How to Love the Body You Have (Not the One You Want)

I am really great at is being a female-to-male transsexual. Having lived as a man for the last fourteen years, this ever changing body of mine has forced me to assess and reassess where I am at in my body, who I am in my body and why I care.

Unfortunately, becoming a fantastic transsexual doesn’t earn me much money. I’ve received some recognition in the college campus/blogosphere/very-important-tranniesphere schema, but Oprah won’t be calling me to discuss why gender works or doesn’t work.

But I think the rewards that stem from becoming very good at understanding gender in both the micro and macro spheres as given me a greater spiritual understanding of what it means to be human.

This wild adventure I’ve been on my entire life is really a spiritual one. These constructions and words and social practices we create around gender are both me and not me. That much I know.

The greatest challenge of being a consciously gendered person: accepting and loving the body I have, right now.

Like me, maybe you have lost countless hours imaging how fantastic your life would be if you just had bigger hips/smaller hips/a deeper voice/a higher voice/gained 15 pounds/lost 50 pounds/hips that didn’t look like girl hips/hips that didn’t look like boy hips?

How much suffering have I generated for myself desiring a body that I probably will never have?

What could  I have done will all that time?

I know we do – and have done myself – some wacky shit when we don’t accept our bodies: forego sex until our genitals are perfect (whatever that means)/starve ourselves/overeat/take too many hormones/take not enough hormones/bind ourselves up in various places.

None of these acts is inherently bad. But if I participate in certain actions because I hate my body, well, that is deeply troubling, if only because I’ve already planted the seed for strong reaction. That means that if I’m starving myself because I hate my body fat, then the reaction of overeating is already gaining strength with each ounce I lose.

The infinitely regressive desire for a  body we don’t have creates a suffering peculiar to those of us living in non-normative bodies.

Do you constantly find yourself looking at your reflection in every mirror and glass window with negative thoughts? I do. “Oh god, my hips look so bad!” “God, I will never look like a man…..”

Do you constantly fantasize about what your life will be like when X on your body changes? I do.

I suppose the way through is dwelling in what Alan Watts described as the “wisdom of insecurity.”

To love the body I have, I must dwell in and love the flab and jiggles and chest surgery that isn’t just so and the penis I don’t have.

To love the body I have, I must say thank you for the legs that get me where I need to go, the spine that supports me, the stomach and liver and kidneys that try to rid my body of all the crap I put into it, the hands that gesture, assist and love.

To love the body I have, I must remember to breath and exhale. (Don’t hold my breath!)

I can hate my body and die and wonder where all the time went or I can love my body and feel the energy of life move through me and die with some modicum of peace.

Practice doesn’t make perfect.

Practice makes peace.

Loving the body I have is the most revolutionary act I can perform in our body hating culture. What’s really cool is that it is free, available to me in a moment and infectious.

When I’m around people who are supremely comfortable in their bodies, their acceptance rubs off.

What’s even more cool is that I can become that person any time I want.

We all want to revolutionize our genders, right?

Let’s start by being kind to and loving the body we  have. Right now.

The How to Love the Body You Have (Not the One You Want) by Jay Sennett, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.