The Love Affair

I read this article today and it was important. It's actually one of many articles I've been reading of late that concern body acceptance and self love. A lot of people get hinky about the idea of people accepting their bodies and loving them. They act like this is going to be counterproductive to all of 'them fat people' losing weight. It won't be. In fact, it will eventually have the opposite effect.

The woman in this article talked about the process of starting to exercise. She said that she didn't do it because she felt she SHOULD. She didn't do it out of some sense of duty or obligation. She did it because she realized her body craved movement. This was something her body wanted and desired. She loved herself enough at that point to allow it. She loved herself enough to understand what her body wanted.

See, this is a hard place to get to. I will admit I'm not there. For most of my life, I've done my best to ignore my body. It was, at best, an inconvenient. Most of the time, it was just a drag. It wasn't doing what I wanted it to do or looking how I wanted to look. It would cause me pain. Recently, it tried to kill me and I was, for a very long time, quite angry with my body. What exercise I did, what healthy decisions I made, weren't really for my body's benefit. They were to insure things were easier next time it tried to kill me.

I've started to realize this isn't a healthy way to view myself. It isn't even fair. My body IS a part of me and it does amazing things for me every second. I need to learn to listen to it, to understand what it wants and desires. I need to learn to love my body, and to make that love the primary love affair of my life. And the frustrating thing is, I shouldn't do that as a means to an end, though, if I'm being honest, right now, it still would be. Over time, perhaps, I can overcome that.

I love my mind. My mind is probably my favorite thing. Loving my mind isn't always easy because I have some mental places that are dark and full of terrors, but most of the time, my mind is great. I want to learn to love my body, however it happens to be in any given moment, as much as I love my mind. This is something I'm going to work on.