had a bad day again

have you ever looked at your reflection and burst into tears?

i'm working from home today: no makeup, no masks, just me in raggedy-ass clothes, in all my non-primped-out glory.  earlier i looked at candid photos of myself on Facebook; also, i went to an artist's website, a photographer that takes nude erotic bondage pictures of women where light replaces leather, chains and ropes.  (note: the only reason i went to his site was because he lives in the same art community complex as some dear friends of mine, and they've mentioned him a few times in the past two weekends. i never got around to stopping by his studio, and now i know why: my psyche was probably trying to protect me).

my point is that these factors--and maybe others that i'm not yet aware of--are what contributed to this feeling of disgust with my appearance.

when will this end?  will i always have these moments of terror and horror as i look at myself in the mirror?  will i always feel panic at how much cellulite i've gained or how much muscle definition i've lost in my abs?  why--with all the positive things people say about me and my work--do i still feel so crippled by body dissatisfaction?

to my eyes, my photos show a girl-woman with a protective layer around her, making her heavy and elephantine.  when i was younger, i always thought of my body as a skin that i wanted to shed in order to feel light and free.  when i see these touched-up photos of women who are young and smooth and blemish-free, i know that this depictions are not real, that the men who snap these shots think of women as cars or diamond rings, sparkly and sleek and polished and hinting not one bit at the soft, squishy, dimpled messiness of real human bodies.

hanging out with my friends all this weekend, women who are strong and fragile and REAL, probably lulled me into a false sense of security.  enter Monday and The World As It Is, or The World As We Have Been Taught To See It: yoga ads with pictures of hard-bodied women in pretzel poses, models who are "edgy" with short, spiky hair and black eyeliner who look all of 16 years old, white, upper-class PhDs who talk about healing but who have never been broken themselves, who have never been told, again and again, since the single-digit years, "you are not good enough," "you are ugly," "you are shameful," "you are unsightly."  i want to be back in that safe, warm, easy space where everyone is loved for being alive and being human...where strangers are welcome and friends are like family (the family that you really, really like).  if that space could expand and occupy the entire world, a giant heartspace where we could all just relax and breathe and let our talents and gifts and skills and knowledge shine out...

i suppose i must first create that space inside my own heartspace.  unfortunately, some days it feels like a Sisyphean task: like building and building and building and rebuilding a house on mountains of mud.

i didn't take any photos, but this might be better

there are only a few people out, not enough to be annoying, so i let my armor dissolve.

it is warm enough that i don't need gloves.  in fact, after walking up the steep hill to the trail, i want to strip down to my underwear and soak my skin.  the forest drips with diamonds, raindrops collecting around blossoms and at leaf tips.  the lake is a still mirror for the sky and the trees.  mist--rogue wisps of clouds--dances across hilltops and settles in tiny valleys.

the shades of green are myriad, like lush quilts of textured emerald hues, from the black-green of old oaks to the bright new sprouts at the trail sides--leaves shaped like moths, wings flat and round-tipped.  i want to graze on that green, taste the moisture on my tongue and feel juicy fibers crunch between my molars.  vines of ivy climb down the sides of the ravine to my right, tangling with slender switches and reaching towards the fuzzy moss that blankets nearly everything that sits out of the sunlight's reach on brighter days.

the smell is like coming home: decaying leaves, wet earth, native herbs.

if i can't take off my shirt, i'll roll up my sleeves.  the rain is soft, tiny kisses by the millions.  every nerve ending in my epidermis gets a massage.  a strand of wet hair points to the corner of my mouth and i let it stay.

the rain begins to come down faster, and the thick hush of the forest is interrupted with soft, sweet percussion.

the walnut trees, skinny, multiple trunks growing out of one base, arc up and over the trail, reaching to the water's edge.  i stop there, too, feet in the wet sand and eyes skimming the surface to find the geese i can hear, honking in approval or in disapproval, i can never tell.  veils of rain descend, bringing water and landscape closer to the same colorless color.

there is a flickering in my periphery and i look up to see a falcon slicing across the sky.  i know she is not a vulture, her movements are quicker and her tail long and slender.  the buzzards are out, too, a few of them, their wings lovingly caress the sky when they move, sensuous and slow.  they are enormous birds, so regal, but their ugly, bare heads betray the bad karma bestowed upon them, perhaps from an earlier life.  they seem to accept their fate with grace, and i quickly say a prayer that i might do the same when i begin to get ugly.

i lift my arms up to stretch, arching back in a bend that opens my ribs and reverses the heaviness of my shoulders.  it's amazing how, when i make a conscious effort at awareness, i can feel the electric current running up from the earth into my feet and up my spinal column, dispersing like little lightning bolts through the conduits of my nervous system.  even in this cool rain, i am sparked, hot, outward-reaching.  time is obliterated and there is only here and now, though i'll have to return to a place of clocks eventually. it isn't doing that nourishes the human soul...it is being.