So I started at my feet, which I see every day when putting on socks but do not really see. How is that possible? I guess it is just not registering as important anymore as I have seen them for 45 years. I have a lovely tattoo on one foot and the other is plain and white. My feet are in pretty good shape even though the arches often ache and when i wiggle my toes i feel stiff and tight across the top of my feet. They do so much for me and yet their pain I tend to ignore as just part of being feet. As I move up to my legs I remember for a moment the "early years" of shaving my legs. The fear, the often misstep and slicing a little piece of skin off, they were so foreign to me then and now I could shave my legs without any real effort. Through the years I have learned to trust my hands and know where my skin and the razor stops and starts. The skin is white and has various bruises and scars. I used to want to be tan so desperately that I would lay out in the sun with baby oil just trying to cook myself just to end up red, in pain, the peel and then back to very white again. I am lucky my legs have no varicose veins (yet?) and are strong and able.
My knees and ankles have held up well and I have never had surgery or injury. I do notice real pain in my ankles when I start jogging especially if I have not run in awhile. My knees, ankles and hips get stiff and pop and crackle like a bad musical but I have learn to expect that "at my age" but I wonder is it genetics, weight, diet or just the evolution of impermanence? My thighs are triangle shaped from the extra weight that I am carrying. It is surprising how big my thighs are as I do not remember them ever being this wide, but I am on the heavier side of my weight spectrum right now. As a child my mother told me that if your thighs touch that you are fat. I used to spend years in every shower putting my feed together and seeing if my thighs touch and if they did seeing that look on her face of disappointment. All though lately it has been a long time since they did not touch and I have stopped looking but I know the disappointment is there for her (if she still talked to me) and me. With horror I realized the other day that my jeans were so tight they had rubbed a red rash on the inside of my thigh. I felt deep shame and then I immediately erased the thoughts it from my consciousness but the shame remains.
For the squeamish I would stop now, all thought I cannot imagine who would be reading with any interest about this at all. My stomach is a diaster. I am one of the fortunate women (not) who gains weight in her belly (and thighs and ass) so I have this rolling doughy look that is actually uncomfortable when I sit. You add that with my breast that sag down and the whole thing is this rolls and folds of skin jutting out so I could pass for 4-5 month pregnant, maybe less but not by much. I have stretch marks from my 10.5 pound son, scars from my gallbladder removal and from the scars from the three lumps removed from my breast. As I have gained weight my breast have gotten bigger and I am thankful that I was not born with large breast. They are terribly uncomfortable and just lay like saggy water ballons. When sitting down I feel squished together, layers of discomfort, and even breathing seems laborious.
The back of me I cannot see well but what I do see is the back of my thighs and my ass have that cottage cheese cellulite look. My back on the other hand is ordinary white. The freckles I had so pervasively on my back as a child have diminished significantly as I have stopped trying to bake myself alive with baby oil. My shoulders slump as most people these days who spends hours on the computer. I remember my father used to always get on me for my posture and in the morning before school would make me lay on the floor and straight my back and lower back to avoid getting scoliosis. I see these older people walking around the streets completely hunched over and I worry from time to time. To be so limited to never be able to stand up or sit up straight again seems frightening. My shoulders and neck are constantly stiff and feel twangy. I roll my neck and I can hear the grinding of the vertebrae on vertebrae. I do not know if it is my bed, my pillow, my genes, my stress or my inactivity that keeps this constant pain and tension but I have just accepted this feeling as well.
My arms are freckled but more mottled looking that the millions of freckles I used to have. As a kid I would get teased and questions about all my freckles, they would ask me how many freckled did I think I had, try to count them or guess that there were millions. I never really tried to count and was embarrassed of my own skin being so different than all the tan beautifully brown kids. I had a boyfriend tell me I obviously did not want to be tan enough otherwise I would be and when I questioned him how he shrugged but he was convinced it was an attitude issue. I wish I could find him now (not really) and explain melanin. So now they have faded a bit and freckles are no longer misunderstood, I had almost forgotten about how I used to hate them. All I hate now on my arms is that I am starting to see signs of a flabbiness in my arms, the wave good-bye that keeps going. Ugh. On the up side my skin looks younger and healthier rather than many of my age group, I think it is probably because while growing up my father made me always wear long sleeves, long pants, a hat...basically i looked like a muslim in hijab but in jeans and plaid.
My hands are starting to show signs of wrinkles but I like my hands. Lately my thumbs ache so much all the time that I try to not think about my hands. I am convinced that I will be crippled with arthritis and unable to use my hands when I am older - how much older? I think about playing the piano when I look at my hands. It is the grace and the beauty of the music they can create (trust me I am not that good) that elevated my hands into a better place. The ability to touch and feel, brushing my fingers through a loved ones hair, running them across someone's skin, the ability to type all these things make the hands almost the coolest part of the body. What if I really do lose function of my hands? Why am I not working harder to get some sort of help with this constant pain that scares me? I think I just assume these pains are all normal part of the decay of the body.
I have my fathers face and neck which is not a good thing as it means I do not have a single chin, but I do not really have multiple chins either unless I squish my neck down which I think most people see multiple chins when they do that. It is kind of a loose chin that looks sloppy and on the verge of being a double chin. The same is for the eyes, as we always have multiple rings under our eyes no matter how much we sleep. When you are a little girl freckles on your face is so cute, but as I aged and wanted acceptance and to be seen as pretty freckles were something to hide under make up. Now the freckles seem to look like age spots and I cover them to make myself look younger but I am lazy enough that I rarely wear make up so we have kind of come to terms with each other. I used to get comments about my beautiful eyes when I was a child and since then the color seems to have faded. I miss it actually as it was one of the few things that I thought made me special or even pretty - but just the eyes not the rest. My eyes are now a dull average blue gray that makes no real impression and that breaks my heart.
My hair is fine and thinning. Every girl wants long beautiful thick hair as they will tell you all men think that is the definition of a pretty girl. I know I used "all" and I know there are exceptions but really for the most part I think it is true. I had a miscarriage in my 20s that left me almost bald, my father asked me at dinner once if I realized I had a bald spot and with horror I said yes I know. He was shocked that I did not try harder to cover it up but other than wear a hat 24x7 there wasn't much I could do. Since then if I am under stress or physically having troubles with my thyroid or just health in general my hair is the first to abandon ship. I wish I could wear one of those haircuts that were really short but my head and face and even my hair just cannot carry it off well. Even my skull is strange as I have all these bumps and angles that are not natural for a head. I have never asked but I get the sense I was yanked out of my mother with forceps and must have gotten stuck and wrenched out leaving me with a very awkward skull. Can a skull be awkward?
My heart is strong, my lungs are strong, my bones are strong and I am very fortunate that most of me works just like it should. My thyroid was radioactively treated and now I wonder what state it is in. Do I really need my daily medicine? What harm has it caused in my body? I do not feed my body well and my stomach suffers from that the most - other than the weight I put on. I am often suffering from an upset or painful acid stomach. My liver is probably in deep trouble too. I know that the stress has me clench my jaw and my hands at night when I sleep but that is something deep inside me that has always been. My teeth are a diaster and always have been, they feel weak but maybe it is from all the hours of grinding? My senses are holding up for the most part. My hearing is as good as I pay attention and my smell has never been all that but it works fine. My eyes are starting to fail me as I lose my able to see far. I have started wearing my glasses again and am amazed at how much I had been comfortable with not seeing. I had let this vaseline gloss land over my world and it never really bothered me. I find seeing everything in the world both interesting and exhausting.
So in review, my body is amazingly strong and healthy. I am overweight and I can see the impact of it on every part of me. I am fading a bit as my body begins its decay and there is no real stopping it. This disassociation with my body however has made me complacent about some of the things I could probably make better or last longer. I can feel the shame as I look and think about my body and it is hard not to notice the disdain and disapproval I have as I look at the thing that is myself. It is time to appreciate the wonderful things my body lets me do and work on making the awkward, painful and uncomfortable things better. The pain of the decay and impermanence does not need to lead to a premature loss of my self.
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