emptying them around neighbor's trees, or foundations. And my take on that was, what will archeologists think, in some thousand years, when rocks from all over the world wind up in an Akron, Ohio, North Hill neighborhood?
Your father thought you were fat? Oh my Lord. Even if you were, how can a father do that to his child? I guess many parents think that if they point out their children's faults enough, they will fix them.
DeleteWhich has worked NEVER.
Your mother was funny with her solution as to what to do with those rocks. I love it! She did indeed leave a puzzle for future archeologists to find and try to figure out.
Love your junk drawer. Let's see, rubber bands from broccoli bunches, batteries, matches, scratch pads, oven thermometer, whistle,..is that a magnifying glass and a smoke detector? You are a well balanced individual!
ReplyDeleteYes! Magnifying glass indeed! And I have no idea if that smoke detector even works.
DeleteSo sad that a pretty little girl thought she wasn't. I'm glad you're addressing it now. So often it's other people who put these ideas onto kids, who don't have the means of dismissing them as silly. Never too late to love what your body can do and has done, and what she's survived. such strength.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways I do very much love and respect my body. I think that giving birth to my children, naturally, and without drugs in my own home gave me a deep realization of its power and ability to function. It's just the way it looks that has always been a demon to me.
DeleteI honestly don't know what to say about all of that. There are feelings and shame that I have never experienced, most of the time I never gave my body a single thought. I was just me.
ReplyDeleteI hope the Xanadu Philodendron survives and grows well for you and when it gets too big for the pot you can slice it in half and have two pots, or break off new pieces and start many new pots.
God. You are one in a million to have had that feeling. As a female, I think. When I had my epiphany the other day, I was looking at those boys doing gymnastics and it came to me that they ARE their bodies. Which is exactly what you just said- "It was just me."
DeleteMy body has always felt "other" to me. Part of me but alien somehow.
I am excited to see what the philodendron does. I've got it perched on the folding table in the laundry room where it will be getting more and more sun as the pecans lose their leaves and I will not forget to water it!
Some varieties can grow HUGE, there is one in a yard next door planted in the griund under the shae of another tree and it is easily fifteen feet tall and very wide.
DeleteI was very sporty when I was young and had a great figure but even then all I noticed was my "imperfections". Does society condition young girls to do that? When I was in Greece a few years ago I was wearing shorts and one of the ladies said what great legs I had and how she wished she could wear shorts (she was a bit heavier). I looked at her and said "when I look at you all I see is your wonderful skin colour" and it was true. She had the most beautiful skin! The next day she was in shorts and we just gave each other a sly grin!
ReplyDeleteYes. I think society does condition young girls to do that. More, perhaps, now than ever.
DeleteI am proud of you for giving that woman the right words to assure her that she could wear shorts. Perfect!
Thee and me are of an age and it seems that we got caught up in the skinny culture of the time. I was always a kid who gained weight before a growth spurt and developed boobs at the ripe old age of 10 and a half. Oh the misery. Add in an anorexic mother with serious body dysmorphia and it is no wonder I hate my body today. Your current posts are doing a lot to help me address my distorted thinking.
ReplyDeleteThank you lovely lady.
I think about what my children learned from observing me and my weight obsession and I shudder and cringe. I know I told them the right things about my body but what I DID surely affected them far more than what I said.
DeleteMaybe it's not too late for any of us.
I have got one of those drawers in my kitchen......where everything that hasn't got a proper home goes in to! There is a comedian over here, Michael McIntyre, who did a routine about the " man drawer" that was very funny!
ReplyDeleteAnd you were not fat as a kid!!
I was not fat when that picture was taken. I did get "heavier" as they used to say. I guess they still do.
DeleteMr. Moon has a "man drawer". It is his entire garage.
I was the opposite of you, tall and very skinny, and teased endlessly because I was skinny. It has nothing to do with our bodies and everything to do with being female and an easy target I think. I was a very picky eater, mum was not a good cook, but I've always loved cookies. Mum was a good baker.
ReplyDeleteSending hugs and love:)
I know that very thin girls suffered too. We were supposed to not be fat but at the same time, we were supposed to have va-va-va-voom breasts and some curves. Well, until Twiggy came along. But that was after you.
DeleteWe could not win. Sending love and hugs to you.
Mary, you are beautiful! Like Christina Aguilera sang,
ReplyDelete"… 'Cause we are beautiful no matter what they say
Yes, words won't bring us down, no, no
We are beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can't bring us down, oh, no
So don't you bring me down today"
Oh, if only we could all internalize that!
DeleteHow interesting that one rooted and the other did not. Wonder why?
ReplyDeleteI can identify with some of your feelings about a compulsion to push yourself. I also have a need to make myself be active and get things done, or I feel guilty. Protestant work ethic, I guess! Your reflections about your attitude towards your body are interesting and I'm sure there's a lot wound up in that, but you looked like a perfectly healthy little girl to me!
(And yes, I think we would have been friends back then if we'd met!)
I think I had more of the root node on the piece that rooted.
DeleteYes, you are like me in a lot of ways. The Protestant work ethic thing, for sure.
Yes. I think if we'd known each other years ago, I could have been like another mother/sister to you. A wicked one!
....And, believe me, the "skinny little things" hated being called that by their peers, their mothers, their friends' mothers, their aunts and grandmothers, their neighbors, etc. "Have another piece of cake-- you could use it!" Apparently, a little girl's job was to be cute, and, whatever your own self-image, you were not cute to observers unless you were plump.
ReplyDeleteThere is that side of the spectrum too. And that points to the obvious- we were taught we were never good enough. Never "right."
DeleteThat's a very sad thing to be taught. It's cruel too, but those doing the teaching were probably raised the same way and don't realise just how cruel it is.
Deletewell, I was skinny and I got teased about it...if you turn sideways you'll disappear and from parents...you don't eat enough to keep a bird alive. I hated mealtimes because that's when most of the 3rd degree and disapprovement occurred, when my father pissed off about whatever was happening in his life took it out on us kids. I think I've mentioned that up until I was diagnosed with osteoporosis and joined the gym and set about to gain muscle and weight in my 50s my adult weight varied from 98 to 105 on my 5'4" frame. and no you do not look fat in that picture, you look just like the other kids.
ReplyDeleteand as so often happens when I think of something to write about next post, there you are writing about it, in this case the kitchen junk drawer.
You are a naturally thin person. Some people are. My brother can eat more (and does) than any human I've ever met and has maintained a slim frame his entire life.
DeleteYour father was a fucking jerk, Ellen. I think you know this.
You can still write about the kitchen junk drawer!
I remember always being so ashamed and self conscious. Any signs of vanity were immediately quashed by parents who seemed to equate any sort of attention to appearance as potential attempts to attract male attention. My mother once asked me (when I was nearly 30!) 'Why I did that?' Completely mystified, I said 'do what?' I had brought my fiance home. And we broke the trip into two legs instead of doing one long push. My father was upset that I was rubbing his nose in the fact that I was sexually active. I said, 'why would you think my sex life is your business? If I asked you about yours, you'd read me the riot act. I think you both need to stay out of my business.' In the end, feeling confident always equated with sex.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot in your comment that rings true for me too. Somehow ALL of this was about sex at the very bottom. Would we grow up to be sexually attractive? Would we grow up to be TOO sexually attractive? If we did, that probably meant we were sluts.
DeleteOf course.
I absolutely adore you for saying to your father what you said. It was not ONE damn bit of his business and he needed to shut the hell up. I've always realized that my kids' sex lives weren't any of my business. Never were, never will be unless they want to discuss something.
Dear Mary.. you look like a perfectly fine young girl in that sweet picture! I love your smile🥰Xo, Rigmor
ReplyDelete37paddington: you and I would definitely have been little girl friends.
ReplyDelete