keskiviikko 10. lokakuuta 2012

Days 18 & 19: Picture-perfect

09-10102012

My relationship to my body is warped. I recall having had trouble being within my skin and flesh ever since the first grade of school when I was 6 years old and had to go to shower with the other girls after gym lessons. It may have begun earlier but I have no memory of it, and I find it possible the shame is something I have learned from my mother indirectly as a very young child.

I have had to face my body issues in the recent months for various reasons, the most prominent at this moment being the role I'm working on for a play that premieres this week. I'm playing the lead in a play that is about anorexia – I'm acting an anorectic girl of my own age. As I have faced the characters thought patterns, justifications and logic I have had to face the fact that some of my own thoughts follow the same routes. I do not have an eating disorder, but my relationship to food, my body and exercise is at its base so tilted that had I not admitted this to myself it may have accumulated into one. I will deal with this now and sort myself out now to prevent causing myself any real damage.

A friend asked me a couple of weeks back whether or not I had lost weight because of this play. I hadn't really noticed having lost weight even though I have and I was startled because she was so straightforward about asking the reason, probably because of genuine concern. I told her that before I started working on this play I kind of promised not to make myself sick over this character. A lot of people were then asking me if I was going to get skinnier for the role and that really annoyed me (“am I not skinny enough as I am?”, “don't you trust me as an actor?”, “am I not believable?”), and I responded by telling them the point of acting is not to destroy myself. I told my friend I didn't know why I had lost weight, but that it was probably because of simply consuming so much energy as I was constantly busy, which probably has been the case, and that being busy just happened to happen at the same time with the process of the play. But even though I was telling the truth, I knew there was something I'm leaving out: that I was excited about losing weight.

I have fought with my body my entire life. As a child I believed I was fat even though I was completely normal, although not in good shape. As due to mental issues I collapsed more and more within my body I started to actually manifest fatness by not standing within myself, resisting exercise even more and consequently becoming more fat – which made me more ashamed and collapsed. I refused to look at what I could do to improve my physical condition to be healthy, because my ideal was not in health but in beauty, not realizing they are the same thing, and as I wanted to just be “picture-perfect” but perceived myself to be unable to ever reach such a high goal, I just gave up and curled up in my self-hate. Every time I did try to do something, maybe exercise or drink more water or diet, I set my goals so high I ended up failing before I even got started. I did not understand my body and how it functions, nor had I no understanding of food and nutrition.

I was at my worst during the age 12-15. I had always loved candy and had developed some form of sugar addiction at some point during my childhood, and when I entered junior high and things got really rough mentally I got away with buying candy myself and the consumption got out of hands. Sugar became a comfort, a symbol of relaxation and a drug to get my attention away from my problems and into some leisure activity. I shrank within my skin deeper away, hiding within my body not wanting to be noticed.

I became a bit more confident as my body grew and I started to slowly turn from a child into an adult. I got fascinated with taking pictures of my face, as I thought I looked much more beautiful in pictures than in reality – in fact I was molding myself to match the definition of “picture-perfect” by creating a self-image through two-dimensional light-paintings, not realizing that if I change my self-image I will not change myself in the physical reality. Checking the mirror to see if I was still “picture-perfect” became a habit I still manifest but have been aware of and working on for some time.

There have been times when I have rapidly lost weight without trying and suddenly matched an ideal picture. During those times I have been immensely proud of my body, not realizing I am living on the energy “high” and that its polarity will come about eventually – instead of investigating what's actually going on in my body to see whether it's healthy or not and what I have done to cause it I have gotten “high” on the kicks I got from finally being “more” instead of “less” in terms of beauty and through that accepted and allowed the beauty norms to keep on existing. When the “down” has come about I have re-gained some or most of the weight I lost and resisted every bit of it, again not looking at what's going on in my body but holding on to my definition of myself as “finally beautiful”.

I am now facing a similar situation where I have again lost weight, this time not that rapidly but through consistent changes in my lifestyle, but I notice myself going into panic every time my weight seems to go up even just a little. I haven't actually weighed myself in a couple of years until a week ago when we got a scale for the play and I noticed myself to be lighter than ever before since childhood – I had expected that increased muscles would keep the weight up to a certain level and I got concerned of myself. I admit that I really don't know what's going on in my body even though I pay close attention to it. The thing is, I don't want to repeat the cycle: if the amount of fat in my body were to increase, as I am now I would not accept it, I would feel bad about it, I would blame myself, I would feel like a failure, I would again not want to be within my body even if it were healthier that way. I see it is not healthy to be obsessed about my body as an image and this will change now.


-- The norm --

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe my self-image to be what I am, when in fact I am this physical body that is here as it is at the moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that myself as the self-image has to match the beauty norm in order to be “enough” - to not be “the loser” and compete to become “the winner”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the beauty norm unquestioned.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to consume and enjoy images in movies, magazines, TV shows, people as idols, literature, music, video games, fashion and art not realizing they create the beauty norm with my acceptance and allowance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand what the beauty norm dictates as the smallest of details (shape and size of one's body parts, the outlines clothing creates, colour implications, etc.) - the reasons behind them and the consequences thereof - and how they are promoted everywhere in the media and in people as living examples following the norm.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize and admit that my struggle with my body is the consequence of me accepting and allowing the norm to be an authority; within this I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live as my self-image of “transcendence” and thus live within and as pride and be unable to admit I too submit to the beauty norm as an authority.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the ways I still live according to the beauty norm through my appearance as clothes, hair and body condition.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to submit to the beauty norm as an authority, not realizing I am abdicating my responsibility to take care of myself by prioritizing living up to an image instead of living within and as a healthy physical being.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that limiting myself by living according to a norm - not making choices from within the moment within and as myself but from within the self-image I act out - will have its consequences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I set myself expectations I have to live up to, I state that I do not want to be where/who/what I am right now, making it uncomfortable for myself to be within my present body; I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the discomfort (= not being here) will bear its consequences in the physical reality as my body.

-- “Loving” my body --

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to go into an energetic experience of excitement, pride and joy as I have lost weight and perceived myself to have “reached the goal”, not realizing the “goal” is imaginary and moves further and further away every time I appear to have reached it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe my relationship to my body is healthy when I have a positive energetic experience towards it, not realizing that the fact that I experience its negative polarity as well when I no longer match my ideal image implies that nothing I've “achieved” is permanent and what I experience is in fact not real.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe my experience of pride is a state of “loving” myself, not realizing that to experience “love” is to experience its polarity “hate” as well, and to experience pride is to eventually experience shame; Within this I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I indulge in the energetic experience of pride I myself accept and allow its polarity to eventually manifest.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to in high school believe that as I had lost weight and “become beautiful” a “justice” had happened – that I got what I deserved as a compensation for my long-time suffering, within this not realizing I had not looked at what had caused me to lose weight in the first place and that it was never a “gift” from the world but something I caused and brought to existence myself through my actions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive myself as “successful” when I've noticed I've lost weight, not realizing the experience of success implies that I still live according to a certain goal and image which I now perceive myself to be “closer” to.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not stop my experience of pride and consequently let it accumulate into arrogance over those I perceive to be “less” than me in terms of beauty, not realizing that this is an act of revenge through which I continue the cycle I suffered from by transferring the pain onto others.


Commitments:

I commit myself to study and investigate how the human body actually works and apply what I learn to assist and support my well-being and health as a physical being here on Earth, as I now see, realize and understand there is a lot I don't know about the human body and that my lack of knowledge and understanding has caused me a lot of harm in the past.

I commit myself to allow my focus to be on my breath instead of my mind in order to actually listen to my body, as it knows me better than I as the mind do.

I commit myself to investigate the ways the beauty norm is promoted and superimposed within this reality in order to assist and support myself and others to see the norm for what it is – a system of control and enslavement – to be able to let go of it and be free to express myself within and as myself instead of images.

I commit myself to no longer validate and justify the existence of the beauty norm, as I now see, realize and understand that it is not real as it is but a game I no longer agree to participate in.

I commit myself to not validate another's experience of “having to” live according to the beauty norm and to expose it for what it is and to support and assist the other as well as I can.

I commit myself to live as an example by no longer accepting and allowing myself to believe the image that is the beauty norm and live accordingly.

I commit myself to investigate and expose all the ways I support the existence of the beauty norm through my thoughts, words and actions.

I commit myself to live patience as my body searches for a healthy state of being within the realization that the process may be life-long and that my body might never remain the same.

I commit myself to stop "getting back at" the world through revenge by stopping my experience of pride when and as it is here, and to face who I am within and as the pride in order to forgive and correct myself.




I will continue with more specific writing on this point, such as my relationship to eating, exercising and my self-image.

Ei kommentteja:

Lähetä kommentti