When the Need to be in Water is Threatened by Body Issues

I put my bathing suit on anyway.

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

I love being in water.

Fully submerged, swimming in it, frolicking like a young child. Especially cold water; the kind of cold that immediately heightens all the senses, elevates the heart rate, causing an undeniable awareness of being alive.

I have been known to yell those exact words, “I’m alive!” Frankenstein-like as I walk from the waves after a long swim in the ocean. This is sometimes greeted with everything from utter amazement to sheer bafflement to near horror as some of my friends watch in disbelief. “How can you do that?!”

I’m invigorated. Energized. Alive!

I’m not picky. Cold water is my favorite, but I’m open to tepid water if the air is cooler. I even enjoy a hot tub with its 104-degree temps from time to time. If I can be in water, all is right in my world for those moments. My outlook on life improves; my senses awaken; my soul healed.

It isn’t just that the water itself is marvelous.

There are wonders to be found in water.

I remember one particularly therapeutic swim off the coast of Santa Barbara just a few miles from the small college I attended. On that day, I took a few deep breaths before plunging into the frigid water and swimming to the buoys that line the coast.

After reaching one buoy, I turned around to swim back and noticed a large, sleek object just feet from where I tread; a dolphin was swimming between me and my destination. I froze, awe-struck and afraid, so close to something so wild.

If there is a pool, river, lake, or ocean nearby and I have a bathing suit, I am pulled to that water like a magnetic power.

But sometimes, there is a greater force that keeps me from accessing what I know is undeniably life-giving.

Despite the deep goodness I experience being in water, I am not always able to get into the water with ease, even if it is nearby. This is, in large part, because being in water usually involves putting my body in a bathing suit. And I’ve been at war with this body for a very long time.

Body issues started early.

My earliest memories of hating this body start midway through elementary school, age 9. As I sat in a bath one night critically evaluating my thighs, I stretched the skin around my upper legs, attempting to fold it under me. I wanted to make them look thinner, imagining what it might be like to just cut off the “extra” parts.

A few years later I was at a sleepover with friends, seventh grade, and we were giving each other nicknames. At least, I believe everyone was getting nicknames, but I can only remember mine. Where the general details are fuzzy, my nickname is not. Thunder Thighs. Then we all toasted. All I can hear is a loud cheer, “To Thunder Thighs.” My voice included.

That was 35 years ago.

I look back at pictures of myself at these ages. Big smiles and bad haircuts. Awkward clothes and gaps where teeth didn’t grow in. But in all of these images, I see a body that was fairly unremarkable in its size. Average for whatever average is. But the lies were creeping in.

In my teen years and early adult life, I began to shift my weight up and down, enjoying the comfort and full-stomach sensations that came from eating before deciding to lose weight when the enjoying got away from me; gaining and losing the same 20 pounds a number times over the next twenty years.

Reviewing old photos of myself creates a palpable tension because in looking back, I often like what I see. A bright young 20-something. A smiling 30-year-old woman. A laughing mother in her 40s.

But I also know that in the moments those pictures were taken, I was generally consumed with self-loathing, utterly distracted by oppressive opinions about how I looked, or how fat I perceived myself to be.

The tension is also laced with shame at not being grateful enough for the healthy body in the pictures. These ideas persist today.

Now, when I’m getting my picture taken, knowing that I continue to detest this body, I often wonder if I will look back at this moment and think, “Oh, my shape was just fine, my skin clear, my eyes bright. Oh, I wasn’t so loathsome.”

Perhaps I’ll look back at the photos of today, much like I do of the ones from the past, and remember the setting, the people, the experience, and not how my pants fit or how my chin looked.

I often wonder what my 75-year-old self would tell 48-year-old me in these pictures. It is baffling to see this whole toxic system so clearly, but feel unable to bypass it in order to embrace this body right now.

There’s been enough destructive energy heaped onto these thighs, how does one get free? I am still working on this.

Is it just me?

Sometimes I ask myself, “Am I just extra susceptible to the cultural messages that constantly swirl around me, the images and ideas that I should look a certain way? Be a certain size?” Sometimes I sit with friends and as the conversation continues around me, I wonder if I’m alone in wanting to throw in the towel, get off the hamster wheel, stop talking about weight and just live.

I’m exhausted from the constant barrage, the never-silent loudspeaker, that yells, “You are not okay. You cannot be okay in that body!” You must “fix, shape, smooth, shrink.”

This constant barrage requires constant vigilance.

Some days I have the energy to keep this tidal wave offshore. And other days I don’t.

In all of this, I know there is one lifeline that will serve as a balm for these wounds, a calm when I’m caught in all this tumult. But the crazy thing is, it requires me to put on a bathing suit.

Regardless of how badly I feel in my skin. No matter how demeaning I am to my body, this body still needs to be in water.

In her book, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, author Anne Lamott writes about heading to the beach during a vacation in Mexico:

“I was not wearing a cover-up, not even a T-shirt. I had decided I was going to take my thighs and butt with me proudly wherever I went. I decided, in fact, on the way to the beach that I would treat them as if they were beloved elderly aunties, the kind who did embarrassing things at the beach, like roll their stockings into tubes around their ankles, but who I was proud of because they were so great in every real and important way. So we walked along, the three of us, the aunties and I, to meet Sam and our friends in the sand. I imagined that I could feel the aunties beaming, as if they had been held captive in a dark closet too long, like Patty Hearst. Freed finally to stroll on a sandy Mexican beach: what a beautiful story. It did not trouble me that parts of my body — the auntie parts — kept moving even after I had come to a full halt. Who cares? People just need to be soft and clean.”

Wisdom from a wise woman, Mama Anne.

On first reading this I realized her thighs were not named Thunder. They were welcomed as cherished members of the family. I cling to this magnanimous view of one’s body as I try to be grateful for the legs that can walk me into the water.

I couldn’t always get to the water.

There were years when I didn’t let myself swim, the walk into the water from my chair or towel too mortifying, too vulnerable to overcome. I was cemented to the ground, unable to get to what I knew was goodness in a pure form.

Sometimes, I would sit demurring when a friend beckoned me to the waves. “No thanks. I don’t want to swim.”

For me to say no thank you to swimming is like saying, “No thank you. I don’t want to breathe air.” It doesn’t make sense. But I let the weight (pun intended) weigh me down on the sand or pool chair.

Sure, there were times when the voices of self-loathing didn’t always win. They don’t always win now. It just requires a seemingly super-human power to turn away from all the messages that declare this body unfit for the public.

I pull Anne Lamott’s words out like an energy drink, to give me the strength to walk these thighs in all their bare glory across the sand or past the pool chairs.

As I’ve gotten older, life has gotten harder, more complicated, in many ways, with all that adulting requires. And the all-encompassing necessity of swimming has become even clearer. It is an unfailing reprieve. I am certain that if I can get in water, I can experience some relief.

Sometimes, though, trying to get to the water is like a snail crawl through quicksand. I give power to the voices that remind me I’m not “beach body ready,” which is regularly reinforced because I live in a Southern California beach city.

When I succumb to that messaging, I am denied access to one sure thing that will restore my soul. Some seasons I’m more successful than others.

Last year, I started meeting with a small group of women who get together to advise, encourage and celebrate one another. I started meeting with the group at a particularly low point in my spirit, where I was acutely aware that there were good things available, life-giving tools, but I couldn’t reach them. I was paralyzed by the oppressive inner voices.

I was believing everything the voices were saying. I was not getting in water very often.

Sometimes it takes outside forces to remind me of the good.

During one Friday gathering, we each declared our goals for the coming month. I said, “I will go to the ocean regularly each week and put my feet in the water.” One of my friends immediately responded, “I think you should put your whole body in that water every week. A couple of times a week, in fact.”

She had heard me talk about how therapeutic water is for me and was trying to help me bypass the destructive internal lies that were keeping me from a really good thing.

So, I modified my goal.

I committed to putting this body in a bathing suit every few days and getting in the ocean.

This was particularly noteworthy because I am on the other side of menopause and my journey through a hysterectomy and beyond has left me with some additional padding. Padding I have really wanted to hide.

But I put my bathing suit on anyway.

These days I get in water pretty regularly.

You might see me. I am the middle-aged woman swimming and frolicking out in the waves like a young child at the beach for the first time. It is pure and uncontaminated joy in its purest form.

The voices in my head have been loudly condemning the body I’m in for so long, but I continue to slowly dismantle their power.

With practice and intention, I can sometimes overcome the messages and get to the water. Sometimes I need close friends in my corner, friends who know me and can direct me with louder voices than the ones in my head. My friends shout, “Get to the Water! And get in!”

So, despite the ongoing work I still need to do here, I put my bathing suit on anyway.