There is a copy paste status going around on Facebook that makes me want to gouge my eyes out.
Paraphrasing:
I love my body even though it’s changed through child birth, every mark, every scar, it’s a sign of my children and etc etc etc. Copy paste this if you’ve had children etc etc etc.
Lovely sentiment and I can totally understand why women are copy pasting it to their status. Affirmation that even though childbirth has changed your body, you are an amazing woman for it.
And you ARE. My GOD you are. You’re amazing, you created another human being. That right there is amazing and you should be proud. If I see the copy/paste thingy on your status, I promise, I won’t even be tempted to throw stones at you.
But reading that status makes me bitter.
Maybe because after 2 children, I’m not all that changed? I don’t think childbearing has taken it’s toll on my body all that much – except for how much bendier I got.
And yet, I am broken and battered still.
If my war wounds were a result of my children, I would bear them proudly, I would stand up and I would shout from the roof tops how proud I was of my body.
Yet, my elastic skin that tears at the drop of a hat, that wasn’t childbirth. The stretchmarks on my stomach, while exacerbated by pregnancy, weren’t caused by pregnancy.
The bruising on my legs, the livedo reticularis that means I can’t wear skirts, my battered broken bits –
Not a one of them I attribute to pregnancy and child birth.
Every. Single. One. of the things I dislike about my body is caused by Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and that makes me bitter.
I can forgive the visual changes – really, I don’t mind how my body looks, even though it’s different. It would have been different anyway, no matter what.
I dislike my body, often, even though I don’t have body image issues (in fact – 2 children later, I am quite proud of how I look).
But.
I hate how I can’t bounce out of bed without checking that all of my joints are in place.
I hate that I can’t walk across the room without tripping over, or walking into a wall, or having to think about every step and judge where everything is by sight, because my feet are stupid and don’t work very well.
I dislike that I have to think consciously about how I move.
I hate that pouring the milk for my cup of tea this morning dislocated my wrist.
I hate the fact that my ribs won’t stay attached to my spine like they should.
I don’t like the way my skin tears, just because it feels like it and then takes weeks to heal. I dislike the bruising that makes me look like a victim of domestic violence (although, am grateful, my face rarely bruises unless I actually walk into a door).
I hate that I am 21 and move like I am so much older – feel like I am so much older. I hate the pain and the exhaustion. My word the pain. My joints slide around like butter and while my smaller joints don’t leave me screaming, it doesn’t mean they don’t hurt. We won’t even talk about how my teeth hurt from the clenching.
I am bitter about how the EDS has changed my body and I dislike that I can’t love myself in it’s entirety, when really, I’d just like a trade in. It can look exactly the same, just someone replace my fucked up genetics and collagen PLEASE.
Bleh.
I’m just feeling crappy and wishing my only issues were visual ones caused by childbirth.
[Again I state that if you copy pasted that status to your Facebook, I am not having a go at you. You are amazing, you created a human being and you should be proud of every single mark it caused. I am just bitter that I am broken and hurting.]
