Finding Everyday Inspiration: I Hate My Body

Part of WordPress’s writing course Finding Everyday Inspiration.

When I plagued my readers with the inquiry what I should write about, Michael from Morpethroad came up with a topic I never considered before: “Your body – how you see it, have used it, have cared for it, how it’s regarded by others.” That’s an appropriate occasion to list some of the complaints I’ve been receiving from my body, which I apparently hate, considering how I mistreat it (I’d say outright that I abuse myself, but I suspect it might come out wrong).

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I was born with an unsightly brown patch on my face. Since we don’t live in Sparta, my parents didn’t resort to tossing me off the cliff (though if they would have, they’d save everyone a lot of trouble). Whatever the patch was (probably a witch mark), it disappeared before I got old enough to be disposed of in pre-school and exposed to mean kids laughing at me. The kids laughed at me anyway because my father was regularly forgetting to pick me up as he got easily distracted by the pubs he was passing on the way.

I was also born bald. My baldness persisted for several years. My mother made me wear a headscarf to hide it (back then a headscarf didn’t have religious connotations because we were tucked behind the Iron Curtain and knew nothing). She also treated my hairless head with green water in which nettle plants were boiled. It probably worked because I grew hair, lots of hair, and my mother is never going to forgive me that I wear it half-shaved these days. I mean, she put so much effort into growing it.

Some body parts

When I was a kid, I apparently attempted to kill myself. Don’t get scared, it qualified more as incomplete manslaughter rather than as attempted murder. I was warned not to go sledging down the steep hill in the woods behind the house, so I naturally went to sledge there. The sledge gained unexpected speed and since I was too clueless to remember that the sledge had brakes, I hit a tree in full speed. I was unconscious for a bit and had a wonderful dream about the Hansel and Gretel fairy-tale. I spent two weeks in hospital with concussion but was most worried about my parents yelling at me.

Now I think my body is trying to communicate with me but I mostly ignore it. I mean, I’m trying to defeat its demands through sheer willpower. I’m not particularly excited with how the body is working, but since it’s past its expiry date, I can’t return it, so I guess I’d better just get used to it. I could have ended up with a worse one. For example, I could have had crooked teeth. Wait. I got crooked teeth. Anyway. Let’s look at the bright side: it will be so awesome when my teeth fall out and I’ll have perfectly white and perfectly straight dentures to replace them. No?