Body Thoughts
When life gives you intrusive thoughts about an ugly body, make one of those starvation lemonades.
The simplicity of truth is profound.
I came out of the shower, cleaner for sweating profusely, an extension of the shower. A liquid vacuum—water forced onto my body provoking sweat extruding from my pores. I look at my naked body in the incomplete mirror on my closet, just big enough to see the parts of me that preoccupy my thoughts. The thoughts that if I could control the shape of my body, it could have anything it wanted. I train my eyes on various extremities. The blubbery excess of my arms, my breasts dropping, a waistline that has never pleased me, that functions at best like a fidget. Scars that I actually adore. I have gained weight this year. A bit of it is compensating for all of the weight I lost last year. Much of it is a return to where my body feels a sacrificial stasis.
I look at this body and invoke the notion of being here in the moment, which has lately been all anyone can advise me to do in a lovelorn neurosis, in the tearing away from thinking. Meditators know what I’m talking about. They all want me there with them and I finally get it.
I look at this body and invoke the notion of being. An epiphany: if anyone ever told me that this exact body is beautiful, it would make me feel so good, and if being told I am beautiful would make me feel good, then I have to believe that this statement is true. I would not feel good being told a lie.
If I felt good about my body, I would not require transformation. If I could understand the profound simplicity of the truth of my body, I would understand that the body does not need to impress you in order for you to know this body exists.
I look at this body, and looking at it may be the want, the desire that I wish to complete like a thought. My body completes the thought of my body.