During the entirety of 2016, I didn’t pick up anything that was heavier than a kettle. How could I? Over the course of that year, I had three (and a half) surgeries, anemia and a severe case of shingles. I was never particularly physically fit to begin with, but my body could carry me to where I needed to go, and I was comfortable moving it in any way I saw fit.
After that year, however, my body — and my relationship with it — had changed completely. I was covered in scars that I had never anticipated having, and any kind of physical capacity I had disappeared. My weight had yo-yo-ed from month to month, and I had spent two months wearing high waisted skirts almost exclusively because of my ostomy. Granted, I was never offered any physical therapy regardless of the fact that I hadn’t truly used my core in an entire year.
Concurrently, I had begun to see my body as something foreign to myself. It was a disgruntled child that only caused me problems. One I needed to feed, clothe, and take to the doctor. It tired me out, it held me back, and it made me spend way more time in bed than I would have wanted to. Slowly but surely, I began thinking of my body and my mind as two separate entities. My physical form was a vessel meant to trap my mind from attaining everything it wanted to. I couldn’t predict what it was going to do, and every time I thought I had it figured out, it spun entirely out of control.
Predictably enough, this dissociation, combined with my lack of physical abilities led to some pretty negative thought patterns. I became overly critical of myself and how much I was eating. I had never thought about my body that much in my entire life, and all of a sudden all I could do was hate it. It’s much easier to hate something that you don’t see as part of who “you” are.
By the time I moved to London in June of 2017, things hadn’t gotten much better. The negative thought patterns were not leaving me alone. I did find respite, however, in my commute. In the morning I took the bus to the hospital, but after the day was over, I walked for an hour and a half to get home along the River Thames. Let me be clear: there was no need to do this, I could have taken the same bus I took in the morning, but I loved the feeling of moving my body and having it take me from one point to the next. I didn’t have to rely on a train being on time. If I needed to go someplace, my body would take me. Slowly, I began walking everywhere — if the journey would take the same amount of time walking as it would on public transport, I would walk. I was totaling 20,000 steps daily, which is wild considering I spent most of my day working in a hospital. Suddenly, my body was effective and had a purpose. My abdominal strength still wasn’t great, but I could feel the soreness in my legs at the end of the day, showing me that they were getting stronger.
When I returned to my university in January of this year, I missed the freedom that London gave me. I could walk to class, sure, but it didn’t feel quite so special as passing the Globe Theatre did on my way home. My body wasn’t sore anymore, and the negative thought patterns began to come back with a vengeance. By early March, I realized I had to do something about it, so I went to see a personal trainer at my University’s gym. She looked at how I moved and what my fitness level was like, and then took me into the gym and showed me the ropes. I am comfortable saying that that decision and her support saved me from my negative thought patterns spiraling completely out of control. Eventually, I moved from free weights to loving barbells, and for the first time ever, I’m consistently going to the gym three, four or five times a week. Not only am I strengthening my core, but I’m also helping to appreciate and reconnect with my body.
When you lift heavy weights, the position of every part of your body matters. Your toe, heel, and side of your foot must be firmly on the ground. You must brace your core. Your back needs to be flat to ensure you’re using your legs to lift. You must move slowly, feeling absolutely every muscle in your body work to become more powerful. When I lift weights, there is only my body to concentrate on. Sure, I usually have some sort of music on, but the world outside me disappears — it must, to make sure I’m lifting correctly. Day by day, the lifts get easier, and I can feel my body becoming more powerful. My posture has improved, and I feel endlessly more capable than I did before. The gym not only serves as a form of physical therapy, helping me regain the strength I lost but also as a psychological remedy to help me appreciate my body further while tuning out the world around me. After the gym, I can feel how sore my muscles are, but it only allows me to appreciate them further and how capable they are considering what I subjected them to.
My negative thought patterns haven’t completely subsided, but moving my body while becoming more powerful has ultimately been the remedy I needed. Although I was never offered any support to help bring my body back to full working condition, I found my own way — which is perhaps even more empowering.
My Intestines and Me 