“Would you rather slowly
reverse your outer aging process, so that each day you look younger, but you
continue to feel older and experience the aches and pains associated with
normal body entropy? Or would you rather continue to age outwardly but inwardly
you are growing younger each day, feeling more energy, strength and
flexibility?”
That question is a test of
wisdom and vanity isn’t it? Someone asked me that the other day. Glad it wasn’t
today.
I’ve been in this Earth Suit
for nearly 44 years now. I’ve been scrutinizing it for about 34 years, learning
to love it for 20 years. I’ve been in true and utter awe of it every once in
awhile, maybe 2 years if I combine all those moments over my entire lifetime. (That’s
being generous.)
I work with women a lot, so
I hear about body issues A LOT. I can sniff em out from a distance. Takes one
to know one. I’ve been to eating disorder land and back, worshipped at the
porcelain bowl, mastered the silent gag and double flush techniques. I know the
holy high of starving myself. I’ve made exercise a religion.
I’ve been clean a long time,
yet still there it is, those occasional days when my Earth Suit doesn’t fit. No
matter how I sit, stand, dress, eat, or work out, my skin is suddenly an ill
fitting irregular garment. I want to trade it in. Instead I move about in the
world doing all my normal functions, smiling when it’s time to smile, and I
robot my way through what could be, on any other day, meaningful interactions.
My old inclination was to forcefully
overcome my shit, to get frantic and really intense about fixing it. Go for a
run, do some yoga, or green tea should do the trick. In the back of my mind the
voice of my inner critic ramping up, so that not only do I feel like shit, now
I feel like shit for feeling like shit in the first place. “You’re a fake, an
imposter. All this progress you thought you were making, HA what a joke.”
The hamster wheel of hate
and self-loathing is hard to jump off when it gets spinning. For all my talk of
sovereignty, being of service, and self-help one truth is persistent and
persuasive. What I resist only persists. The harder I fight it, the faster the
spin, and greater the suffering.
Then what the hell is there
to do? Nothing. Truly, I swear that is the secret oh so passive weapon.
You know how it goes, something
like this: life is great, then you wake up and suddenly it isn’t. A stranger
looks at you funny, you don’t get the job, your beloved forgets the plans
you’ve made together, dog pees on the carpet, you lose an eye lash, a spider
sneezes. Who knows why your entire reality can shift in the blink of eye, why
one day the mirror is a benevolent benefactor, and the next day a pratty
antagonist. Trust me I’ve tried to get to the root of this mystery. It’s a huge
waste of time and energy.
I will share with you some
of my tried and true survival strategies for a shit day.
1.) Surrender to the suckiness, just allow it to be.
2.) Take a shower, get dressed. Seriously this helps.
3.) Permission to wallow for a day. Sleep a lot. (This is
not a lifestyle choice.)
4.) Chocolate, it helps.
5.) Netflix. It
can be your best friend in a pinch.
Yep that’s it. Let it ride.
Be shallow. Let your “practice” go for a day. Remember what its like to just be
a muggle.
Oh one more survival
strategy: write a blog post about what it’s like to be uncomfortable in your
beautiful body, ungrateful in your bounty, miserable in your health. Write
about what it’s like to be a whiney a lil bitch once in awhile.
Tomorrow will be better, I
promise.
PMS, Love, and rockets baby.
No greater than a speck of dust, no lesser than a god. We’re only messy humans
after all.
