You Know Your Brain is Lying to You When…
- Mia Garlock
- Feb 3, 2023
- 5 min read
When your best friend brings you a giant bag of clothes to try on, and everything is sized down from where you’ve been for months. You’re on your period so you’re feeling crappy about yourself, your body, and all the thoughts you have are negative. And as you go through the bag, you notice some really cute things that you’d like, if only you were that size. As you’re holding up the clothes, something tickles the back of your brain, and whispers just try them on, so you pick out a few things, and you try them.
And they fit.
I’m not sure when exactly body dysmorphia started to control my life, but I recognize that it has been dominant in my perception of myself for years, decades even. My face is too round, my hair is too big, my shoulders are too square, my hips aren’t curved in the right spots, and my boobs are overwhelming, and my belly is too soft, and my arms are too wide, my skin color isn’t right, my hair is too dark, my eyes are too brown, my feet are too square, my legs are too thick, I could literally go on for days, about all the flaws I see when I’m faced with my reflection, or a picture of myself. Never satisfied with compliments or loved ones insisting that I’m blind to myself, or that I could ever be anything classified as beautiful. If I try to source it’s inception, I remember being little, like 5 or 6, and being scolded by my dad for taking big bites of my food. I can hear his voice, as I’m eating a salad, and the note of pride that I would order a salad would be gone, and replaced with “that’s a lot on your plate, don’t you want to slow down?” I remember asking him if he was big boned, seeing his barrel shaped chest and thinking that maybe that’s where I got my build from, and him saying “No, I’m not, but I think you are.” I remember being told that I have tree trunks for legs by my stepdad when I was 11 years old and wearing a dress for the first time on an outing. My mother, telling me that lifting weights would make me bulky and shaped more like a man.
Photo by Kat Smith on Pexels.com
So many little moments that pushed my brain to question my mirror, that turned my eyes to laser focus on the spots that made me feel insecure. That had me thinking that surgeries and diet pills and starving myself for days would give me a body that those people could think was beautiful, that they could be proud of, and want to be around. I wish I could forget them, erase them, and embrace myself as fully as my best friend does, as my husband does, my children. They see me for who I am and not the cruel lies I was told over and over again growing up. It makes me concentrate so hard on not giving those same insecurities to my own children. Please eat the food, please eat a whole meal, see your beautiful reflection, smile big and bold and bright, and feel everything, don’t shut it down, don’t bottle it up, be strong, but your own kind of strong, don’t you dare think you need to be more like anyone else but yourself.
Amazing that a trash bag of hand me downs could bring up so many feelings.
None of the clothes she gave me were the sizes I’ve been wearing. Everything is a size down, and I’m on my period, and they fit. THEY FIT. They fit well. Comfortably. Not too snug anywhere, not clinging to my body, or squeezing my arms, or blown out by my chest. My body is changing again, morphing into what I’m shaping it into. I don’t even know what the final result will be when I’m done, I just know that it’s changing drastically every month. Even if I can’t see it. I would swear up and down that I’m exactly the same size and shape that I was 6 months ago if I looked in the mirror right now, but I know, I know, I know, it’s a lie, a trick from all those poisonous statements I was fed growing up, distorting how I see myself.
I’m on day 2 of my period, and I know these thoughts come from the flood of hormones in my body, I know that my critical analysis of myself in the mirror is pushed by those chemicals, or lack of, and that they change the way my brain works for a few days. Change my eyes to see myself differently, change my emotions so that they become the glasses through which I view myself. Dawn Court Mindstilling to collect myself, to root down deep in the reserves of optimism and positivity that I generally only share with others. This well of sunshine and rainbows that I use to help boost other people up, and never really use on myself, I know I can tap it, and submerge myself in it with some time and focus. Deep breaths. “No part of me needs fixing.“
Photo by Nadezhda Moryak on Pexels.com
The biggest lessons I have learned in the these months of dedication to Valkyrie Squad, to hitting the mat, to choosing me, are the ones that are healing the years of trauma and abuse that I carry with me every day. Unexpected lessons, and unexpected healing. Scars that I didn’t even know were scars, are healing over, new muscle and new skin, changing the landscape of my body and my brain. I am excited to get up every day, excited to don my sports bra and leggings, excited to drag the mat out and count the drops of sweat that fall from my face with every rep. I’m excited for this act of self care to commence before the sun rises each day, and I’ve never known that feeling this good in my skin was possible. Even when I was running every day, training for a marathon, I didn’t feel this good. I didn’t feel the scars of my traumatized childhood falling off of me. I feel it now though.
Valkyrie Squad has given me so much to think about, so much to embrace, and learn, and grow with. I feel like a starved plant who was finally given some fertile soil. Exercise doesn’t have to be a punishment. Food doesn’t have to be earned or deserved, through sweat. Clothing size doesn’t actually define me as a human. Strength comes in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. I can be loved as I am, and for who I will be, by myself, and by others. I am grateful, eternally grateful, for that silly TikTok app, and for showing me Sam’s page. I am more myself now, at 34 years old, than I have ever been. And while a small part of me does mourn for the years that I was so lost, more of me, a bigger part of me, is so gods damned excited to be here, now, part of Valkyrie Squad, with a sword in my hands.
Comments