Reading · more soon · RSS Amplifier

This post is a personal one! Though I write on this platform in a professional capacity, I am expanding my writings to include some personal essays on the topics of health, well-being, self-inquiry, and body peace. Skip this one if a personal exploration of body experiences (including health symptoms, negative body image) doesn’t feel like a good fit today!

I was in the first grade the first time I felt it.

The scalding Florida sun was on my back and the track’s broken gravel pushed into my left shoe.

Kiara was running right beside me until I stopped.

I felt the tightness, the pain, the clearest sense: I can’t breathe.

Hotter than the air I couldn’t breathe, I felt the fire of shame light up my seven year old body.

What is wrong with me? Why can’t I keep going?

I watched Kiara’s braids bounce as she continued away from me.

In that moment, with the limited skills I had as a child, I “figured out” that what was wrong with me, was, well…me. My breathlessness meant that my body was broken and that it was my fault.

Had my PE teacher already terrorized us about how our fitness is our fault? Our health is solely in our control? We determine our stamina, muscle strength, and cardiovascular fitness?

Had I already learned that bodies can be right and wrong? (the first lie)

I can’t remember.

The next memory floods in and I’m in the third grade.

Instead of the track, we are running out on the field. This was so much worse; the square of light poles we ran around were so far apart.

This side of the school was drenched with that nearly-white mid-morning sun. My eyes were half shut, the light hurt them; I felt dread.

I remember running to the first pole. The first moments of intense movement are okay. But halfway to the second pole, it starts again.

Tightness, pressure, breath somewhere ahead of me, just beyond my reach.

Later on, somewhere between eighth and ninth grade, I had consumed enough Girls Life and Seventeen magazine articles and images to learn that the solution to my blossoming despair about my body was simply to change it (the second lie). Looking back, I can see that my body’s cardiovascular symptoms crashed against and became imperceptibly woven into the body dissatisfaction common during adolescent development. My emotional experience around my body was tumultuous.

During this time, I regularly returned to that same elementary school track with my best friend. We biked the mile to our old school, I propped my kickstand, and removed my helmet before walking onto the track. My PE teacher taught me that seven laps were a mile. As a teen, I wanted to overcome what little me never could; I had to run seven without stopping. I returned for months, but in all honesty, I don’t remember if I ever ran all seven.

In high school, I joined a club lacrosse team and self-selected into a defensive position. Half the game, I stood around (our offense often held possession). By then, I knew I couldn’t play forward or mid-field; I didn’t have the stamina. I dreaded conditioning days, always falling behind on the warm up jog in the tree-lined neighborhood by my high school. During games, I’d fold my body into an “L” shape with my torso parallel to the ground, half my body weight leaning on my lacrosse stick, heaving to catch my runaway breath.

It’s homecoming season, freshman year and I’m in the dressing room at Dillard’s trying on dresses for the dance. I feel confused why all the dresses with a halter top look so weird; I wonder how, with the size of my breasts, I didn’t have any cleavage. I deduce the problem is my breasts. We settled on a halter dress with a periwinkle satin insert across the chest that my grandmother would sew.

Early college was a reprieve. I roller bladed and biked around campus. I went to spin classes. I occasionally ran at the gym; this time the track was bright red and elevated over the basketball courts.

Around my junior year of college, my partner at the time loved to run. I would begrudgingly go with him, but again, would always fall behind.

I felt intense frustration, sometimes even rage when we ran together.

My pace would slow and I would signal for him to go ahead, “don’t wait for me, just leave me behind” I’d nearly scream at him.

Rage was the accessible emotion, underneath it, shame: I was so ashamed to be seen.

I couldn’t accept being accommodated. I couldn’t hold his kindness because my own hands were so full of judgment.

There was one, one, singular time that I jogged for two miles without stopping. It was night, it was cool out. “Fourteen laps”, but this time it took the shape of one long loop. I wasn’t even proud of myself—I couldn’t believe it, but I had learned so long ago I was broken that one success wasn’t going to heal that tender hurt inside me. I laid on the grass after completing the loop. I felt a little sad.

By the time I reached my senior year in college, a classmate invited me to go to a yoga class with her. That dark room was a crucial, life-altering starting point of me stubbornly owning what movement felt good and right in my body. After that, I biked, I walked, I did yoga. Along the way, I added pilates and dance to the mix. I mostly left running behind.

But, my body spoke up in yoga classes too. A forward fold to standing would illuminate my vision with stars. Heart openers created prickly, pointed pressure in my chest. A heated class would make my heart hammer, I’d feel faint. I never quite felt like I “got” breathwork—a deep inhale always hurt me and I couldn’t sit comfortably for very long. Still yet, there were times I couldn’t breathe. At least now it was okay, and encouraged, to take a break in child’s pose. My teacher’s consistent reminders to honor my body’s cues slowly began to re-wire how I experienced my body’s clear boundaries. My teachers changed my life.

Summer of 2019 at the end of my yoga teacher training

In my mid-20s, the internalized body blame was so strong, still, despite seven years of health, body, and nutrition-related education, I never considered that there could be a medical explanation for my symptoms.

But, as things sometimes do: everything changed in an instant.

I was 28. I was watching a continuing education eating disorder webinar led by the brilliant Dr. Mehler who said something along the lines of:

“Patients with bulimia who have pectus excavatum are at higher risk for stomach rupture from vomiting due to their sunken chest bone.”

He said these precious words so casually. They weren’t on his slides. He just happened to throw it in, a curious and interesting “fact” about risk assessment.

Oh my god.

My heart started racing; I was breathless (the irony). I opened a new tab on my browser: “pectus excavatum”: pectus excavatum is a congenital skeletal deformity in which the sternum and ribs are sunken into the chest cavity. It can result in compression of the heart and lungs.

Oh my god, I have this. My chest bone is sunken; this is what is wrong with me.

As I read the symptoms on the Mayo Clinic website, my body mapped the echoes of sensations I’ve felt nearly every day of my life. My sensations are symptoms. I felt two decades of ambiguity, confusion, self blame evaporate from my body. The shame cooled; the fire extinguished.

A memory came to mind, I’m small enough to be laying in the bathtub, maybe 5 or 6 years old. The sage tiles crowd my peripheral vision as I look down at my chest.

The dent in my chest is filled with water, despite my body not being fully submerged. I splash the water with my fingertips. I sit up and watch it empty. I lay down and see it fill again.

Observation, curiosity.

There was a before time.

A time before the shame.

I’ve been there before. Now, I’ve returned.

Hello, little one.

I've never taken a deep breath

Comments