Plyometrics. Wow.
This may well be the finest tool in my arsenal for the pending overthrow of General Fatness (see what I did there?). Squat-Jacks, Rock-star Jumps, Leap frogs, and a whole plethora of other thigh igniting exercises worked hand-in-hand to make me smell like ass.
And I loved it.
My mind has been burning recently with the stress of self-employment and the quiet shame of self-loathing. I am certainly not as large as I think I am, but that sentiment is meaningless when walking by a shop's window and wanting to spit at the reflection matching my stride, step for step. I am only capable of trying on one or two garments in a department store dressing room before I am deflated (mentally...though physical deflation would be preferred) by the pale and putrid mess of skin standing before me in the mirror.
It is a constant and terrible ache, my friends.
Sadly, most of us suffer from an inflamed and distorted self-image. We are too skinny and too fat, too pale and too tan. Our freckled bodies seem to us more like leprous skin, waiting for the slightest zephyr to pull it from our bones. Our moles are small brown bombs like piles of dog shit scattered across our backs and chests and arms and faces. We are damaged and ugly and unlovable.
Our eyes often find themselves painted in the wrong color. Our lips are anorexic or obese. We spend so much time hiding ourselves from the world - women with their makeup and push-up bras, men with our polo shirts and Axe Body Spray -, as if some divine cloth or substance will make us, if even for one moment, beautiful and desired. Sadly, if we were to ever obtain the emperor's new outfit to wear ourselves, we would be that little boy calling out "But he's naked!" We would still find our reflections repulsive. We would still cringe with disgust every time we slipped into a thong or went shirtless in public.
Such delusions are those of grandeur; we believe - sincerely - that the rest of the world looks at us the way we look at ourselves.
When I was fifteen, I was not only overweight (by a lot), but also had keloids (an overgrowth of scar tissue) protruding from my back like worms burrowing in my skin. I went, once, on a church trip to a pool. Once shirtless, I sighed and exited the locker room. Lucky for me, my hatred for my body was outdone by my love for high-dives.
Within thirty seconds a small group of teens encircled me and looked upon my imperfect body as if I were infected by some communicable disease. Some boys laughed at my budding man-breasts, while the girls scoffed in awe at my scars.
I turned around and got dressed, then spent the rest of the day sitting in a nearby field, weeping.
From then on, I really believed that I had some physical deformity unlike anyone else...which is such a ludicrous and selfish belief. Everyone has a "deformity" or two. Even those pieces of shit that circled me like a ravaged pack of hyenas, looking to feed off my misery, had problems. It dawns on me now that there were two reasons that they treated me like a dog:
1. They were protecting themselves from their own fears and self-doubt by attacking someone whose imperfections were more noticeable.
2. Kids are assholes.
And yes, people grow out of that stage of douche-bagginess...well, that is people who don't grow up wearing Axe Body Spray and asking everyone everywhere to play beer-pong all the freaking time.
So I must undergo another struggle in this battle with my fat and fat-habits. I must learn to understand that I will never be perfectly good-looking, but that's fine, because nobody is. Hatred of ones self leads only to further self-destruction, which in my case means a KFC Double-Down and a side of potato wedges...
And you'd better not forget the biscuit.
mdm
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