Swimsuits are the Devil
I have many fine qualities. I’m smart, stubborn, a reasonably good writer, a person with a sense of humor, with kindness and compassion.
But I’m also prone to staggering, crippling self-concsciousness, something that an entire lifetime of both dance and sports/physical activity seems not to have cured me of. Sure, I can be half or fully naked in a dressing room, a stage wing, a… well, that’s no one else’s business. I don’t feel modest, or in need of hiding my body away from anyone’s gaze if I’m partaking in an activity of some sort.
But I feel close to frozen at the thought of wearing a bathing suit to the spa on Friday. We’re going to Glen Ivy, it’s as DIY and body welcoming as any place that involves lots of nearly naked people slathering red mud on themselves in the middle of the desert can be. In fact, the only place I can think of as being less body-perfection pressuring would be a hippy dippy concert in a field full of happy drugged out music lovers.
And yet, I kind of want to cry at the idea of displaying my body in a swim suit. I…this past year I stopped taking care of myself in so many of the ways that count, gave into my depression, my rejections, the losses that seemed to keep coming like the nibble on flesh of those fish manicurists. And now? It’s left me with this feeling like nothing could be worse than wrapping my flesh in stretchy lycra and being out in public.
Ugh. I just. I’m as embarrassed to feel this way as I undoubtedly will be to walk around on Friday. Thank god for the red mud.
