I Hate My Body (But Not Like That)

College was the loneliest time of my life. I went to school in Brooklyn, NY, over 900 miles away from my home (at the time) in Georgia. I had no family nearby, I was struggling to make friends, and the city turned out to be more overstimulating and overwhelming to live in than I had anticipated. Because of all this, my anxiety and depression were the worst they’ve ever been in my life. Not only did I feel like I was completely on my own with no support system, but the never ending stimuli of city life put me in a constant state of fight or flight. This led me to discover that my brain’s solution to dealing with extreme stress is to shut down and dissociate.

For my entire four years of college, I was experiencing perpetual dissociation. It was so bad that I often felt as if I was a camera hovering slightly behind and above myself, like a third person POV in a video game. There was even a few occasions where I lost small chunks of time. I would walk down the stairs in my dorm, feeling like it was a quicker walk than usual, only to realize that I’d zoned out so hard that I couldn’t remember the last few floors. This constant dissociation is what I believe led to my ongoing issue of feeling a disconnect between my mind and my body. My body became nothing more to me than the thing that carries my brain from place to place.

I hate my body. Not the way it looks; I’m honestly somewhat fond of my tummy and thighs. No, I hate the fact that I have a body at all. I hate having to eat, use the bathroom, exercise, have a period. I hate that I get sore, that my back hurts all the time, that food gets stuck in my teeth. I hate that people can see me, can sexualize me, can judge me based on appearance alone. I hate that I get tired, that I’ll keep aging, that I’ll one day die. I feel shackled by this body I live in, like I could be so much more if only I was just a mind, just a soul.

I mentioned this feeling in passing once to a therapist. I said, “I’m a brain, and this body is just a vehicle to move me around.” And she replied, “But you’re also you’re body.” I agreed, reluctantly, but I didn’t really believe it. It took me until now, after almost ten years of feeling like this, to realize that this disdain for and disconnect from my own body is a problem.

I am my body. Me hating that fact won’t make it any less true. But if it’s true, why is it so hard for me to care about it? I’ve heard the term “self care” so many times, and it took a long time for me to realize people didn’t just mean taking care of your mental health. They meant caring for this body, this part of me that I’ve been neglecting for so long. It’s so easy for me to prioritize my mental health, but my physical health always gets pushed to the back burner, always something that I’ll worry about later. I’m like a car with the check engine light on, but I still run (for now), so why do anything about it?

The problem is that I’m not yet sure how to fix this mindset. How can I connect to my body again? Why is it so hard for me to recognize the physical part of myself? How will I teach myself to care for this body as easily as I care for my cats or my plants or my mind? I don’t know. But at least now I know that something needs to be done.

I write this not just to talk about myself or brainstorm my own problems, but because I’m almost certain someone else out there has felt similarly to me. Don’t worry about me; I have a therapist I can talk to about this. But if you feel similar at all to me, maybe it’s time to worry about yourself, your physical self. Maybe it’s time to ground, to reconnect, to remember that we’re not only just minds, but bodies too.