On Body Image

I'm not going to talk about body confidence today in the classic sense of the term. There is so much discussion on learning to love yourself and your nose and your eyes and your bum but I want to talk about illness.

This all came into my consciousness last Friday in Maths. A boy said to me "well your hair is rubbish" in one conversation. This was a stupid thing to say as I'd just had it cut and coloured so I could not be more confident about my hair. I started thinking about which comments would wound me and make me feel low about myself. I realised in that moment that I couldn't be wounded by conventional body comments.

I'm not saying that my body is the perfect body visually, I've just learned how to work with the bits I don't like so I now do like them. I'm not sure how I got to this point so I can't give advice on how to feel good about your body, and I'm sorry about that.

My issue with my body is my hypermobility syndrome. I hate my body because it represents everything that I can't achieve with my lifestyle, I can't spontaneously go to events because I haven't rested beforehand, I can't get a job because I can't handle my commute let alone a job, I can't have a relationship because I don't have the energy etc etc. So while I do have a good relationship with my waist and my thighs, I don't have a good relationship with the way my body hinders me. 

Then, of course, my body is a physical manifestation for my chronic pain that exists all the time in every muscle in my body including my hands, my face, my toes as well as the conventional back, leg, arm and core pain. My relationship with my body is related to my relationship with pain and my relationship with my lifestyle.

Which leads to the question I've been contemplating - can words hurt when it comes to my own self perception of my body? The funny thing is it depends who's words. My consultant can make me hate my body and my physio probably could, but I am the main problem with my own self worth. A lot of the time I have these thoughts (especially at night) which stem from "I am never going to get better" and "this is my life for the next 70 years" and while neither may be true it's the most upsetting and wounding comment anyone could make about my body. If it came from somebody that isn't a medical professional it's easier to deal with because do they really know that much about Ehlers-Danlos type 3? However when it comes from me it is so wounding because I do know my body really well because I can feel it flex and struggle with everyday activities. 

My mum met someone who has a slightly different variant of EDS and asked me if I'd like to meet up and a sense of panic washed over me because there is nothing I hate more in the world that my illness and meeting someone who's main reason for rapport is the thing I loathe is a terrifying concept.

I fear my body.

I dislocated my shoulder today (being prone to dislocations is a major EDS side effect). This is the first time I've dislocated something major and I was so scared for the rest of the day because a tiny action caused me pain. With pain comes resentment which leads to more hate.

Chronic illness is very hard to mentally manage because it makes you hate the body that you live in but I'm trying to get better because that will make my life better, and maybe one day I won't hate my body. I'm never going to love it because I can't ever love something that has made me so unhappy but I'm getting there. Slowly and steadily.