Your Body is a Horror Show: The 10-Day New Year's Journaling Challenge - Day 3

 January 3. Tender and Strong, by Nell Diamond

Your prompt for today:
Think about a time that you experienced a shift in your relationship with your body. What caused this shift? Did it last?

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From nearly the beginning of my conscious memory, I viewed my body as a place where I was trapped.  A vessel that betrayed me and held me captive, much like HAL, the spaceship, in 2001:  A Space Odyssey.  The first time I recall being aware of this, I was maybe 6 and had just had my fingers accidentally slammed in a car door.  I couldn't escape the pain and embarrassment.  I would only ever be me, I would only ever be awkward and clumsy.  It seemed like I was always sick or injured in minor but irritating ways.  A cold.  A scraped knee.  That's not unique, and certainly describes most childhoods, but it bothered me.

Already overly conscious of my physicality, puberty was buckets of fun.  I was so oily I was turning down invitations to OPEC conferences.  A close-up photograph of my face could have been mistaken for a topographical map of Appalachia.  Once, my history class got really out of hand and the teacher made us all put our heads down for 5 minutes.  I rested my forehead on my textbook, which was covered in the customary brown paper bag (do they still make kids do that?).  When we all raised our heads, I was horrified to see that my textbook looked like it had been used to line a basket of fish and chips.  

I was so sure I was the most disgusting human being alive.  I would have done anything to change that.  I would have free-based Accutane.  I would have promised my first-born child to the devil (joke's on him, though).

Mercifully, adolescent hormones don't last forever.  The rage and the mood swings and the physical indignities eventually subside, or you adapt to them, or you stop caring.  Fortunately, growing up with the objective reality that you are not conventionally attractive forces you to develop other aspects of yourself.  You might hone your sarcasm to deflect insults; you might develop a sense of humor so you can make people laugh with you instead of at you.  You might pull your head out of your own ass to realize everybody probably felt the same way about themselves, and nobody was wasting any time thinking about you.