Stranger to the Bone

This is a post about my body.

No, this is a post about how my body looks.

No, this is a post about how I feel about how my body looks.

And it's a topic which has been weighing heavily on my mind, lately.  So this post is about exploring how I feel, and if I accidentally offend anyone with my stumbling words, I beg you to understand that I don't mean to be insensitive or hurtful with any of this.  I'm just in a strange place right now.

lemme take a selfie

I haven't always been in the best shape.  I did pretty well throughout childhood and most of adolescence: I was a swimmer and active and it showed.  But then came senior year, and knee surgery, and enforced idleness followed by a lingering terror of re-injuring myself, followed by yet another knee surgery barely a year later... long story short, I was overweight for quite some time- like six years quite some time.  It took a devastating breakup and completely losing and re-finding myself (and surfing) to give me the tools I needed to take my own physical fitness in hand.  And I did.  And I still do.  Because it's important to me to be healthy and fit and strong, but beyond all those noble things, it's important that I look good naked and be physically desirable to myself.  That's right, myself.  Sure it's nice to get compliments from other individuals, and I know my husband thinks I'm sexy no matter how much additional jiggle I have, but the person whose head I'm really trying to turn is my own*.

(Hey, we've all got our own fitness motivations, eh?)

And to be honest, for the past five years or so, one of the reasons I've felt like I need to not just be fit but look fit is because I'm not a mother.  Because in my head it's okay for mothers to be soft.  Their bodies have gone through this amazing wringer, and they came out on the other side with a brand new human, and a body that reflects that rite of passage.  Moms earn their bodies and they have every right to have less-than-perky boobs, and less-than-taut tummies, and they are beautiful and amazing and who the hell has time to work out for two hours every day when you're feeding something every four hours!  But me?  I didn't have a kid, so I didn't have any outside (inside?) influences on my shape.  The only thing changing my body was me.

Except... that's not true anymore.

Pregnancy changed my body.  Both times.  And the first time around it was only a few weeks worth of change, and things went back to normal fairly quickly.  This time, however?  Some of the changes seem a little more permanent.  Here it is, two months after the miscarriage, and my breasts remain larger than they were pre-pregnancy.  My belly remains rounded.  My hips remain widened.  That last one is not something I can "work back into shape".  It is a new shape, a strange shape.  A strange new shape that doesn't come with a strange new human.  And I'm... not really sure how I feel about it.

Oh, I know how I ought to feel about it.  Love and support for this body that has carried me through so much.  But knowing how you ought to feel very rarely has anything to do with how you do feel.  Sure, I can fake it until I make it, and I will, but sometimes you just want to take a moment and acknowledge how fucked up a situation is before you go back to ripping the silver linings out of it.

The breasts are annoying.  The belly is depressing.  The hips are... weird.  I spent 33 years with only the barest hint of hips, and now suddenly I have to pay attention to how I pull a dress on, lest I get stuck.  It's just strange.  I know I will get used to the breasts, and I will get rid of the belly, and as for the hips... well I suppose I'll get used to them eventually, too.  Of course, one of my girlfriends (who made it all the way through pregnancy into motherhood) told me it took a full year for her hips to go back.  So maybe there's hope for that, too, in the long run.

But is that even what I want?  For my bones to creep back to what they were?  Or do I want them to stay, the last lingering evidence of something that might have been?

I don't know.






*(I recognize that I'm a bit of a hypocrite with this, in that I cut others a lot more slack with their bodies than I do with my own in terms of what I find sufficiently attractive to get down with.  I think that's because the more I like someone, the more attractive I find them physically, regardless of how insulated their six pack is.  But I'm way too familiar with myself and my own bullshit to fall for any of my own personality-based charm: thus I must rely solely on the physical charms, which of course sets the standards higher.)  (Does that even begin to make sense?)