28. Running To Love Myself
Falling in love with my body more and more during my sunset runs ... and other rebellious thoughts.
I did my first official runs of the year this past month and I realized how much I really missed that feeling of being present in my body; to feels its ebbs and flows. I already knew the very first run was going to be a challenge, but it was the kind of challenge I was craving. I knew that my body would be more sensitive than normal to the work it had to do during this run, as I was quite sore from an intense glutes and abs class that I took the day after getting back from Mexico. I also had a few extra glasses or orange wine the day before with my girlfriends out and about in Greenpoint during what felt like a blissful summer of a Saturday. So I had somethings physically working against me. But still, I was really looking forward to this run all day long, as it hit me that particular weekend how much I miss the feeling of using every fiber of my body to push forward even when I feel like I want to give up. The best feeling is not giving up and realizing that you actually had it in you to go those extra feet and that it was actually not as painful as you’d thought they would be.
The best thing about these hopefully soon to be ritualistic runs, is that there is absolutely no possibility of being bored. I find myself being hyper aware of my surroundings on a run. I get to acknowledge the skyline at its most beautiful moments during sunset. It’s a zen like sensory experience noticing how much the sun has moved down behind the buildings with each pass of a pier, and to play a game in my head to see if I can beat the amount of time of its descent. I notice the soreness of my thighs but it just motivates me to keep going. In those moments, when my foot meets the pavement, a sense of rootedness and firmness that justify my strength while at the same time bringing me down to earth, overcome me. I run by life in all shapes and forms, such as the group of teenagers kicking around a soccer ball or the lone soul reading her book on a bench, unflinching to the movement around her. I admire from a distance these strangers who may or may not be in someways similar to me, but I try not to give too much of my energy to figuring them out out. My energy only goes towards myself, both attentive and out of breath, as I find the pace that keeps me in cruise control and then I can think a little less. To be that an anonymous figure in passing, in my mind unnoticed by others. It’s humbling. At the end of my run, I’ll take all the time in the world to walk the rest of the way home acknowledging every individual muscle fiber, paying each one thanks and giving its constant buzz value and weight. A reminder of the energy of my being and my existence. A little sweaty epiphany moment that makes me more and more thankful for my body each and every time.
How hard it is to give thanks to our body these days for its natural shape, form, strength and unique beauty. Unfortunately, it doesn’t suit capitalism when us women embrace the bodies we were born with. It’s much more profitable when we don’t. Capitalism prefers that we give into injections for weight loss and filler for youthfulness. When terms like “pilates body” translates to a pursuit of thinness instead of strength for impressionable young women, at a costly $40 a pop. Kris Jenner’s new face is the talk of the town when when majority of women cannot find a proper treatment for their endometriosis. In a world where money rules, it’s better to be in pain as long as the exterior is tied up in a pretty bow.
I watched these two videos on Instagram and they basically wrapped up what I’ve been feeling these days in reference to the amount of stress women’s bodies have to go through on a daily basis to feel even just a little bit of ENOUGH.
And I just read this post this morning by Paris Mwendwa, a fellow Substacker, and felt so aligned with her entire latest post:
And in particularly this quote:
In this way, daring to have aspirations beyond desirability is one of the most feminist things you can do. Telling women to build the life they want–and to stop believing they have to be beautiful and chosen first–is truly radical.
Violence is a harsh word, but to be honest maybe it is not harsh enough. We’re expected to be smooth. We’re expected to be thin. We’re expected to be toned but not too muscular. We’re expected to have really good breasts because that is what men prefer. We’re expected to have full lips. We’re expected to be married. If we aren’t married, we are expected to be looking for a husband. We’re expected to be pregnant. We’re expected to child rear. We’re expected to never be tired. We’re expected to always do our hair. We’re expected to cover up our grays. We’re expected to always have mascara on. We’re expected to always be young or else no one will pay attention to us. We’re expected a lot out of us but the line is drawn when it suddenly becomes too much. Is there a way to win?
I grew up with a ton of insecurities surrounding my body image, fixated on the fact that I was always the tallest in my class, self conscious about my flat chest, hating my body because of my scoliosis and quietly facing the slap of jokes from mean classmates (usually white males) about my racially ambiguity and my Asian-ness. I hated to wear sunglasses because I thought they brought attention to the size of my nose. I devoured fashion magazines and catalogs which brought me so much inspiration and joy, but of course at the time I didn’t realize that there was a lot of harm that came with the vision of beauty that they projected on me (today we can call this Instagram face) that didn’t match what I saw when I looked at myself in the mirror, which was an ethnic nose, full cheeks, asymmetry and straight brown hair that seemed quite plain in comparison to girls with the wavy, perfectly highlighted hair in all the pictures. Looking back, I must have internally felt exhausted and it is no wonder I had an eating disorder for two years of my high school experience. My insecurities and damaged body image definitely shaped me into who I am today, but it didn’t ultimately define me. It paved a different kind of path for me to take, one that I needed these sort of wounds to help me redefine my own definition of beauty into one that served me much better.
Healing came for me at a point where I was forced to choose my strength and health over anything else. During my first year of college, I had to undergo a 7+ hour surgery to correct my scoliosis, and in order to do that procedure safely, I had to gain weight. I think this life vs death mentality really hit me at that point, and I slowly came to realize how important nurturing my my body instead of beating up my body was. And how important it was for my future wellbeing. I was left with a titanium metal rod in my upper spine, alongside screws in my vertebrae. Retelling all this makes me realize that I was basically a poster child for girlhood insecurity. haha. Honestly, it almost feels like a miracle how I bounced forward unscathed and unscarred, except for the physically scar down my spine that I now embrace with respect and admiration.
And I think with finally coming to appreciate my body for what it is meant to do for me instead of what it is meant to physically look like, I came to realize the power I had with standing up for the parts of me that I never thought were beautiful enough or worthy enough of admiration from others. I came to realize the power of my own self admiration and using it as an act of rebellion against the cookie cutter molds projected onto me that made me weak in the first place. Embracing and preserving my imperfections was my little way of raising a middle finger to a society that constantly judges our bodies, stifles our thinking and seeks to control our free will which in turns more women against each other more than we think. And that’s the whole point. From dating to diet culture, I have seen simple interactions within female communities have patriarchy engrained in them. And this just makes us weaker in a world that already loves to see us weak.
So this is what I was trying to get at when I started writing this post inspired by my weekly sunset run that makes me think about my body in new, eye opening ways each time. I will continue to run and build my stamina. I will continue to lift weights and show off my broad shoulders. I will continue to not brush my hair. I will continue to not slouch and be the tallest woman in the room. I will continue saying no in response to people forcing me to say yes even when it stings a little that they didn’t hear me the first time. I will continue to love the fact that I don’t look like the other women online with tons more followers than I do. I will continue to relish in the fact that there is nobody else who is ME.
Using self love as an act of rebellion in this world for as long as I find myself here is one of the greatest gifts I can give myself. And I’ve found community to be key in this self love. I have friends near and dear to my heart from all sorts of backgrounds and who are on very different paths. Older women. Younger women. Married. Married with children. Married without children. Single and dating. Single and not dating. Single and with children. Women who work to live. Women who live to work. Women struggle to find balance between the two. Women who are settled in life. Women who are ready to start a new chapter. Women we are more lost and confused and are still figuring it out. Each woman has equal worth and equal value. And building a community of different kinds of women who use their differences to uplift and support each other is what makes us most beautiful I believe.
And of course I’m not perfect. Of course I’m only human. Of course I have moments of worrying about aging and will book myself a skincare laser session or a facial when I feel I need a boost. Of course I’m going to put on lipstick before that event in the hopes of looking my best even if I don’t feel like it. Of course I find myself asking my sister or friend to borrow a brush so I can brush away the flyaways before taking that group photo. Of course there will still be many days when I walk into a room, all near 6 feet of me, as polished as I can get yet still feeling unsure of myself, or that I don’t have enough to offer, or that I don’t belong in a room amongst women more petite, delicate, maybe more put together or “perfect” than me. But I just remind myself that there is space for us all and all the complexities that we feel within ourselves, and that the pressure to hide beneath a perfectly refined exterior is all a facade. Maybe these complexities need to be shown and embraced rather than hidden, and that way we can accept ourselves more easily that way.
Healing can never be full, but we can get pretty damn close to de-centering our focus on perfecting our bodies. And thinking this way feels rebellious in the best possible way. And I end up feeling beautiful and worthy more times than I don’t these days. And that is what counts.
And this is my story of the wheels that turn during my sunset runs that just happened to be something like a love story.
:)