This December I’ll be turning to page 62 of my life story. Mentally, I still feel the youthfulness of my twenties, but I am conscious of my ever-changing body. Almost overnight my skin is a little thinner, like a soft malleable paper with a shiny iridescence of a grayish mother of pearl. It’s interesting; I see beginning of things in the mirror that I witnessed while I worked in a nursing home. I’m not delighted that I’m soaring towards the end of my life, but I won’t be heading into it kicking and screaming.
I really have no problem with aging and the changes to come, mostly I find it all terribly interesting. Growing old isn’t catastrophic or upsetting, it is an unavoidable part of life that I would rather embrace than fret about; goodness knows I did enough of that when I was younger. I wasted my youth thinking I was a hideous freak of nature and now I am riddled with remorse, that I didn’t show my physical body more kindness when it was a magnificent, youthful masterpiece.
I’ve been a sensitive soul my entire life. Perhaps rough beginnings mapped out the years to come after being denied a smooth entrance into the world. Following protocol of the time, my mother’s legs were tied together during a blizzard when a doctor couldn’t make it to the hospital to deliver me. It seemed the world didn’t want me and when a physician finally came to our rescue, walking several kilometers on snow shoes to reach us, I was blue and gasping a last breath. My poor mother, traumatized by the ordeal, couldn’t relax enough to breast feed me when the same nurses that tied her up hovered around her telling her “You can do it”, thence cheating me of the most intimate mother child bond there is.
Then my homecoming was tainted by an older sibling who didn’t like my intrusion and wanted me returned to whence I came. So, the first week of my life was a trifecta of rejection, perhaps helping to form my weak personality. During my first decade I was bullied even before the terminology was popularized and suffered name calling, slaps, pinches and kicks, turning the pain of it all inward, until I felt ugly and worthless and totally unloved. Maybe I needed more attention than some, maybe with more affection and assurance I wouldn’t have felt like a mutant freak, because as early as three, I began to systematically tear my body apart, loathing the various attributes. What preschooler obsesses about their body, focusing on perceived flaws and magnifying them out of proportion? Why wasn’t I in the sandbox, playing with dolls or bumping up and down on a teeter-totter without a care in the world instead of hanging out in my head, conjuring a cruel and unfair reality for myself?
Everything was clouded by a body image that had been planted with a negative seed and then watered and nurtured until it grew into a tangled mess. At the time I thought I was alone, in an exclusive club; but millions of people are insecure and unhappy with their appearance. Look what happened to Michael Jackson. When he was a young boy, a fan exclaimed how huge is nose was and look how that turned out. Plastic surgery is a multi-billion-dollar industry, that’s not a couple of Hollywood starlets spending their entire paycheques, its millions of people getting a heck of a load of alterations, nips and tucks to find happiness. For me it all started with my chin and legs, two taunts that left their mark like a branding iron. To this day I don’t own a pair of shorts after being labeled “Ole Chicken legs”, ha ha cluck, cluck. After being called this relentlessly, I truly believed that my legs were by far the ugliest in the world.
Then came the “Witchchin” moniker which was even worse because I couldn’t hide my face as easily as my legs. Imagine always trying to position yourself so those around you couldn’t see your profile. For some reason I felt I had to protect everyone from seeing my ugliness so I wouldn’t be judged or thought less of from the horror that was my chin and in turn, protected myself from expected ridicule and further berating. I was taunted by my sister with how ‘no boy could ever kiss me because my chin was so huge, his lips would never meet mine’. Throughout my adolescence, if I was forced to wear shorts, I used to walk backwards and sideways so those behind me couldn’t see my barnyard gams, while holding my chin so those beside me couldn’t see my distorted profile. I was an irrefutable mess.
After those two physical attributes were condemned, I began my own self-destruction. I rationalized that if my chin was hideous and my legs were an abomination, how was all else in-between acceptable? I remember each physical assassination so vividly, each target a nightmare as I tried to overcome them with subterfuge, camouflaging with added clothing and maneuvers as not to show my flaws. Although I still remember each attack and the ensuing stress, the order is blurred, but here’s the run down. My ears were too large, my nose too small, my lips were paper thin, my eyes too wide apart, but then flip-flop, they seemed beady and too close together, my neck was too long, my head too large, my hair too straight and much too thin (I sure wish I had now what I had then), I perspired too much, oh my the sweaty feet, acne, my shoulders were too narrow, my arms were too short for my long torso, my legs were also overshadowed by the long body, but then nothing below my pelvis had any merit, my feet were weird with my second toe dwarfing the big one, I didn’t go outside much so I had the pallor of a creature of the night, my inner thighs were gapped like a tunnel cut through a mountain, my huge knees knocked, my calves were too thin, my breath was foul, my teeth too crooked and my eye teeth too long, there’s that vampire comparison again, and on and on it went. I was an ugly duckling with no hope of a swan transformation and felt like the loneliest, ugliest and most unloved kid in the neighbourhood, perhaps even the world.
Looking back to my twenties and thirties, I regret having the confidence to wear the little spaghetti strap, black dress because my legs were shite and my arms were too hideous to reveal. The latter one really behooves me because my arms are great, have obviously been lovely my entire life. Of course now they are a bit doughy and have a couple of flaps that wave when I do, ironic isn’t it? If only I could have hated myself in reverse, let the loathing escalate as I ascend to the higher double digits after gravity has its way, while beginning my adolescence in love with my firm, youthful self.
I’d spent years hiding beneath huge shoulder pads in the nineties, making my noggin look like a pin head. After that trend petered out, I was even more conscious of their shortcomings and now the fad is resurfacing for another run but I don’t need them now, I really never did! I look in the mirror and see lovely shoulders. I even bought a few sleeveless tops last year, mostly from being tired of hiding my body under fabric when I deserve to be comfortable in the heat of summer and a hidden bonus, no farmer tan! I told hubby the other morning that I don’t understand why I was so critical of my shoulders when they are perfectly normal and he said “It’s about time you shouldered aside the self-recrimination sweetie”.....my guy, my biggest fan and always the wordsmith.
I’m saddened that my younger self lacked the proper building blocks to break the shackles of insecurity. My life could have been simpler, what a different person I might have been, relaxed and comfortable in my own skin instead of fidgeting, concealing and deflecting attention away from my person. It would have been wonderful to not care about which side was showing, one only mildly better than the other, or worrying how the sun or room light was highlighting something I preferred to remain unseen. Now that I’m older I look at myself in the mirror and wish I’d been kinder to me, wish I’d appreciated what I had, perhaps flaunted it, shown a bit of cleavage for goodness sake; celebrated my youth and curves with pride.
We humans are strange creatures, although my story is extreme, it’s not that uncommon. Thankfully, I’m no longer that self-destructive, foolish girl that was hell bent on hurting my feelings. Thank goodness we grow older and become wiser. By the time I’m 90 and time is slipping away like pennies in a pocket hole, the vessel that carries my mind around will be soft and supple, a casing perfectly matched to the contentment I feel inside.
We only get one chance in this mortal frame and I foolishly screwed up the first two thirds anguishing over it, but I don’t have regrets; they won’t serve any purpose now. So much wasted time, worrying and obsessing about absolutely nothing, at least nothing that mattered. If there was one thing I could go back and change it would be to love the younger me, embrace my flaws whether they were real or perceived. All of the energy that went into hiding and camouflaging and avoiding social contact could have been used to power a city for an entire year.
Anyway, such is life. Now that I’m older I shake my head and even laugh at my foils but where do I go from here? Well, I’ll not shy away or cheat myself of life’s experiences because of my body. It is what it is and if truth be told it’s pretty amazing, a miracle of biology really and will be till the very last wrinkle settles into the vast desert of my skin and my very last breath sustains it. I am unique and formidable. When my breasts are flattened to my chest and tucked into the waistband of my pajamas, and the skin on my knees is resting on my shins, when the cracks and crevices on my body can hold a snack, maybe my keys, when I’m almost bald with a bad comb over or perhaps a wig, when my ears have grown as long as my face and my eyebrows are like bristles on a wire brush, I will be beautiful……..
I really have no problem with aging and the changes to come, mostly I find it all terribly interesting. Growing old isn’t catastrophic or upsetting, it is an unavoidable part of life that I would rather embrace than fret about; goodness knows I did enough of that when I was younger. I wasted my youth thinking I was a hideous freak of nature and now I am riddled with remorse, that I didn’t show my physical body more kindness when it was a magnificent, youthful masterpiece.
I’ve been a sensitive soul my entire life. Perhaps rough beginnings mapped out the years to come after being denied a smooth entrance into the world. Following protocol of the time, my mother’s legs were tied together during a blizzard when a doctor couldn’t make it to the hospital to deliver me. It seemed the world didn’t want me and when a physician finally came to our rescue, walking several kilometers on snow shoes to reach us, I was blue and gasping a last breath. My poor mother, traumatized by the ordeal, couldn’t relax enough to breast feed me when the same nurses that tied her up hovered around her telling her “You can do it”, thence cheating me of the most intimate mother child bond there is.
Then my homecoming was tainted by an older sibling who didn’t like my intrusion and wanted me returned to whence I came. So, the first week of my life was a trifecta of rejection, perhaps helping to form my weak personality. During my first decade I was bullied even before the terminology was popularized and suffered name calling, slaps, pinches and kicks, turning the pain of it all inward, until I felt ugly and worthless and totally unloved. Maybe I needed more attention than some, maybe with more affection and assurance I wouldn’t have felt like a mutant freak, because as early as three, I began to systematically tear my body apart, loathing the various attributes. What preschooler obsesses about their body, focusing on perceived flaws and magnifying them out of proportion? Why wasn’t I in the sandbox, playing with dolls or bumping up and down on a teeter-totter without a care in the world instead of hanging out in my head, conjuring a cruel and unfair reality for myself?
Everything was clouded by a body image that had been planted with a negative seed and then watered and nurtured until it grew into a tangled mess. At the time I thought I was alone, in an exclusive club; but millions of people are insecure and unhappy with their appearance. Look what happened to Michael Jackson. When he was a young boy, a fan exclaimed how huge is nose was and look how that turned out. Plastic surgery is a multi-billion-dollar industry, that’s not a couple of Hollywood starlets spending their entire paycheques, its millions of people getting a heck of a load of alterations, nips and tucks to find happiness. For me it all started with my chin and legs, two taunts that left their mark like a branding iron. To this day I don’t own a pair of shorts after being labeled “Ole Chicken legs”, ha ha cluck, cluck. After being called this relentlessly, I truly believed that my legs were by far the ugliest in the world.
Then came the “Witchchin” moniker which was even worse because I couldn’t hide my face as easily as my legs. Imagine always trying to position yourself so those around you couldn’t see your profile. For some reason I felt I had to protect everyone from seeing my ugliness so I wouldn’t be judged or thought less of from the horror that was my chin and in turn, protected myself from expected ridicule and further berating. I was taunted by my sister with how ‘no boy could ever kiss me because my chin was so huge, his lips would never meet mine’. Throughout my adolescence, if I was forced to wear shorts, I used to walk backwards and sideways so those behind me couldn’t see my barnyard gams, while holding my chin so those beside me couldn’t see my distorted profile. I was an irrefutable mess.
After those two physical attributes were condemned, I began my own self-destruction. I rationalized that if my chin was hideous and my legs were an abomination, how was all else in-between acceptable? I remember each physical assassination so vividly, each target a nightmare as I tried to overcome them with subterfuge, camouflaging with added clothing and maneuvers as not to show my flaws. Although I still remember each attack and the ensuing stress, the order is blurred, but here’s the run down. My ears were too large, my nose too small, my lips were paper thin, my eyes too wide apart, but then flip-flop, they seemed beady and too close together, my neck was too long, my head too large, my hair too straight and much too thin (I sure wish I had now what I had then), I perspired too much, oh my the sweaty feet, acne, my shoulders were too narrow, my arms were too short for my long torso, my legs were also overshadowed by the long body, but then nothing below my pelvis had any merit, my feet were weird with my second toe dwarfing the big one, I didn’t go outside much so I had the pallor of a creature of the night, my inner thighs were gapped like a tunnel cut through a mountain, my huge knees knocked, my calves were too thin, my breath was foul, my teeth too crooked and my eye teeth too long, there’s that vampire comparison again, and on and on it went. I was an ugly duckling with no hope of a swan transformation and felt like the loneliest, ugliest and most unloved kid in the neighbourhood, perhaps even the world.
Looking back to my twenties and thirties, I regret having the confidence to wear the little spaghetti strap, black dress because my legs were shite and my arms were too hideous to reveal. The latter one really behooves me because my arms are great, have obviously been lovely my entire life. Of course now they are a bit doughy and have a couple of flaps that wave when I do, ironic isn’t it? If only I could have hated myself in reverse, let the loathing escalate as I ascend to the higher double digits after gravity has its way, while beginning my adolescence in love with my firm, youthful self.
I’d spent years hiding beneath huge shoulder pads in the nineties, making my noggin look like a pin head. After that trend petered out, I was even more conscious of their shortcomings and now the fad is resurfacing for another run but I don’t need them now, I really never did! I look in the mirror and see lovely shoulders. I even bought a few sleeveless tops last year, mostly from being tired of hiding my body under fabric when I deserve to be comfortable in the heat of summer and a hidden bonus, no farmer tan! I told hubby the other morning that I don’t understand why I was so critical of my shoulders when they are perfectly normal and he said “It’s about time you shouldered aside the self-recrimination sweetie”.....my guy, my biggest fan and always the wordsmith.
I’m saddened that my younger self lacked the proper building blocks to break the shackles of insecurity. My life could have been simpler, what a different person I might have been, relaxed and comfortable in my own skin instead of fidgeting, concealing and deflecting attention away from my person. It would have been wonderful to not care about which side was showing, one only mildly better than the other, or worrying how the sun or room light was highlighting something I preferred to remain unseen. Now that I’m older I look at myself in the mirror and wish I’d been kinder to me, wish I’d appreciated what I had, perhaps flaunted it, shown a bit of cleavage for goodness sake; celebrated my youth and curves with pride.
We humans are strange creatures, although my story is extreme, it’s not that uncommon. Thankfully, I’m no longer that self-destructive, foolish girl that was hell bent on hurting my feelings. Thank goodness we grow older and become wiser. By the time I’m 90 and time is slipping away like pennies in a pocket hole, the vessel that carries my mind around will be soft and supple, a casing perfectly matched to the contentment I feel inside.
We only get one chance in this mortal frame and I foolishly screwed up the first two thirds anguishing over it, but I don’t have regrets; they won’t serve any purpose now. So much wasted time, worrying and obsessing about absolutely nothing, at least nothing that mattered. If there was one thing I could go back and change it would be to love the younger me, embrace my flaws whether they were real or perceived. All of the energy that went into hiding and camouflaging and avoiding social contact could have been used to power a city for an entire year.
Anyway, such is life. Now that I’m older I shake my head and even laugh at my foils but where do I go from here? Well, I’ll not shy away or cheat myself of life’s experiences because of my body. It is what it is and if truth be told it’s pretty amazing, a miracle of biology really and will be till the very last wrinkle settles into the vast desert of my skin and my very last breath sustains it. I am unique and formidable. When my breasts are flattened to my chest and tucked into the waistband of my pajamas, and the skin on my knees is resting on my shins, when the cracks and crevices on my body can hold a snack, maybe my keys, when I’m almost bald with a bad comb over or perhaps a wig, when my ears have grown as long as my face and my eyebrows are like bristles on a wire brush, I will be beautiful……..
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