The body never lies... or does it?
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on 3/31/2008
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Apparently this phrase is being bandied about in new books on relationships and in the blogs of several people I know.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but if they mean body language, I call bullshit.
I spent 38 years of my life desperately ill. My family knew I had medical issues. My spouse knew I had medical issues; yet none save my mother understood the extent of my illness. Why? I was a first class actress. That turned out to be rather detrimental. You see, I was so ill that every morning I woke up and thought, "today will probably be the day I drop dead in the hallway". I tried explaining to my spouse that we needed a plan so that I could quit working and although he agreed, he had no sense of urgency. So far as he could tell, I was doing ok.That was entirely my fault. I didn't know when to turn off the act. And yet, I had quit driving 3 years prior because I could no longer trust myself to operate a car. There were clues if one looked for them.
When I was a little girl, my father took me to work with him and introduced me to a man with whom he worked. He was a nice man. He asked me how I was doing. I told him I was sick and didn't feel good. He patiently explained to me that when people asked how you were, they were merely being polite and didn't truly want to hear how badly you felt. That was one of two events that shaped my character.
The other event occurred a few years later. I was 8 years old and having blood taken for the gazillionth time. I sat in a chair in the lab as a lab tech drew my blood. This was old hat to me and therefore not a big deal. Just something I had to do. Another child entered and sat down and another lab tech began to take her blood. As I watched, she began to cry in great big sobs. The tech sitting with her pointed to me, "look at the big girl," he said, "you see, big girls don't cry." I stopped crying that day and to this day it's rare for me to cry.
I've had 12 major surgeries and I'm a breast cancer survivor. I never lost a single day of work through 3 sessions of chemotherapy. Although I was deathly ill, I worked 60+ hours a week. I'm not bragging. I just had such a sense of not giving in, of not making other people uncomfortable, of "putting on the face" that I just sucked it up and got on with things. That's not all bad. I still believe that going around looking as awful as I felt would not have made me feel better, nor would it have made anyone else feel better.
Eventually, I knew that if I didn't quit working and take care of myself, I was going to die. It was as simple as that. Quit or die. Quit or die. In order to live, I had to allow people to see the full extent of my illness. That was not easy for me and I didn't want to shock anyone. I had to slowly begin letting down my defenses. My spouse eventually got it and made the leap to a better job paying enough money that I could quit and get healthy. To this day, all but a few trusted coworkers, ever knew I was ill.
Five years later, I'm at my healthiest. I'm slimmer. I exercise. Sure, I could do better and I could stand to lose another 20-30lbs, but all in all I'm in a much better place. I've lost 110lbs and the other 20-30 will come.
The body absolutely can lie, even to itself.
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