Hearts

I have a meditation practice where I send hearts to the parts of my body that I spend a lot of time wishing were different. I sit in stillness, welcoming wisdom and enlightenment, and literally visualize little cartoon-like one-dimensional crayon-red hearts floating around my waist, hips, ass, thighs, and stomach. I picture little tiny ones nuzzling each other inside my cellulite holes and long ones sliding down my stretch-marks as if they were in a water park. I picture a line of them holding hands around my love-handles (oh-so-appropriately-named) and one big warm one right where I wish I had a six-pack. They are always happy, these hearts, all smiles and sending loving "you're perfect" vibes.

If you haven't detected it, I'll tell you- there's a hint of embarrassment in my tone.

See.

I'd rather be telling you all a story that exposes how confident I am and how I love my body and worship the divinity that resides within me and all that.

But that's just not the case.

I grew up in Brazil, I didn't have the kind of mother who told me I was the most beautiful creature in the world, I was bombarded with magazines and pop culture telling me that there was always something about myself I could improve, and I was not given a model's genetic coding. Embedded in my socialized brain is the concept that there is an "ideal body" and that I should strive for it.

I am ashamed that I occupy something as deep as meditation with something as frivolous as body-image issues. But what can I do. If I don't do this, I don't stand a chance against the voice in my head that tells me I'm not good enough.

Here's how it goes: I wake up in the morning, pee, brush my teeth, and then sit in front of my closet with my coffee and try to figure out which outfit will make me feel good that day. The voice starts in, That's a pretty dress but you had pasta last night and you'll look pregnant. Don't even look at those shorts, are you crazy? You can't wear shorts. You'll look like jell-o with feet. If you wear those jeans you have to wear a shirt that's loose around the waist, unless you want someone with a flat tire to mistake your waist for a spare.

The voice is evil. If someone else told me that they had a voice like that in their head, I'd tell them it should be murdered in a public square and that they should pay it no mind. I would kill anyone who talked to someone I care about the way this voice talks to me. And if I were an objective listener hearing how this voice talks to me, I would tell me it's full of shit. At the same time that I'm overpowered by this negative, self-hating voice, I am aware of its absurdity. I am aware that it is not the truth and that it is in my head, and therefore within my control.

But it's always there. And it always sounds so very real. And I can't get rid of it, not completely.

So I balance out its damage and diminish its power with my hearts meditation. I sit with my cute little hearts and I let them love me and tell me I am beautiful and perfect just as I am. I find comfort in knowing that yeah, even though I can create a voice that is so exquisitely cruel to me, I can also create an image that is boundlessly loving towards me.

It doesn't always work. Sometimes I sit around with my hearts and even they look skeptical, as if challenging my ability to love any part of myself that I've attached a negative feeling to. Or I'll just get stuck in how completely ridiculous I feel; being 25 and too intelligent to be so immobilized with a 15-year-old's insecurities, picturing a 5-year-old's drawings of hearts on my body so that I can get through the day without counting every calorie I ingest. Shouldn't I be over this shit by now, I think, when am I going to grow up? (As if "adulthood" is supposed to be free of self-esteem issues and "intelligence" should outwit the desire to be anything other than what we are.)

That's part of the quest for inner peace and balance, I suppose. Self-love is a tall order. I come up with ways to counter negative or limiting habits and, for the most part, they work and I enjoy doing them, but sometimes I just get tired of all the effort it takes to feel good about myself. I used to think, whenever I got sick of working so hard, that I was losing it, until someone offered that I tell myself instead that I am finding it. Even when I can't stand any of it and want to give up and eat a tub of ice-cream and hate myself afterwards because, frankly, it's just easier than picturing cartoon hearts on my ass, I am still on the road, paving my way towards a healthy self-image. The tumbles backwards are still part of moving forward, even though they feel like the exact opposite. Sometimes I have to ungrow to grow. I have to get a little stuck so I can recognize when movement occurs.

I can't force growth, I can only allow it. I can't force my little hearts into being, but they're there for me, when I make space for them.

How lovely.

image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drawn_love_hearts.svg