How does your body treat you?

Do you ever feel betrayed by your body? Does your body ever disgust you? Or does your body ever scare you? Does it make you livid? Mine does. And I am not talking about all this in terms of the way your body looks, but about the way your body makes you feel.

Does it treat you like a jealous and a possessive lover that is insecure all the time? The one that keeps throwing tantrums to get your attention and keep your attention. Does it treat you like a stubborn old grandfather who refuses to accept anything new? The one who thinks that any deviation from its own thinking is incorrect? Does it treat you like a cruel step mother who wouldn’t let go off any instance to give you pain and discomfort? The one who thinks that being at rest or peace is not your right.

Mine does. All of the above. My own body makes me feel betrayed, disgusted, scared and angry at the same time.

I feel betrayed and disgusted because I didn’t sign up for a body that is weak all the time? In spite of treating it with utmost respect, in spite of trying everything possible to make it feel healthier, it changes only for worse. It betrays me for all the efforts I put towards making it healthier.

I am scared of my body, of trying anything with my body. Be it a new food item, a different sleeping pattern, a new cosmetic product or a mere different workout style. Because it retaliates. As bad as a teenager high on drugs.

It angers me to see other people healthy even when they abuse their bodies so much. Whereas I have been treating it with a caution of a new father holding his child for the first time.

And yet. It behaves the way it wants to behave.   

I can sometimes hear my body talk to me. Like a person. A person who is not an ally. A person sitting across the table scrutinizing and scorning everything I do. Keeping notes for times when it can mock me, smirk at me and take its revenge. I can hear it saying something like, ‘Ahan, so you want to pull a late nighter watching a show on Netflix. Just wait and watch how I make your head explode tomorrow morning’. Or may be something like this, ‘So you think you will be able to get away with eating outside food two days in a row, let me show you the consequences. I am not accepting this food.’

My relationship with my body feels like an unrequited love affair. An affair where I give. And only give. Attention. Care. And medicines. To get nothing in return except being bruised, broken and in nagging pain all the time. Being on medicines for one thing or the other.

Do you know how much amount of time, energy and mental space your own body occupies in case it treats you like mine does? Immense. When I sit and reminisce, it fills me up with regret. Regret of things I could have done if keeping my body in a healthy working condition didn’t occupy so much of my mental space.

So, if yours is treating you well, be grateful. And work towards keeping it that way.

Source: Google images

PS – I am not sick due to any terminal illness. I am just not healthy enough to live without medicines.