Annie-gram 2: Listen

Content Warning: This letter mentions disordered eating & exercise. If you feel like reading about that may be harmful to you today, you might want to skip this Annie-gram.

Dear ones,

Do you listen to your body? I mean, do you really listen & try to understand? As someone with a body that is often in dysfunction, I have a hard time listening to my body. Sometimes, I’m afraid of what my body might say. I don’t always know when to push & when to rest.

I’ve been swimming regularly since the spring. I was a lifeguard for years in highschool & college & used to swim laps, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Most weight-bearing exercise is difficult & often painful for me, due to joint-hypermobility, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, & Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, etc. But exercise is an important tool that can help me feel my best.

I’ve been conditioning myself & am currently swimming 30 laps two to three times a week. I am going to swim a mile by the end of the year. At 30 laps, I’m only five away from my goal. 

I’ve had an unhealthy relationship with physical activity throughout my life. I can remember doing crunches at the ripe old age of 12, thinking my stomach wasn’t flat enough, even though I was conventionally perfectly thin & also, a child. It would be comical if it weren’t so heartbreaking. I know many of you understand. I’m sorry you do.

I never liked running. But I used to run sometimes, mostly when trying to lose weight or stay thin. One time, while running in Virginia in July, I cried. I cried & I ran. I cried because I hated running, but more so, because I hated my body. I was hot & tired & the diet of mostly almonds I was eating didn’t cut it. Poor kid. I was torturing myself in a multitude of ways. 

Most designated exercise has felt to me like punishment. I was never thanking my body for all it does for me. I was telling it to change: be thinner, shorter, smaller. Be less. 

I’m not doing that anymore. I’m exercising to care for my body. Swimming has been healing for me & healing, as per usual, requires painful recollection & inventory of how it got this way. 

I am proud of myself when I have the energy & the strength to go swimming. I’m proud when I swim 30 laps. I’m also proud of myself when I make the choice not to go or to swim less. It helps me keep my reason for exercising in check. If I’m very exhausted, in a lot of pain, or in an active migraine attack, I choose not to go swimming, because if I go, I will feel worse. I am trying to cultivate joy in moving my body. If I force myself to go when I don’t really feel able, I am mucking up my why. This restorative, healing act becomes punitive. 

In therapy, I realized that the cruelty I’ve demonstrated to myself throughout my life has been an attempt at protection. If I am mean to myself, I’ll beat them to the punch. No one else can be mean to me. Maybe I was under a subconscious spell that if I did it to myself, it wouldn’t hurt when someone else did it to me. Of course, this was never the case. 

It’s common in survivors of emotional abuse - this reflex of self-loathing. A cloak of cruelty, it was a secret that I wrapped tightly around myself for years: my private stifling shame that tasted like the salt of my tears & draped heavily against my body. It was woven from the conditioned belief that I am unworthy of love & respect. 

Though I’m still healing, I’m grateful that I reach for that self-loathing impulse much, much less frequently these days. I have filled a toolbox with coping mechanisms to help me.

One of these is rest. Instead of doing what may be expected of me or even what I wish I were capable of, I try to listen to my body. So when the chronic tendonitis in my glutes & hamstrings was glaring at me in the pool the other day, as well as fatigue, I knew I needed to swim less that day. 

I listened somewhat. I took a few “easy” laps with the kick board. I didn’t do my aerobic deep water exercises. Instead, I went into the heated therapy pool & floated & let the hot water soothe the tension I felt throughout my lower back, hips, & legs.

Still, I should have done less. The number 30 may as well be lit up in pink neon & suspended above the lane I swim in. Indeed, I suffered later on that night. 

How can I not be crushed by a goal, but buoyed by it? How can I inspire myself to achieve what I can & let that be perfectly enough? How can I live to nourish myself, not punish myself, & be able to tell the difference?

Like all things, listening to our bodies is something we have to practice & like us, it’s imperfect. It requires great gentleness. I celebrate when I get it right. I try really hard to not beat myself up when I get it wrong. 

In the pool, I speak to myself with utmost compassion. I try to be conscious of the miracle of every breath, every movement that makes it possible for me to glide along the surface of the water. 

At the end of my workout, I float for a couple of minutes. Suspended without the weight of gravity, I rejoice in feeling unencumbered. Thank you, body, I say–& I thank God for another day to practice caring for myself exactly as I am. 

Until next week,

Annie