My Body is Wrong
Every race starts the same. The gun goes off and I’m terrified. I’m a cannonball let loose. My legs move on their own. Elbows tucked, knees pointed straight, I’m the embodiment of efficiency. Every motion is critical and confident. I must make it to the front of the pack. I will make it to the front of the pack. I could bulldoze a house with my thighs. I could run straight into the sun.
•
I stopped running in the same way I began: all at once and without much thought. It was August of 2009 and I was done with it. I didn’t deliberate. I deferred to my body for once. I didn’t tell anyone. No coaches, no teammates. I just never went back to practice. I was tired.
I had just returned home to New York from Oxford, where I lived for the first half of the summer, which changed me in a way you can only be changed at seventeen. I studied art on its own the first time. No AP classes. No learning for grades. I learned without effort. I got to be a kid. No five-hour practices. No cross-training. No waking up at 5am. No squeezing in homework.
I went to Stonehenge and admired its permanence and staticity and confused existence. I went to Brighton Beach and threw sand pebbles into the ocean one by one and the tide regurgitated them to me one by one by one. And the pointlessness of cyclicality didn’t matter, cellphone-less beside the wharf with all my friends.
But every so often, I would remember that I was falling behind. Back in New York, my teammates were training all summer ahead of our cross-country season. Five times a week, they would wake up before the sun to meet our coach at the high school. No other sports teams practiced. In the lonely world of pre-professional athleticism, it was just them and the hot sun and the empty school.
Our other classmates never came to our races, but we were on the best team in the school. We qualified for State. We ran in the Federation Championship. Our team captain went to Nationals every year. We trained with Olympic seriousness.
And suddenly it all felt so silly, so self-serious. We were seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen. We were only kids. But we weren’t really. We were something in between. Not a girl, not yet a woman just like Britney Spears. Like popcorn, every few weeks someone in our region would pop up out of nowhere, suddenly fast, suddenly winning, suddenly nationally ranked, suddenly a woman. And we all secretly hoped that that potential was also marinating in us, waiting for some arbitrary moment to reveal itself.
•
I go to the doctor because my body is wrong. I haven’t had my period in five months. My pediatrician wants to put me on birth control. I am confused by the proposition. I don’t understand why I should use a pill that prevents pregnancy to get my period. She doesn’t mention the possible side effects, the headaches, the mood changes. I decide to let my body sort itself out. No one suggests that I should stop running so much.
When I return the next year with blood in my urine, we find my first rare disease whose vascular implications mean that birth control could kill me. I take in the moment for posterity. I arrange a small vow to my body: I will always trust you over anyone else.
•
I focus on a point far in the distance even with my line of vision. Never looking up, never looking down, it keeps me moving fast. No objects matter except the sixty girls running beside me, made of mostly limbs, knees and elbows. I want to murder everyone in my way. I threaten to destroy everything they’ve ever loved. And in the moment, that feels normal.
•
To say something like The world is designed by and for men doesn’t mean much of anything. It is too abstract to generate feeling. I first notice trickle down patriarchy when my life depends on it. To spend ten years and $30,000 searching for a diagnosis for vague but widespread pain should be a sign of some failure, but there is no one big enough to blame except my government, which lacks a face to wag my finger at. There are little failures everywhere and they all attach in some great invisible web. I pay attention to the way each failure relates to others as my only line of defense. An egoic doctor ignoring my pain is my incompetent supervisor. A lack of funding from the NIH for research for illnesses that predominantly affect women is my dismissive coach when I miss my period for months. They all band together to tell me about my body or ignore it altogether.
•
I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. The nurse takes my height and weight, blood pressure and pulse. The nurse plugs my numbers into an electronic file that represents my body. An algorithm calculates my body mass index. My body is a point far outside the bell curve, lost at sea. The doctor tells me you are too thin. The doctor thinks he’s throwing me a life raft. He is my first adult doctor. I think about my pediatrician. I miss her waiting room with big illustrations of polar bears. I miss being asked questions. I’m not sure what to say. I am a small little girl. He is a big man in loafers. He is wrong, but I say nothing. I defer through silence. He does not mention that my blood pressure is low.
•
After the first four hundred meters, I’m settled into my position. I am in the woods. Only my heavy breath and light stride punctuate the quiet. I can’t see anything but the trail. The leaves precariously hanging onto branches don’t register. All I see is the stretch of distance and the bumps of the trail, every tree root and pebble accounted for and avoided.
•
Sara was a popcorn girl. More than just my team’s captain, she was unbeatable in my region. She won every race by minutes, lived a few meters ahead of everyone else, ran every race against herself. She was nationally ranked. She was going to the Olympics one day. She had entered a new stratum of runners, and like all pre-professional female athletes, she was destined for one of two things: she would become a professional runner, or her body would fail by her early twenties.
We trained around Sara’s needs. We overtrained. Often our all male coaching staff trained us with the boys, made us fit to meet the boys’ schedule, fit into the timeframe of boys’ biological development. Like clockwork, I would become too injured to run by the end of each season. I limped around my high school between classes clutching different parts of my body: in November my knee, in March my lower back, in May my hips, in June my dizzy head.
•
I go to the doctor because my head is wrong. To prevent my migraines, they give me medications made for other illnesses: SSRIs meant for depression, beta blockers meant for blood pressure, Botox meant for wrinkles originally meant for crossed eyes, anticonvulsants meant to prevent seizures. Because they’re not meant for head pain, they do more than prevent migraines. They have unendurable side effects: I hear voices, my hair falls out.
Migraines have been around since ancient Egypt, recorded by Hippocrates in 400 B.C. The first migraine medicine created specifically for migraine prevention started trials in 2017 A.D. If migraines didn’t disproportionately affect women, it wouldn’t have taken 2,000 years to develop a treatment. I eagerly wait a year for my medicine to enter the market like it’s a husband returning home for dinner.
When I begin my new migraine medicine, it controls my menstrual cycle. On the side of my prescription, it reads: side effects may include constipation or soreness at the injection site. There’s no mention of hormone interference. Because medical research routinely excludes women, we don’t know how illness is particular to us, how medicine particularly affects us. The cyclicality of our hormones is ignored for the staticity of maleness. I report my side effect to the FDA with hundreds of other women, but the label stays the same.
•
I get to the hill and want to stop. But my legs are moving on their own and they don’t stop. They could go on forever. I am alone with my legs in the woods. No cheering. I cheer for myself, go go go. I raise my arms up a little and pump them back farther and farther with each stride. They are Newton’s cradle. I don’t slow down.
•
Between The Real World episodes on MTV, I watch a Dove commercial on Real Beauty. They tell me to create a new standard of beauty. They tell me to have confidence through bar soap. By high school, Olay commands me: love the skin you’re in.
In the early days of Facebook, memes circulate slowly. Overlaid on a picture of a full-figured Marilyn Monroe reads this is what a real woman looks like. Boys in my class share the image over and over. Models are ridiculed for being rail thin. Eat a cheeseburger!someone comments. This is not what a real woman looks like. I am not a real woman.
I grow up thinking body image campaigns aren’t for people like me. Are all in service to the male gaze. Are only there to give women confidence. And then I got sick.
•
I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. I sit unclothed on a table in the middle of a big room. A boy my age looks into my ears and asks me questions. He makes awkward comments about ear wax. The words come out of his mouth in flutters as he avoids looking at my breasts. I want to pat his head and offer him a cigarette. I am a professional. His hand shakes as he presses his stethoscope to my bare back and I imagine him in ten years, post med school, post residency, post awkward patient interactions, post caring, post humility.
The real doctor enters the room and asks if I have an eating disorder. No introductions. No ice breakers. I miss the boy’s tentative hands and questions. I want to laugh at the doctor. I want to ask him if he thinks that question would work, if anyone with an eating disorder would just come out and say so when asked. But I answer no in that careful tone I’ve perfected, respectful and believable. I try to ask a question about my symptoms. What did you eat for breakfast this morning? The words fall out of his mouth all pointy. The fluorescent light hanging above me changes shape. The room is an interrogation and I am a criminal. Coconut yogurt and granola. Every question he asks is a little trick. What’s your favorite food? How many meals do you eat a day? I can hardly tell what he’s up to. I want to pat him on the head for being a good little detective, but I still need him to answer my medical questions. I check the clock on the wall and time is running out. My fifteen minutes are almost up. I was born like this, in this ratio. I speak in the language of algorithms. But none of that matters now. I live too far outside the curve and he wants is to pull me back in. I leave the appointment the same way I came in, feeling wrong wrong wrong.
•
You’re built like a runner. This is what everyone tells me when they meet me. They are free to talk about my body because I am thin and tall and that means I am good. When my mom asks me to show off my thin legs to her friends, I roll my pants up to my knees and walk around the room so they can laugh at the physics of my body. In the sixth grade, my classmate accuses me of having an eating disorder. During races, spectators can’t believe my legs can hold me up. They let me know that as I cross the finish line. You are too thin. My best friend on the team won’t talk to me every time I eat pizza because it’s not fair that I can eat pizza and be thin. I find out that she’s not kidding, that it really does make her mad.
•
When I am my most depressed and teenaged, I can’t eat for four months. I weigh only 97 pounds. My friends envy my thinness. They talk about my body because I am thin and that means I am good. After my boyfriend breaks up with me, I feel unattractive. When he sleeps with other women, I am quick to insult their weight because it’s the only ammunition I’ve got. I’m embarrassed by this but can’t seem to stop.
•
I make it to the top. I am stronger than anyone, stronger than Sylvester Stallone, stronger than Arnold Schwarzennager. I go back down the hill I just came up. I don’t think about pointlessness. I do not make this a metaphor. The world is literal and before me. The world wants my soft step. My hair is falling foliage. I plod my agile tree limbs into the dirt. I lower my branches and lean into it. The gravity of the world makes me move faster and faster. I let it happen. I remember where the earth curves to get my footing right, to avoid the tree root, to maximize speed without falling. I am going so fast.
•
I remember the smell of chlorine and the all-male coaching staff surrounding me and Sara and our five other varsity teammates in our high school’s pool during our lunch period as we cross-trained instead of eating. I remember running ten miles with the boys in single digit temperature in January and the feeling of hot incinerating my lungs as I walked back inside my high school’s gym to ride stationary bikes for an hour followed by an hour-long core workout. I remember feeling like my muscle was eating itself. I remember missing my period for four months. I remember the early symptoms of my disability that I ignored to keep running. I remember being injured more than anyone. I remember injury being normal, expected. And by the end of each season, when my body was too tired to move fast anymore, I remember watching the back of Sara’s head growing smaller and smaller ahead of me like she was getting sucked straight into the sun. I had never seen someone that could really go on forever.
Sometimes when I’m bedridden I pretend I can go on forever. I think of the weightlessness of my body running up four flights of stairs and the evenness of my breath. I think of feeling completely in control of every molecule inside of me. For a moment I feel light as a feather. I feel immortal, invincible. I am a cannonball again.
•
I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. I go to the doctor because my body feels wrong. I go to the doctor because I am wrong. I go to the doctor because I am wrong. I go to the doctor because I am wrong. I go to the doctor because I am wrong. I go to the doctor because I am wrong. I go to the doctor because I am wrong. I go to the doctor. I am wrong. I go to the doctor. I am wrong. I go to the doctor. I am wrong. I go to the doctor. I am wrong. I am wrong. I am wrong.
•
I leave the woods and can see people yelling in the distance. Their voices don’t register. Their cheering arms move in sync with the tree branches bending to the wind. I hear the ocean in my seashell ears. For the last 2200 meters, I’ve been telling myself only 800 meters left. But this time it’s real. I can see the next person in front of me. I threaten everything she’s ever loved. I must beat her. I catch up to her. For a small moment we are conjoined twins. Our arms move together, our legs move together, our heart beats as one. She speeds up and we are two again. I sprint ahead of her to prove something. She can’t catch up. I keep sprinting. I can’t stop. I am proving something to the wind. I use every bit of energy left in my pathetic, wheezing mitochondria.
•
In a Facebook support group for my genetic illness, a woman writes: I’m so mad. I went to see a new rheumatologist and my doctor just told me to lose fifteen pounds and all my symptoms would go away. He wouldn’t even run any tests. I click open the post’s 54 comments to see woman after woman after woman say same same same. We have joined ourselves together virtually out of desperation. We crowdsource the data of our bodies to make sense of ourselves. We talk to each other when our doctors don’t listen. We solve each other’s pain.
I remember the nephrologist’s office with plaque after plaque of New York’s Top Doctor Awards hung on a wall behind a doctor that prescribed going home and eating ice cream for blood in my urine. If you gain fifteen pounds, you won’t pee blood anymore. I said nothing. I was a little girl. He was a big man in loafers. I looked at my chart on the clipboard in his hands: the low BMI circled, the check mark next to dairy allergy ignored.
I am the 55th woman to comment on the post: same except I was told to gain fifteen pounds. It’s almost like we can never be the right size.
•
I go to the doctor, a rheumatologist, a woman. She asks me questions. She types into her computer all of my answers. She doesn’t ask about my weight. She bends me up and down. She squeezes my heels. She diagnoses me.
She leaves the room. I laugh uncontrollably. I don’t know why. I watch myself laugh at the cotton balls in a jar. At the white room. At my purple gown. I finally have a name. A defense. A retort.
She returns to the room and orders me scan after scan. She apologizes that it’s taken me ten years to learn why my body is. I leave the room and I feel light as a feather. I am a cannonball let loose. I have solved something important despite every little failure. I want to wag my finger at something that will see me.
•
I stop running in the same way I begin: all at once and without much thought. I cross the finish line. My limbs flail. I hardly have any bones. My heart and lungs think I’m still running. I rip off my number and hand it to another hand who hands me a medal. There are noises, all logically singular: the cheers from the crowds coming out of individual mouths, the feet barreling down behind me, the clanking of medals and rips of paper. If I hadn’t been running, I could trace them all to their source. But for me, right now, they blend together into nothing. I only hear the thump of my heart in my ears and the soft erratic whir of my breath. I don’t know how or why but I walk down the shoot. I keep walking and walking and walking. My legs could go on forever.
ξ
"My Body is Wrong" was first published in Gulf Coast.
Olivia Muenz is the author of the chapbook Where Was I Again (Essay Press). She holds an MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University, where she earned the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award in prose and served as an editor for New Delta Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, Salt Hill Journal, Anomaly, Southeast Journal, and elsewhere. She currently teaches at Louisiana State University. Find her online at oliviamuenz.com
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