I think my body is trying to tell me something. I have had this itchy rash for a couple of days now, mostly on my face. I went to the doctor yesterday and he had no answers really. Gave me Benadryl and a cream for my face. I couldn’t take the Benadryl all day because I had to go to work. So I was itchy and uncomfortable all day. Then about mid day my back started hurting. Like the kind of pain that you can’t ignore. I took some ibuprofen but that hasn’t, so far, touched the pain.
I am trying to pay attention to my body and listen to what its is trying to tell me but we have such a hard time communicating after all the years of abuse and neglect. I feel like I left my body at such a young age. I kind of dragged it around with me everywhere but largely I treated it without much respect, ignored its messages and put it through a lot of pretty shitty stuff.
Even today, I have this kind of irritation at it for making me itch and feel badly. Like it is doing it on purpose. Like it is against me. I realized that I have this antagonistic relationship with my body that is likely not healthy and certainly not productive.
It is no wonder why. I have poured millions of empty calories into it, factories of booze down it, over exercised it, under exercised it, and largely ignored it for many years. I have totally taken it for granted and become super irritated with it when it doesn’t do what I want it to do.
I am realizing, how could it be different? What other kind of relationship could I possibly have with someone I treated like this? Truthfully, I am lucky that it is speaking to me at all...
So how to change this internal dialogue with my eternal host? How do I change this antagonistic conversation to one that is more loving, caring and supportive?
For me, I think that I have to go super deep and realize that my body is not an inconvenience. It is not an impediment in my life. I am not joking when I say that I will dehydrate myself because I don’t want to slow down and have to take bathroom breaks more often which would be the byproduct of being appropriately hydrated. I shit you not.
At 50, I can see that while my body could be in much worse shape, it is sending me messages that it is kind of tired of putting up with my shit. It is demanding better treatment and is totally capable of getting my attention. I am kind of waking up to the fact that if I continue my path of intolerance and ignorance; I am surely going to pay some interesting consequences.
And that my friends is how I have always done my life. Living right on that edge of taking things too far and being able to pull back and right the course. How much can I get away with before I really, permanently fuck things up? Not the best living motto but I have used the fuck out of it.
So as I lay here in my cozy bed, with my expensive bedding, $200 pillows (6 of them) and luxury pajamas it strikes me that I might want to reconsider my priorities. Perhaps I might want to spend a little time and money on my life container, that is my body.
So I am going to start today asking it questions...what does it need? How can I be of service to it? How can I give it what it needs? Just writing this makes me a little crazy. Feels like I won’t have time, or this is weird. I immediately come up with resistance to myself. A well worn pattern of thoughts takes over and attempts to usher me back into the well worn groove of decades of abuse and neglect. Appears that I may have a hard time with this one. The questions easily asked but hard to answer in a truthful and authentic way. How can I begin to treat something lovingly when I have hated it for 50 years? How can I stop the abuse and neglect that has now just become my way and manner of living? How do I come to see it as a temple in which I reside instead of a prisons that enslaves me? How do I reconnect to it in a manner that promotes well being and safety?
I have a lot of questions today and not many answers. It appears that I have a lot of work to do...staying present with myself and staying in my body not easy and spiritually challenging. I guess I will start with being grateful to be alive. Grateful to be healthy, relatively painfree, upright and breathing in and out.
