January 2018 – Southern Wild

I have a body 5,129 miles from my home. All seven organs, all 206 bones, and three layers of skin. A mesh of veins and muscles and tendons are all there, too. Ten toes, ten fingers, and breath in its mouth.

I tied two toes with big, red strings before I sent her off sailing into another dream. My body, you know, has seen a lot. But down here, I can feel she is starting to pop.

She’s walked 22.2 miles, traveled Normandie and Paris. She’s eaten a crate of cheese, and a whole fish with carrots.

I let her go on pretending she’s dauntless and brave, but I can see her strings are starting to fade.

So I gave her two toes a few tugs while she was out there – suspended and free – and I asked her nicely to remember me.

Three years ago I finally cut the crap and set a real New Year’s resolution:

Do what you’re too afraid to say out loud.

In 2015, I realized I kept tacking on trite goals of weight loss and clean eating habits instead of focusing on what I needed to improve. I get it, a new year gives motivation to restart or erase bad habits, but why did I keep seeing the earth’s move around the sun as a clean slate for my body mass? A new year is a continuation of life’s progress, a building block, a stepping stone to the rest of your life. Why would I tether each step forward with a bitchy list of restrictions?

Here’s a look at my resolutions through the years:

2009: Cut out soda

2010: No more processed foods

2011: Eat red meat once a month

2012: No more white carbs

2013: Throw away the scale, but also cut out carbs, sugar and food in general

2014: SQUATS

2015: Food is not the enemy

I’m not saying weight loss isn’t a valid goal for a new year, but I am questioning why it matters. For me, the years of body-centered resolutions became my own way of putting off what I was too afraid to go after:

I can’t be a writer right now, but I can refuse this ham sandwich and eat kale.

I read an article years ago that said, “If you want to be a runner, start telling people you are a runner.” Sure, that seems like a simple enough concept now, but at the time – the line came packaged with its own group of white doves and a dramatic omniscient melody. That shit registered in my head. Was this guy saying I could just say what I wanted to do?

Voicing my dream aloud provided some weird power (aka peer pressure, motivation, public humiliation) to actually fight for it, but more than anything – it let me see that the dream was real. That somewhere, behind all the list of things I thought might make me

skinny

pretty

powerful

wanted

There was a real ambition waiting.

Month: January 2018

Catenary

Bonne Année