History of a Body

There are things that happen to a body when it is running.  Muscles pull and push the weight of bones, fat, and tissue.  Joints rotate and bend.  Breath has to enter and leave the lungs, providing oxygen to a pounding heart and to the blood which travels everywhere.  I watch other people run and they make it look so easy and fluid: thin graceful legs creating a circular motion as they glide across the ground with straight backs and relaxed shoulders.

 I don’t feel like they look. Not even close. 

I feel like my feet slam into the hard ground like a hammer, reverberating up my shins, through knees and thighs and hips, all the way to my spine.  I find myself pulling my shoulders up around my ears as if I can lift my legs higher that way.  I have to remind myself to un-clinch my fists.  But despite the tensing of muscles and the hard ground beneath me, I feel certain things start to fall away.  I feel as if it is my right to pound and pound and pound at the earth. As if I can pound out dark and unpleasant memories.  I feel as though every time I run I leave behind a little bit more of the things that my body wants to forget. 

 I become lighter.

·         A body was born 31 years ago, a female body, small and perfect, about 6 and ½ lbs. 

·         When the body was 5 years old it was inappropriately used for a period of time by a curious teenage boy who didn’t understand the ramifications of what he was doing, and who was damaged him-self.  The body was used with a blanket pushed over its eyes and never told anyone. 

·         When the body was 10 its bony joints and thin limbs and sturdy core changed.  The body’s hips became wider.  It developed a soft round belly, and was the only one in dance class that had to wear a bra beneath its leotard. 

·         When the body was 14 it was told how beautiful it was and how desirable it was by men who were old.  The body did not feel beautiful. 

·         When the body was in its teen years it became larger and softer.  It was the token chubby member on the basketball and volleyball team.  It was the brunt of crude jokes and it was groped by a stranger.  The body snuck food and ate in private.  Then it would make itself vomit.

·         When the body was 18 years old it was spied upon everyday in the shower by a family member until it found out and moved away.

·         When a body was 22 it was trapped in a bathroom at a party and raped repeatedly by three different men who wouldn’t let it leave. 

·         Until the body was 24 it starved itself of food for days at a time and then gorged until it was ill. 

·         When the body was 25 it grew a baby within its womb.  It nourished itself.

·         When the body was 27 it was told that it had fibromyalgia, which is a chronic pain disorder that explained the exhaustion, the cramping muscles, sore and swollen joints, migraines, weight gain, and constant pain after physical activity. 

·         The body has learned how to feed itself.  It knows how to work through the pain.  It is still learning. 

All bodies must have a history.  The ones that pass me by while we run alongside the canal.  The ones that have never been fat.  The ones that have to fight through pain every day.  I accept the history.  It is the past and cannot be changed, re-written, or erased.  It simply is.  But I am finding that if I run with my worn out tennis shoes, pulling my too large body along the way, I might be able to leave a little of the history in the dust.  Perhaps that is why I have chosen this painful and difficult and embarrassing activity.

Have you ever looked at the history of your body?  Have you thought about writing down the things that have been done to it or the things you subject it to?  It is a cathartic experience.  It is also very strange to look at those life experiences from a distance.  I have never done it before and, like running, seeing those events on the computer screen made them just a little less important, a bit farther behind me.