i’ll get to the cycling, just bear with me
a sec...
i was ten years old the first time it
occurred to me that i should be dissatisfied with my body. someone who hadn’t
seen me for a while – an adult – walked into the lounge room where i was
sitting and said, “hello kt, you’ve put on some weight”.
ten. years. old.
i think i mostly forgot the incident at the
time, but i remember it hurt my feelings in a way that they hadn’t been hurt
before. the real kicker came two years later when i was stumbling through
puberty in grade eight at toowong state high school. a short, skinny kid with
terrible teeth called brian something-or-other humiliated me in front of our
entire bus on the way home from school one day. he told everybody that i had cellulite
and that must mean i was fat. people told him to stop, but they were laughing
while they did it, so clearly they didn’t want him to stop at all. brian
something-or-other was on a roll and he had a captive audience. i really only
realised he was short, skinny and had bad teeth when he said nasty things about
me. not the first time in history that hate bred hate i suspect. for some
reason – in that moment – i had to find something wrong with him so i didn’t feel so pathetic about myself.
if i had the choice to relive those twenty
minutes of my adolescence or walk around for a full year naked with lipstick on
my teeth, there’s a good chance i’d choose the lipstick. i hated that kid as
much as i can recall hating anything ever in my life. it is an event which i
can categorically say led to years of hating my body.
i’m kind of sick of hating my body. i’m
sick of having the voice of brian something-or-other (and others like him who
have made themselves known to me over the years on televisions and billboards) constantly
in my ears telling me that how i look isn’t good enough. i’ve still got
cellulite which means i must still be fat, which means everyone probably still
wants to board a smelly bus and laugh at me. i’m really sick of it.
the truth is, that in conjunction with my
mind, my body has done something pretty extraordinary in the last month. my
body and my mind have travelled almost the entire west coast of america on a
bicycle loaded up with a tent, a sleeping bag, a pillow and some clothes. i
shouldn’t hate a body that is capable of that. i should give that body a pat on
the back and say, “well done body. you did good”.
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| fog, ocean and mountains... these are the things i saw most days |
i hope none of you hate things about
yourself. your bodies, in conjunction with your minds, have been doing some
pretty extraordinary things this past month too. some of you are parents. your
bodies and minds have been doing things that i’m really not cut out to do. some
of you teach. some of you heal other bodies. some of you cook and clean and
love people really well. some of you use your bodies and minds to give gifts of
extreme kindness and grace to the world in which you live. some of you create.
some of you study so that your minds can make the world a better place. some of
you courageously get out of bed when everything in you is telling you stay and
drown where you are. we shouldn’t hate bodies and minds that are capable of
these things. we should high five those bodies and minds... heck we should high
ten them!
i’m done with the hating. i invite you to kindly remind me of this next time i ask if i look fat in my jeans.
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| me and my body |
