finishing

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”.

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.

me and my body