And the water washed our wounds.
May. 1st, 2008 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raybearTonight I was thinking, damn, once again I'm jonesing to sit down and get all this stuff out of my brain that's been swirling around on the topic, but I can't because even though I'm at work and its quiet, I have this freelance job I need to work on. So I sighed and ho-hummed and got down to it, but when I went to get started on the second part, there were technical errors outside of my end of the deal and its too late, there's no one in the office, so oh well, guess I'll do it first thing in the morning!
Onto thoughts about my body.
If you haven't spent any time with me, in person or via e-mail in the past few months, you know I've been going to the gym. A lot. Wait, ok, this sounds like you would know this because OBVIOUSLY I'm so buff now, but no, what I mean is, I talk about it a lot. I mention that I'm on my way, that I was just there, about something I overheard, about how I need to soak in epsom salt because I'm sore, about this new thing I read, about what I'm eating and why and when because of working out, etc. etc. I'm trying hard not to be That Guy while also realizing, well, I kind of am That Guy, so how can I be That Guy but not terminally annoying and also just accept that this is what makes me happier and more functional? Well, because duh, its not just a new habit I'm obsessed with, like watching early 80s films or collecting commemorative state spoons, its about my body and things about bodies are always weird in this culture, and its more complicated with non-slender bodies (though really, everyone has self-image body issues, even skinny people, and everyone is also burdened and undone by any perpetuation of self-loathing and judging), and its even MORE complicated with trans bodies. Hence me having lots of thoughts. Though I suspect I'd have something nearly as long to write about anything, I have lots of thoughts all the time.
When I started my transition, when I went to the doctor and got my physical check-up and unexpectedly got my very first shot of testosterone that day (seriously, I thought he was going to make me come back, but I think it helped that my therapist was his patient as well, so he knew I was easily verifiable), I weighed in at 242 pounds. I think I wore size 44 pants, but its always varying, depending on where you buy them from and I never took an actual tape measure to my body because I was not connected enough to my body. I'd been slowly gaining weight all through college, though I have no memory of any of it, because again, see disconnect from body. Seriously, this paragraph is really hard for me to write, not because I'm cringing or ashamed, but because I flat out don't know, can't remember. What I do remember, and can piece together from other evidence, that like many other body-related things in my life, it was a slow process. There wasn't a "year I got fat" or anything like that. It was a gradual building process of eating poorly (both nutrition wise but also unaware, emotional eating) and inactivity, all tied up into things like depression and gender and sexuality and whatnot. Ugh, I lost my train of thought, I guess I was trying to do some sort of setting the stage. So anyway, I started on hormones, I started transitioning, and all that testosterone meant my metabolism changed (I started eating less quantity-wise because I was full, not out of restricting myself), I gained muscle while doing nothing (which also effects my metabolism and body shape), and I was slowly starting to inhabit my body more, which meant I did more with it. I still didn't take up jogging or anything, though I tried a few times (I still remember the first time I went with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
limenal and she was like, uh, that's way too fast, and I realized all this time, I was starting off my jogs at a near-sprint and then wondered why I could barely make it around the block!). Mostly I just walked a lot more, occasionally did weights. Like, every few months I'd bust them out and do them for a week, then forget. I also subscribed to Men's Health that first year on T. For real, it goes that far back. Overtime, I lost weight. Approximately 40 pounds over the course of a year or two. I stayed around 200 pounds and a size 40 pants for awhile.
Around the time I decided to be a writer, I went back to grad school, I quit my job and cashed out my retirement fund and used it for chest surgery, I started being more active to get in shape for the surgery -- I would run occasionally, I would walk a lot, I started paying attention to how eating would make me feel and adjusting things that way, but all this was sort of patchwork and piecemeal, nothing consistent. I bought my first bike and started riding again. During this 2-3 year period (which ended last year), I was always fluctuating 10 pounds, depending on the time of year and my emotional life, but for the most part I could fit into any size 38 pants and occasionally size 36s. I took stairs two at a time and didn't get that out of breath. I still only lifted weights once a month.
But last year was when I started to put some pieces together about my body. My habits weren't getting worse, but I was gaining weight. Hello 30 and metabolism starting to slow down. I was still prone to emotional eating and drinking during the winter months. I was sluggish and less active in the winter months which made me depressed, or being depressed made me unwilling to leave the house, or it doesn't matter which one came first, they were both their. Oh god, now I've devolved into the style of a fitness magazine before and after profile piece. Why did I decide to do expository backstory? I hate exposition. Its my least favorite part of being a writer because it requires the most craft to make it look effortless and easy! Digression.
What do I want to say?
I joined the YMCA in early December. For 3 months, I went 2-4 times every week. Seriously, there might have been one week I only went once, but I highly doubt. I'm pretty sure I went at least twice every week. EVERY week.
In the past 30 days, I have gone to the gym 22 times. 3 times I didn't go because I jogged outside or went for a long bike ride. I don't have plans to change this. I'm wanting to maintain going 5-6 times a week, though once it gets warm for real in Chicago, I'm sure I'll be biking a lot and integrating that and going less. But even so, I'll be working out, active, 5, 6, 7 times a week.
That is some isht to me. When I take a step back and realize, ok, wow, I'm a different person now. How the fck did I become this person? I mean, it was kinda like quitting smoking. I've had a million false starts in this, going all the way back to high school when I thought I would run cross country one year, or when I embarrassed myself by trying to do a 5K when I'd never jogged more than a mile. Sometimes things did take -- all during high school, I went to dance aerobics classes with my mom. If you want someone to go to a jazzercise class with, I'm your man. All dance training I ever received was through the theatre department at church and dance aerobics!
I'm doing it now because it is helping so much with my mental health. So much. I can't really stress enough how much it helps me. It burns off anxiety energy. It transforms stagnant depression energy. It gives me the stability of routine, but with the massive flexibility of choosing what 1 of 5 million things I could do. (I think this is why I love reading Men's Health, because its informative and its shopping for ideas of things to do or try.) But the vanity aspect doesn't hurt. I keep telling people, its better than prozac. I might not have love I can feel from my family of origin, but I am developing some fcking killer biceps. My legs were always pretty strong and had definition, but now they are even sicker. Wtf, I just called my leg muscles "sick". Omg, who am I. I don't know. I'm struggling with this new person still, but this new part of my personality, this new part has some advantages.
Its not a panacea. I still have shitty days. I'm still deep in the work. I've been going to therapy every week for the past month or so, which is not like me, I'm more of an every-other week person, but so much is being dug up and unearthed, I could almost go twice a week and fill the time. I'm saying so many things that have been unsaid for so long. I'm feeling things that have been in boxes for years, maybe even decades. This is often what I visualize when I'm working out -- I'm burning off cells in my body that I have been carrying with me and I don't need them anymore. Not to get all Oprah, who would probably say I was hiding in my body and hiding under my fat or something like that, but that is so reductionist, so simplistic. I mean, I have eyes, I see my family, my genetics, my biology, I am real about my body. I can love my body. I didn't hate my body before I started working out. Some days I wasn't fond of it, some days I could see its appeal. But I never really loved or hated it, because in a way, such strong emotional reactions require being IN it in a way I generally avoid. That is how I got around the risk of hating my body as it related to gender too, because I rarely had moments ever in my life that I hated my female-body. No, instead, I just pretended it didn't exist. I swallowed it up, pushed it aside, pick your metaphor.
Right now I'm in a period where my body is changing, noticeably so (and not just to me). People are commenting and I have mixed feelings about it. I have mixed feelings about what it means to compliment a body that's thinner than it used to be. I've also realized that when someone says "you're looking good! .........I mean, not that you weren't looking good before..." I immediately feel deflated and dis-ease about how my body is being looked at, examined, the comparison that didn't exist UNTIL they backtrack. But also, its the discomfort of being looked at intensely. I think that is where a lot of this comes from, because the exact same thing happened when I transitioned. I would spend time in the mirror noticing all the ways it was masculinizing, changing, and I wanted the world to see those things, but I didn't want the world to point out those things were there, or rather point out that they weren't there before. I didn't want to experience the physical and visceral act of being seen. That is still hard for me. It is not hard for me to believe I am sexy, that I have attractive energy and ways of moving, that someone might want to go to bed with me. It is hard for me to think of my body as an appealing object, something someone would look at it and get turned on by. But sometimes I am now catching glimpses of it. And it scares me, I think "oh god, I'm becoming a narcissus", not realizing that maybe its okay to exist in a middle space of just genuinely liking yourself. That seems so odd. I have precious few positive examples of it. I have lots of examples of people going to far and being all about their bodies and looks. And while I obviously don't think moving into a space of being objectified will solve anything at all, only exchange one problem for a different one, I understand why it happens. I understand Marc Jacobs and the thousands of others that we see and who make us uncomfortable because they go from hiding inside their body, to making us uncomfortable by insisting we all look at it and validate it. There's a discomfort in both states, but the former is endearing in a way, it connects to our own sense of questioning our self-worth. The latter is uncomfortable because it challenges us but in a way that's not about grounding and reality, its still based on a approval and comparisons and outside support, and it replicates all the things fcked up in the system about what is ideal and what is worth.
My biceps are just as fleeting as anything else in this world. I have some element of control of them more, versus something that is relationship-depending. But who knows that could happen. I could injure myself, get sick, spiral into a depression phase and stop working out, or just straight up die and then who the fck cares about my arm muscles unless I'm dying in a crash and the survivors are contemplating eating me. Vanity might be my prozac, but neither one is my core. But figuring out the location of my core, cleaning out the old junk that hasn't been working, scraping off the rusted patches and holes left by old and festering wounds -- the acts themselves of being in my body, being present, learning things about it, pushing limits helps to do those things.
The part of working out I love the most, the part that gets most of my mental energy is the weight-lifting. Sure, I do the cardio, I make myself sweat, I know its good for the heart. But its not what I'm fixated on. Muscles, strength, endurance. Its not necessarily about radically changing the size and volume of my body, its more about changing what I can DO with my body, how I can use it for all sort of things I'd previously never even noticed. Those are the moments that feel awesome. Its not the secretary down the hall saying I look thinner -- its when I sprint and catch the train before doors close AND I'm not even out of breath. Its today, when I carried the 20 pound bag of dog food under one arm while carrying several bags with the other arm, up into the house and barely noticing. Its running my hands over my body every night and really learning where are all my cracks and crevices, soft and hard flesh, scars and smooth, soft and rough, where things begin and end, and appreciating all of it. Even the few things I'm actively trying to change, like rubbing stretch marks with cocoa butter.
There's loads of other minor things that come about too. Being in my body means being more aware of the gendered parts of it and what makes me feel uncomfortable. There's the fatphobia issue and what it means to my own reactions and others. There's also random small moments, like today, when I thought, I love that I work out at the Y and I see naked old men almost every day. Because how often do we see aging bodies? Or hell, naked non-sexualized bodies? Especially ones that aren't perfect to a specific adonis standard and age? How are we supposed to relate to our own bodies as they change and age with no models or examples? I feel way more comfortable in observing and accepting womens bodies of all various shapes and sizes and ages, because I've had more experience being surrounded by it: I was raised a girl, so I was around naked/near-naked family members, there was gym class in middle and high school, I've had various female lovers. But what about men? My predominant experience is hypersexualized, in underwear ads or movies or in my own bed because I'm having sex. I've never lived with a male lover, I never was around men's bodies and saw them as they are. I find it sort of awesome and hilarious that I'm filling in this gap at the gym.
I will probably start writing about these small moments more. I've been afraid to write, afraid for a few reasons -- I don't want to make others feel bad at all, nor did I want to make MYSELF feel bad, because as I said in the beginning, body issues are tough and sticky and there are really few people in the world I can even talk about them outloud with. I'm also afraid if I write it, I'll stop doing it. I don't want to be all la-la-la look at who I am now and then next week I'm not working out at all. But this latter part, I'm becoming more flexible on. Sure, its a risk. But me falling off the habit of something is not some magical murphy's law that is unfixable. I will always fall out of habits. And I will always approach them again. That is life. Observe the thought, back to the breath.
And now I have the fortunate problem of a closet full of pants that are all too big for me. Not too big that I can't wear them, just not as terribly flattering as I'd like. But I'll suck it up because there are worse problems to have. Besides, I have some awesome summer wear that I can fit into now. I will seriously be wearing the same two pairs of short pants/long shorts ALL SUMMER.
And if anyone out there is in need of some Kenneth Cole Reaction dress pants, perhaps some sort of swap could be arranged. They are all size 38, some are 38x30, most are 38x32. But give me a few months to settle into this new body, I don't want to have to be acquiring pants 10 times a year.
Onto thoughts about my body.
If you haven't spent any time with me, in person or via e-mail in the past few months, you know I've been going to the gym. A lot. Wait, ok, this sounds like you would know this because OBVIOUSLY I'm so buff now, but no, what I mean is, I talk about it a lot. I mention that I'm on my way, that I was just there, about something I overheard, about how I need to soak in epsom salt because I'm sore, about this new thing I read, about what I'm eating and why and when because of working out, etc. etc. I'm trying hard not to be That Guy while also realizing, well, I kind of am That Guy, so how can I be That Guy but not terminally annoying and also just accept that this is what makes me happier and more functional? Well, because duh, its not just a new habit I'm obsessed with, like watching early 80s films or collecting commemorative state spoons, its about my body and things about bodies are always weird in this culture, and its more complicated with non-slender bodies (though really, everyone has self-image body issues, even skinny people, and everyone is also burdened and undone by any perpetuation of self-loathing and judging), and its even MORE complicated with trans bodies. Hence me having lots of thoughts. Though I suspect I'd have something nearly as long to write about anything, I have lots of thoughts all the time.
When I started my transition, when I went to the doctor and got my physical check-up and unexpectedly got my very first shot of testosterone that day (seriously, I thought he was going to make me come back, but I think it helped that my therapist was his patient as well, so he knew I was easily verifiable), I weighed in at 242 pounds. I think I wore size 44 pants, but its always varying, depending on where you buy them from and I never took an actual tape measure to my body because I was not connected enough to my body. I'd been slowly gaining weight all through college, though I have no memory of any of it, because again, see disconnect from body. Seriously, this paragraph is really hard for me to write, not because I'm cringing or ashamed, but because I flat out don't know, can't remember. What I do remember, and can piece together from other evidence, that like many other body-related things in my life, it was a slow process. There wasn't a "year I got fat" or anything like that. It was a gradual building process of eating poorly (both nutrition wise but also unaware, emotional eating) and inactivity, all tied up into things like depression and gender and sexuality and whatnot. Ugh, I lost my train of thought, I guess I was trying to do some sort of setting the stage. So anyway, I started on hormones, I started transitioning, and all that testosterone meant my metabolism changed (I started eating less quantity-wise because I was full, not out of restricting myself), I gained muscle while doing nothing (which also effects my metabolism and body shape), and I was slowly starting to inhabit my body more, which meant I did more with it. I still didn't take up jogging or anything, though I tried a few times (I still remember the first time I went with
limenal and she was like, uh, that's way too fast, and I realized all this time, I was starting off my jogs at a near-sprint and then wondered why I could barely make it around the block!). Mostly I just walked a lot more, occasionally did weights. Like, every few months I'd bust them out and do them for a week, then forget. I also subscribed to Men's Health that first year on T. For real, it goes that far back. Overtime, I lost weight. Approximately 40 pounds over the course of a year or two. I stayed around 200 pounds and a size 40 pants for awhile.Around the time I decided to be a writer, I went back to grad school, I quit my job and cashed out my retirement fund and used it for chest surgery, I started being more active to get in shape for the surgery -- I would run occasionally, I would walk a lot, I started paying attention to how eating would make me feel and adjusting things that way, but all this was sort of patchwork and piecemeal, nothing consistent. I bought my first bike and started riding again. During this 2-3 year period (which ended last year), I was always fluctuating 10 pounds, depending on the time of year and my emotional life, but for the most part I could fit into any size 38 pants and occasionally size 36s. I took stairs two at a time and didn't get that out of breath. I still only lifted weights once a month.
But last year was when I started to put some pieces together about my body. My habits weren't getting worse, but I was gaining weight. Hello 30 and metabolism starting to slow down. I was still prone to emotional eating and drinking during the winter months. I was sluggish and less active in the winter months which made me depressed, or being depressed made me unwilling to leave the house, or it doesn't matter which one came first, they were both their. Oh god, now I've devolved into the style of a fitness magazine before and after profile piece. Why did I decide to do expository backstory? I hate exposition. Its my least favorite part of being a writer because it requires the most craft to make it look effortless and easy! Digression.
What do I want to say?
I joined the YMCA in early December. For 3 months, I went 2-4 times every week. Seriously, there might have been one week I only went once, but I highly doubt. I'm pretty sure I went at least twice every week. EVERY week.
In the past 30 days, I have gone to the gym 22 times. 3 times I didn't go because I jogged outside or went for a long bike ride. I don't have plans to change this. I'm wanting to maintain going 5-6 times a week, though once it gets warm for real in Chicago, I'm sure I'll be biking a lot and integrating that and going less. But even so, I'll be working out, active, 5, 6, 7 times a week.
That is some isht to me. When I take a step back and realize, ok, wow, I'm a different person now. How the fck did I become this person? I mean, it was kinda like quitting smoking. I've had a million false starts in this, going all the way back to high school when I thought I would run cross country one year, or when I embarrassed myself by trying to do a 5K when I'd never jogged more than a mile. Sometimes things did take -- all during high school, I went to dance aerobics classes with my mom. If you want someone to go to a jazzercise class with, I'm your man. All dance training I ever received was through the theatre department at church and dance aerobics!
I'm doing it now because it is helping so much with my mental health. So much. I can't really stress enough how much it helps me. It burns off anxiety energy. It transforms stagnant depression energy. It gives me the stability of routine, but with the massive flexibility of choosing what 1 of 5 million things I could do. (I think this is why I love reading Men's Health, because its informative and its shopping for ideas of things to do or try.) But the vanity aspect doesn't hurt. I keep telling people, its better than prozac. I might not have love I can feel from my family of origin, but I am developing some fcking killer biceps. My legs were always pretty strong and had definition, but now they are even sicker. Wtf, I just called my leg muscles "sick". Omg, who am I. I don't know. I'm struggling with this new person still, but this new part of my personality, this new part has some advantages.
Its not a panacea. I still have shitty days. I'm still deep in the work. I've been going to therapy every week for the past month or so, which is not like me, I'm more of an every-other week person, but so much is being dug up and unearthed, I could almost go twice a week and fill the time. I'm saying so many things that have been unsaid for so long. I'm feeling things that have been in boxes for years, maybe even decades. This is often what I visualize when I'm working out -- I'm burning off cells in my body that I have been carrying with me and I don't need them anymore. Not to get all Oprah, who would probably say I was hiding in my body and hiding under my fat or something like that, but that is so reductionist, so simplistic. I mean, I have eyes, I see my family, my genetics, my biology, I am real about my body. I can love my body. I didn't hate my body before I started working out. Some days I wasn't fond of it, some days I could see its appeal. But I never really loved or hated it, because in a way, such strong emotional reactions require being IN it in a way I generally avoid. That is how I got around the risk of hating my body as it related to gender too, because I rarely had moments ever in my life that I hated my female-body. No, instead, I just pretended it didn't exist. I swallowed it up, pushed it aside, pick your metaphor.
Right now I'm in a period where my body is changing, noticeably so (and not just to me). People are commenting and I have mixed feelings about it. I have mixed feelings about what it means to compliment a body that's thinner than it used to be. I've also realized that when someone says "you're looking good! .........I mean, not that you weren't looking good before..." I immediately feel deflated and dis-ease about how my body is being looked at, examined, the comparison that didn't exist UNTIL they backtrack. But also, its the discomfort of being looked at intensely. I think that is where a lot of this comes from, because the exact same thing happened when I transitioned. I would spend time in the mirror noticing all the ways it was masculinizing, changing, and I wanted the world to see those things, but I didn't want the world to point out those things were there, or rather point out that they weren't there before. I didn't want to experience the physical and visceral act of being seen. That is still hard for me. It is not hard for me to believe I am sexy, that I have attractive energy and ways of moving, that someone might want to go to bed with me. It is hard for me to think of my body as an appealing object, something someone would look at it and get turned on by. But sometimes I am now catching glimpses of it. And it scares me, I think "oh god, I'm becoming a narcissus", not realizing that maybe its okay to exist in a middle space of just genuinely liking yourself. That seems so odd. I have precious few positive examples of it. I have lots of examples of people going to far and being all about their bodies and looks. And while I obviously don't think moving into a space of being objectified will solve anything at all, only exchange one problem for a different one, I understand why it happens. I understand Marc Jacobs and the thousands of others that we see and who make us uncomfortable because they go from hiding inside their body, to making us uncomfortable by insisting we all look at it and validate it. There's a discomfort in both states, but the former is endearing in a way, it connects to our own sense of questioning our self-worth. The latter is uncomfortable because it challenges us but in a way that's not about grounding and reality, its still based on a approval and comparisons and outside support, and it replicates all the things fcked up in the system about what is ideal and what is worth.
My biceps are just as fleeting as anything else in this world. I have some element of control of them more, versus something that is relationship-depending. But who knows that could happen. I could injure myself, get sick, spiral into a depression phase and stop working out, or just straight up die and then who the fck cares about my arm muscles unless I'm dying in a crash and the survivors are contemplating eating me. Vanity might be my prozac, but neither one is my core. But figuring out the location of my core, cleaning out the old junk that hasn't been working, scraping off the rusted patches and holes left by old and festering wounds -- the acts themselves of being in my body, being present, learning things about it, pushing limits helps to do those things.
The part of working out I love the most, the part that gets most of my mental energy is the weight-lifting. Sure, I do the cardio, I make myself sweat, I know its good for the heart. But its not what I'm fixated on. Muscles, strength, endurance. Its not necessarily about radically changing the size and volume of my body, its more about changing what I can DO with my body, how I can use it for all sort of things I'd previously never even noticed. Those are the moments that feel awesome. Its not the secretary down the hall saying I look thinner -- its when I sprint and catch the train before doors close AND I'm not even out of breath. Its today, when I carried the 20 pound bag of dog food under one arm while carrying several bags with the other arm, up into the house and barely noticing. Its running my hands over my body every night and really learning where are all my cracks and crevices, soft and hard flesh, scars and smooth, soft and rough, where things begin and end, and appreciating all of it. Even the few things I'm actively trying to change, like rubbing stretch marks with cocoa butter.
There's loads of other minor things that come about too. Being in my body means being more aware of the gendered parts of it and what makes me feel uncomfortable. There's the fatphobia issue and what it means to my own reactions and others. There's also random small moments, like today, when I thought, I love that I work out at the Y and I see naked old men almost every day. Because how often do we see aging bodies? Or hell, naked non-sexualized bodies? Especially ones that aren't perfect to a specific adonis standard and age? How are we supposed to relate to our own bodies as they change and age with no models or examples? I feel way more comfortable in observing and accepting womens bodies of all various shapes and sizes and ages, because I've had more experience being surrounded by it: I was raised a girl, so I was around naked/near-naked family members, there was gym class in middle and high school, I've had various female lovers. But what about men? My predominant experience is hypersexualized, in underwear ads or movies or in my own bed because I'm having sex. I've never lived with a male lover, I never was around men's bodies and saw them as they are. I find it sort of awesome and hilarious that I'm filling in this gap at the gym.
I will probably start writing about these small moments more. I've been afraid to write, afraid for a few reasons -- I don't want to make others feel bad at all, nor did I want to make MYSELF feel bad, because as I said in the beginning, body issues are tough and sticky and there are really few people in the world I can even talk about them outloud with. I'm also afraid if I write it, I'll stop doing it. I don't want to be all la-la-la look at who I am now and then next week I'm not working out at all. But this latter part, I'm becoming more flexible on. Sure, its a risk. But me falling off the habit of something is not some magical murphy's law that is unfixable. I will always fall out of habits. And I will always approach them again. That is life. Observe the thought, back to the breath.
And now I have the fortunate problem of a closet full of pants that are all too big for me. Not too big that I can't wear them, just not as terribly flattering as I'd like. But I'll suck it up because there are worse problems to have. Besides, I have some awesome summer wear that I can fit into now. I will seriously be wearing the same two pairs of short pants/long shorts ALL SUMMER.
And if anyone out there is in need of some Kenneth Cole Reaction dress pants, perhaps some sort of swap could be arranged. They are all size 38, some are 38x30, most are 38x32. But give me a few months to settle into this new body, I don't want to have to be acquiring pants 10 times a year.
