Chapter 4: Body Image
An excerpt from my unpublished book, Somatic Psychology, The Body in Culture, History and Spirit.
“Body image is a complex entity, formed from both an Individual’s mental representation of the integrity and competence of their own physical self, as well as their awareness of how others perceive them - the social interpretation of their physical self. This paper examined the concepts of body image and its relationship with Body image-dissatisfaction, physical self-concept and self-esteem. For Adolescents and Young Adults body image and its relation with the concept of physical self-image are very important because body image determines their relationship with their friends, their social activities, and their self-esteem. They are very hot and sensitive for everything. Also, they are productive groups than other groups. It has negative impact on their life.” — Alebachew & Ashagrie 2017
I am Pinocchio. My childhood shadow follows me everywhere. A grotesque face from a lie and a wooden body stiff and awkward shaped by a wood carver’s knife. I was a liar as a child and linked this secret to my body.
Upon leaving the Army in 1973, I had gained 100 pounds after the terrorist bombing attack I experienced. I was morbidly obese. When I was finishing my doctoral work in 1995, I wrote an essay about my body image from the experience of being obese. I called it Every Ugly Man originally. For a reference point, the reader should be aware that this chapter is referring to a time in my life during childhood, adolescence and my early 20s when I had BMI of 32 and over. That is clinical or morbid obesity.
My hero throughout adolescence was Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus. Dead parts of cadavers were assembled haphazardly, sewn together awkwardly, producing the perception of an ugly form. Two knobs protruded from his neck through which he became animated with a spark of electricity from lightning conducted down from the roof of Dr. Frankenstein’s castle. This was my body, however stitched together by faces and feelings completely foreign to me. My pieces, unconnected, big, uncoordinated, were pus-filled sores, acne covering my face and jock itch down to my knees. I walked like the monster reeling from side to side, an ugly hateful thing to see. Grotesque to feel from the inside.
It was Mr. Kempster, my sophomore English teacher at Cardinal Newman High School who turned me on to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. At last, I found a kindred soul, a wretched creature who had my body, my experience. This was a better creation story than Genesis. Our hero longed for one thing at the end of Mary Shelley’s story. It was the creation of a female with whom to share his life. I was sex starved in a Catholic fog of depression—don’t think it, don’t touch it, don’t tell about it. Sin in the body. Trapped in my own longings for something other than this moment. Trapped in a hatred of myself. A sinner for having a body. The body as sin.
As I was being born, just as my head was about to pop out, my mother asked for a general anesthetic. She could not tolerate the separation from intimacy, the intimacy of carrying me for nine months. I became an ether baby. Knocked out for the main event. Gotta get out. Panic and anxiety if I can’t. I love to numb when I get excited. My mom smoked and drank during her pregnancy with me. I smoked and I drink. And then the military bombing followed by tons of recreational drugs. Blame it on someone, something, somewhere in lost time. I’m sensitive to pollution, bright lights, loud noises. I get angry. I hate it sometimes. I want to kill the smoker and then I get A-fib. Get out, get out, get away from the moment. I reject sensations in my body. I don’t want to feel. I contract, ignore, deny, tense and withdraw from all feelings, hideous creature that I was. A terrorist bombing attack in the Army cemented my old body into a new fat one.
I remember my first bad acid trip after the Army. It was in my mid-20’s. I felt the full extra 100 pounds I was carrying in and on my body for the first time. I touched my fat, my lumps, my blobs. It all felt like excess baggage, a densely insulated sack. Nothing short of a monster, a cadaver coming to life. It scared and fascinated me at the same time. I felt fragmented. Each part had a different shape, a different feel. Some were sticky and sweaty, unconnected. Some were heavy, some hurt, some cried out, some were angry. Every part was confused. My head ached relentlessly for days. I was scared, but I found my body on LSD. I got a foothold back in.
Salvation will come through a cauldron of molten metal that I must swim in to save myself. I was a steelworker after the Army: Local 295 South Chicago. Shoveled iron ore and coal for the blast furnaces. I am homeless, nowhere. Who the hell can save me anyway? I hate it. I can’t even save myself. Living on a ship condensing my craziness.
I wanted to dismember myself, strip myself, lay bare my flesh and bones in my fascination. I was driven. I stopped eating on the ship and lost the 100 pounds in six months. I went to massage school. I felt vitality return to my body. I learned control and excitement with food, a first for me. I obsessed. I fasted. I became celibate. I stopped doing drugs (for a while anyway). I was raw meat, exposed and shivering, but in contact with my interior, morbid thing that I was.
I started Gestalt therapy and found my body contained even more and more feelings! I quit. I started. I cried. I wept. I sobbed for the loss of a soul I never knew I had, and thought could never get. I wanted to scratch and claw at my body neurosis and keep picking the scab over and over again. I further dismembered myself ritualistically with colonics, massage, Rolfing, anything that could excavate my feelings from my body. Purge them. Flush them out. How I hated those feelings. Jesus did I hate myself. I hated my therapist. I wanted to kill him, too.
I went back to graduate school for more training to get smart and out-think myself. I wanted to learn more techniques to apply to myself and my client. It was the great quest of more is always better. Enough is never as good as a feast. I converted to Buddhism to make friends with my mind. I converted to the culture of bodywork and massage to make friends with my body. I accomplished neither. I still hold Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator (the new Frankenstein) as my new hero. I want a body impervious to pain. Disfiguration is no big deal.
I contract with each new feeling rather than open. I am hostile towards each sensation rather than friendly. I ignore emotions, rationalize, project, deny, and kill my feelings. I’ll do anything to avoid the reality of my body. Laxatives, pills, dope, alcohol, speed, overwork, under sleep, exercise, no exercise, relax, no relaxation, friendliness, no friendliness, hatred. No damn end to hatred of the body. Always waiting for compassion, looking for compassion, wanting compassion. I know it is inside somewhere. The puzzle, the maze, the labyrinth of destiny unfolding in the flesh.
Thanks for reading The Biodynamic Heart! Subscribe to receive new posts and support my work. It is certainly worth noting that this chapter’s subject matter has evolved over the years for me since initially writing it. Find out more about my traumatic war experience and stories of compassion in my recently published book.
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