the politics of infrastructure

Today, I meditate on the idea of self-care. Why I'm so bad at it. Why, oftentimes, the care of others comes well before care for myself. I am genuine in my externalization of attention, advice, comfort. I am downright ruthless and without mercy in my internalization of same. I'm not even sure there's any room for forgiveness amid all the emotionally charged flotsam taking up so much of my psychic space.

Immediately, when I think of where I learned to ignore my body and exist soley in my head, an image of my father comes into sharp focus. I have never known him to be anything but overweight to the point of uncomfortability--he now has two fake knees, both of them having blown out under the stress of carrying so much poundage for so long. His second knee, in fact, got so bad that by the time doctors went into operate, he not only had no cartilage and a patella that was swimming in a sea of puss and bone shards, but the pressure of his femur against the fibula and tibia had literally caused the tibia to split, and the femur was grinding into it. Makes you wince, doesn't it? I cannot imagine the pain my father was in, though I did see him not long before his surgery, when he and my mother came to visit me in Colorado. My dad could hardly walk. Two, three blocks was too much for him. He anesthesized himself with loads of Aleve and nightly martinis that would have put a horse under. And he was a bear to be around. Constantly irritable, quick to ignite into a rage over the smallest things. My mother bore the brunt of it, of course, and I think she felt sorry for him, because after 40+ years of marriage, you know when you're partner is in pain. And you want to help. But there's nothing you can do.

Finally Dad relented and had the surgery. He's now even playing golf, which was something I could not fathom him doing just two years ago. His knee pain is almost non-existent, though I know he still takes Aleve, so he must experience some kind of discomfort.

When I get a twinge in my knee, I freak a little inside. One of the primary reasons for losing weight is so that I don't walk--or crawl--the same path as my Dad. I want to keep these knees, but I know that I am built like him--at least from the waist down--and there's a very good chance that I inherited his bone structure. Before I started back on WW, one of the things that cemented my decision was a persistent ache in my right knee. S. would rub it at night while we lounged on the couch together, and it felt so good, but it was also a sign that carrying 240 lbs could not continue.

I chose this particular photo of my father because he's reading in it. For as long as I can remember, my father (and mother) was a voracious reader...if he wasn't reading the paper, which he did every night after coming home from work (as the years wore on and his stress/pain levels rose, martinis became a permanent fixture on the coaster next to his seat on the couch), he was reading some tome of a book, probably a biography or 500 pages of historic non-fiction which detailed a particular WW II battle. If the TV was on, he would always have something to read in his lap: the National Review, Time (before it slanted, in his mind, too far left) , Fine Woodworking. His was not a one track mind. I don't believe it was about attention span as much as it was about being constantly stimulated. So long as his mind worked overtime, he could do without his body. Or so it seemed.

I inherited my parent's love of reading, and not that long ago noticed that I too have become one of those people who find sitting and watching TV only a grand waste of time. If a show really sparks my interest--say "60 Minutes" or "History Detectives" or, my favorite indulgence, "America's Next Top Model"--I might give it my undivided attention. But I am a periodical junkie, and take the daily paper too (NYTimes on Sundays) so there's always reading to catch up on. I'll read while S. watches CSI--oh how David Caruso grates on my nerves!--or yet another episode of Law and Order. I will tune it all out and concentrate on the words before me. Just last night I read the latest issue of Vanity Fair while S. watched Caruso deliver canned lines in his affected baritone. I plowed through Garydon's letter and Dunne's latest missive, perused Oscar night photos and began an article on mining in West Virginia. Then I went to bed.

Try as I might, I cannot deny that I carry a legacy riddled with addiction and fed by an insatiable curiosity. Not all that I have inherited is bad, but there's a heck of a lot of baggage to sort through. When I saw my first stretch mark winding its way across my stomach, I was 15. I am thin skinned and fair, and it wasn't long before that one stretch mark became a veritable highway interchange of silvery scars that seemed to cover my whole body. I stopped looking at my body altogether. I believed that I was disgusting, that objectively, no one could look at me and say that I was beautiful. If they did, they were lying. Those stretchmarks were the price I paid for a whole manner of wrongs done to various people in my youth. I was destined to carry the scars of my lies and betrayal forever. That was truly what I believed.

Why choose to inhabit a body that is rife with imperfection? If I keep my nose in a book, if I can engage in intellectual banter with the best of 'em, if I can be a poet instead of a pretty girl, then surely I will have succeeded.

But it comes down to this: I don't want to be the poet/intellectual/well read woman with a body that's failing. Waking up one day to a 300lb me is simply not an option. Why can't I have it all? Maybe I can. Maybe embodiment will augment my art in ways I cannot fathom. I sure do hope so. I'm hanging my hat on that one.