Issue #238: What Is My Body Trying to Tell Me?

On injury, hormones, and learning to (finally) listen.

TW: I briefly touch on disordered eating and suicidal ideation in this post. I’ve also included a voiceover, in case you prefer to listen to me reading this piece. x

In the weeks after spraining my ankle, I developed a habit of calling it my “stupid ankle,” so often that the words ran together to become a compound. I could be traveling in my van, or skiing, or running, if not for my stupidankle. My stupidankle became a scapegoat not only for my limited mobility, but for all of the myriad frustrations and depressive thoughts that emerged during the three months it took to heal to the point that I could walk without pain. Over lunch, my friend gently admonished my new naming scheme. She’s a therapist, and has a way of looking at me before delivering something I need to hear. “Leslie,” she said, the look in full force, “Your ankle is not stupid. If anything it is wise. It is telling you to rest.” I laughed, even as I could see the truth in it.

For most of my life, I’ve treated my body as a machine, and its interruptions as inconveniences to push through. When I developed chronic stomach issues in college, I got my gallbladder removed, only to learn later that my symptoms were caused by stress. When I tore a tendon in my foot a month before the L.A. Marathon, I treated the pain with handfuls of Advil and beat my goal time by fifteen minutes—it wasn’t until years later that I learned about “cross-training” and “mobility.” I don’t think I’m alone in this. Like other Millennial women, I was raised in a culture where our relationships with our bodies were built on discipline and management. I hid tampons at the back of my locker, spent a week in middle school surviving on cantaloupes alone (ill-advised diet advice from a friend’s older sister), and spent hours scrutinizing every inch of my body and scanning the pages of Seventeen Magazine for solutions. Psychologist Hillary McBride uses the metaphor of standing outside the body rather than living inside it; evaluating and managing it from a distance, instead of truly listening to it.