From the Outside In
By DJ Alling
This is an essay dedicated to my Mommy, my MiMi, and every other person on the planet whose body doesn’t cooperate with their mind and spirit.
About a year ago I worked at a not-for-profit agency that works primarily with senior citizens. On a small bulletin board near the boardroom a paper is posted that, in big, bold font says, “Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.” From the first time I read that, I was sure I knew what it meant. Society tends to see people for their physical appearance and abilities and tends to discredit the intelligence and spirit that resides within. I have always thought of myself as a moderately empathetic person and thought I could clearly understand and relate with the confusion and frustration having a body that doesn’t work as well as it used to can cause in an older person However, I recently learned that I didn’t truly understand as much as I should, and that I was being narrow-minded by thinking that phrase could only be applied to those who have reached senior citizen status.
I could picture a young person who was smart and intelligent and who felt she had value to the world, and because of her age, health and physical abilities everyone else thought so as well. I then pictured that same person, still with the same intelligence and drive to make a difference, yet suddenly her body isn’t cooperating, and neither is the rest of the world.
A few mornings ago I was getting ready to go to work, and, as I slopped sticky goo into my hair that is supposed to make every hair stay in its place, but rarely does, I stopped dead in my tracks. The image in the steam fogged mirror suddenly seemed completely foreign to me. I stared, yet could not recognize the woman staring back at me.
It wasn’t one of those moments of clarity where one begins to question her life values and ethics in Life. I feel pretty confident with who I am on the inside. Though my beliefs have changed over the years, I’ve kept up with it pretty well and am in confident in who I am spiritually. Physically, however, I suddenly realized that though I look in the mirror every day, I have obviously not been seeing anything.
I have always been considered by society, and myself, as fat. I am and always have been a very solidly built female. And while emotionally that has always been a sore spot for me, I’ve always considered myself a healthy and active person who could do anything physically, if I wanted to. I also considered myself very shapely and attractive. Big bones and wide hips had never deterred me from doing the things I wanted to do.
Then, that morning I suddenly had to take a closer look. Sometime over the years the broad, yet firm young girl has disappeared into layers of softness. I stared for half an hour just at my hands. The phrase “big boned” was truthfully one I could always apply to myself. I have always had short, wide, stubby fingers, but somewhere they have virtually disappeared. As I held my hand up in front of the mirror, it more closely resembled a latex glove that had been blown up into a balloon with nubs instead of fingers poking out than the nimble appendage I had always perceived it to be. I couldn’t understand how they could be the same fingers that fly over the keyboard and quickly and efficiently churn out the hundreds, if not thousands of words I write each day at work or in chat with my friends.
The longer I stared, the more anomalies I found. Hips that had once been large yet firm were lumpy and dimpled. Skin that was once smooth and supple hung with a texture that was suspiciously like that of skin on raw chicken.
As surprised as I was at the physical changes that had seemingly crept up on me, it wasn’t the first signs that things had been changing. I finally had to admit what I’d been so desperately trying to deny. I wasn’t as young and healthy as I once was. I was still of the firm mind that thirty-two is not that old, but my body had been telling me otherwise for some months. Ten years before I often danced all night, then ran home for a shower, then off to work all day. But in the past year, walking a block had me puffing like a freight train. The young girl who had once been an active belly dancer was still inside and screamed in frustration when I couldn’t last more than five minutes in aerobics class. And I finally had to admit I wasn’t as spry as I once was when I found my self scrambling like a turtle on its back because I sat in the floor and couldn’t get up.
The changes in my physical being hadn’t really sneaked up on me; they were the culmination of years of not paying attention. My mind rebelled at the spreading hips and aging lungs. I had finally been slapped in the bloated and chubby face by reality. And while this reality set in motion the expected resolutions, eat right, exercise more, buy expensive moisturizers, it also brought something else home.
Inside me I was still that young and active 22 year old, but my body wasn’t. It didn’t change the fact that I didn’t think of myself as old at all and had the hopes for many more years to come. But it did make me realize that, as much as I thought I understood that saying on the office wall, I really hadn’t. That simple saying only skims the surface of the horror a person can feel when her body no longer works as well as his or her mind, whether the affliction is age, weight gain, illness, or injury.
Diet plans and skin care regimens will come and go, but they are not the real fruits of my realization. The real prize is an understanding that had eluded me thus far. Worth, especially self-worth, comes from somewhere much deeper than crinkled skin and fat thighs.
