SMASH THE SCALE
I smashed my scale about four months ago, sometime in September. Literally. I was in my apartment, staring down at the cold, impersonal metal surface, one foot hovering over the body-fat sensors, bringing to the surface the constant insidious chatter that made up a devastatingly considerable amount of my internal dialogue.
I didn't want to step onto the scale. I didn't want what it said to matter to me. I didn't want to give it that power--to give away MY power. I was so tired. Tired of tying my personal worth to the digits displayed on the interface. Digits that would determine, if only by a pound or two, what clothes I would wear, how I would feel looking in the mirror, whether I would "indulge" in a full meal for dinner or heat up some frozen vegetables and naw, unsatisfied, on a piece of fruit.
This exhaustion--mental, physical, and spiritual--weighed over 22 years old. I can remember quite distinctly the first time I ever consciously expressed dissatisfaction with my body to myself. I was at a gas station with my parents, filling up our Volvo station wagon. I was in a tank top and flip flops. I remember standing in the sun, looking down at my slightly protruding stomach and thinking:
It should be flat.
I wasn't more than six. Maybe younger.
Where did that come from? The media? Barbie dolls I played with? The Britney Spears poster in my bedroom? Something my mother said about her own body? I have no idea. The specific medium is largely irrelevant to me at this point. But somewhere, (see: everywhere) the message that we are not enough has been repeatedly (see: continuously) conveyed and digested. Across gender, race and social class. Across all walks of life. No facet of society has been spared from the overriding and prevalent theme of NOT ENOUGH. We operate within a framework that tells us that to be worthy of love, to be worthy of feeling safe in our own bodies (see: to be worthy of EXISTENCE), we must be or strive to be X, Y, and Z. And this benefits who?
Not us. Not me.
This message externally manifested itself for your young author, among other ways, with terrible body image and a dysfunctional relationship with food. It's not a private struggle. This shame assigned to our bodies is designed to keep us from connecting. To keep us hiding. To believe that we fight alone and against ourselves. But it is a battle and you--me, him, her, hir, us--we've been enlisted and indoctrinated from day one.
Whether or not you believe the human, industrial and governmental powers that be are systematically oppressing and repressing everyone that is not themselves (and actually unknowingly themselves as well) through media, legislature and rape/shame culture in general, it is a simple fact that the culture many of us live in encourages our focus on losing weight, having perfect skin and generally investing huge amounts of energy (and money) in how we appear to others. This leads but is not limited to; depression, extreme self-consciousness and self-doubt, anxiety, calorie counting, excessive exercise and full blown eating disorders. And this conveniently keeps us (see: kept me) from proactively meddling/challenging everything from the status quo to immigration policy, at least not with our full potential and strength in tact (see: exhaustion, see: compliance, see: obedience).
Women are the world's richest and naturally inexhaustible resource and instead of having our growth and development encouraged and celebrated, we are still largely and tragically, not just underutilized, but actively, and often violently, kept silent and dehumanized. And don't think that that number on the scale yanking your emotions and closing your throat with shame is superficial or silly. Don't dismiss its effect. Because associating your self-worth with that sterile, numerical measuring stick is just that. Dehumanizing. Defining yourself as a commodity let's your value be judged by others. A woman sexually confident and at home in her body, a woman without shame, is a fucking POWERFUL being. A woman not obsessively focused on when and what she can eat or what other people think of her is a woman who can make waves and move mountains.
It makes me sad to think of all the time spent and energy wasted on trying to make myself smaller, on an impossible and doomed mission to be what I thought was everyone else's version of enough. Skinny enough, smart enough, accomplished enough, pretty enough (see: eating less than 1500 calories a day, see: binging, see: waking up at 5 am to walk through a snow storm to my gym at boarding school to workout before breakfast, see: not eating for two days to make weight for a tournament). What else could I have been doing? What friends could I have made and gotten to know? What projects could I have pursued? What lives could I have made a difference in, what causes could I have joined?
It's not easy, getting to the point where you are ready to smash the scale. It's scary, letting go of the false safety of having something or someone else define you. It can be a very slow road. But the freedom, the feeling of coming home to your body and realizing your inherent right to respect, is nothing short of a miracle.
So, when I stepped on that scale for the last time, when I saw the innocuous disjointed lines that made up those numbers and caused my heart to squeeze, I calmly walked over to my tool bag, got out my hammer and went to work.
I have stories to write. I have places to explore. I have ideas to manifest and people to love, myself included. I have SMASHED THE SCALE.
Join the revolution: http://bit.ly/1dSoLmO
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Thursday, December 26, 2013
The "Where in the World is Zilla?" Tulum Addition
My last entry left off after my appearance on the podcast "It's New Orleans" with my car loaded up, the rest of my possessions in storage and the intention of creating space in my life in order to let events and personal development unfold organically. To learn to loosen my iron grip on the self-sabotaging concept of what I should be or should be doing. That was only two months ago but so much has happened since then that I find myself at a loss as to how to encapsulate that time in a few paragraphs or even several pages, especially since I want to focus specifically on where I am now. And so, I will simply mention factually some of the major happenings that have taken place.
I did indeed drive up North. I made it to Tennessee where I was staying with a friend before continuing to DC when I received a call for some stunt work in a movie filming in New Orleans the next week. I continued to DC where I booked a flight back to NOLA. I filmed for a few days, flew back to DC, got another call, flew back to NOLA and so on. It was a fantastic experience. I am now SAG certified. I eventually managed to spend time with family on the Northeast, staying with my aunt and uncle on their new beautiful property, took horseback riding lessons, saw museums, got a tick bite and a subsequent cycle of antibiotics, spent a week with my mom and a week with a very good friend in Virginia. And then finally, it was time to go to Mexico.
I am now based in Quintana Roo. Specifically, I live in Tulum. If you've heard anything about Tulum, it is probably in reference to its celebrity visitors, its pristine beaches and coral reef, and general status as an exclusive tropical paradise. And you would have heard correct. This place is awesome and I feel comfortable here. Comfortable in the same way as I do in Cambodia, and Southeast Asia in general. Comfortable in the same way as I do in New Orleans. What draws me into these specific areas, what vibrational frequency attracts me to these similarly humid, wild, swamp/jungle, off-beat and often partially off-grid hybrids of first and third world? Just that. The razor thin edge separating developing and developed, the intermingling of Western amenities and technology, with the preservation (hopefully) and immediacy of indigenous cultures and ways of life. It's the option of how to live; the option of living well but simply. You can stick out your tongue and taste the potential along with the moisture and heat; a chance to set things right with the world, or at least a part of it. Rebalance and harmonize industrial advances with the environment. Reshape the collective consciousness in a blending of ethics, cultural and environmental preservation, and technological advancement. Without the rigidity of cemented regulations and cultural preconditions, the power to effect change is permeable. There's the haunting and pressing urge not to let this precious piece of earth gather the momentum of going down an increasingly steep path to which other parts of society have succumbed, oblivious.
Much of the Yucatan is collectively owned by the Mayans. The land, and the beach front in particular, is largely off grid and cannot support extensive power usage. These are both good things, as it sets natural limits on potential development and exploitation. This area will never be able to support the crowded high rise hotels of Cancun or Miami. Thank God. Still relatively exclusive, there is already much that needs to be addressed; the bleaching and inevitable pollution of the reef, blatant corruption, increasing taxes and a backwards incentive system that gives rise to an underground economy that functions particularly ineffectively (yes, some underground economies function well enough, having been created in response to a system that doesn't...not optimally though, obviously), and--this is the part that interests/concerns me most--terrible waste water management.
The land in this area of the Yucatan--and certainly elsewhere though as of this moment I am not familiar enough to address other geographical regions outside of my immediate area--is particularly vulnerable to bad environmental practices. The top soil is very thin and there isn't much underneath it; any natural filtration system provided by that layer is nonexistent. Sewage, bleach, pharmaceutical refuse, are dumped and all sink straight into the aquifer, untreated. It's not just hotels and restaurants who are culpable but local residences without viable alternatives. Quintana Roo also has the largest underground river system in the world that remains an essential source fresh water and ecological support. While I hold to the fundamental economical, environmental and spiritual principle that everything is interconnected, this basic tenet has never been so obvious or immediate as it is in the ecological system dynamics that make the Yucatan so unique and beautiful.
I came down here with no real agenda other than to get better at Spanish and put my professional SCUBA diving license to good use. I was hooked up through a mutual friend to the two premier cave divers in the world who have been discovering and mapping the underground river system here for over a decade and who I now work with. I am leading eco park tours, learning Spanish and Mayan, and getting my cave diving certification. I am also watching, waiting and gathering as much information as possible. As it must be obvious to anyone who knows me or reads any material I write (mom!), I like to get my hands dirty and keep busy. And I see something on the horizon, right now, telling me to get ready because when I zip around town and back roads on my scooter, explore Cenotes, and visit with the small business owners trying to proactively impact and contain the development of Tulum, I stick out my tongue and I can taste the opportunity.
I did indeed drive up North. I made it to Tennessee where I was staying with a friend before continuing to DC when I received a call for some stunt work in a movie filming in New Orleans the next week. I continued to DC where I booked a flight back to NOLA. I filmed for a few days, flew back to DC, got another call, flew back to NOLA and so on. It was a fantastic experience. I am now SAG certified. I eventually managed to spend time with family on the Northeast, staying with my aunt and uncle on their new beautiful property, took horseback riding lessons, saw museums, got a tick bite and a subsequent cycle of antibiotics, spent a week with my mom and a week with a very good friend in Virginia. And then finally, it was time to go to Mexico.
I am now based in Quintana Roo. Specifically, I live in Tulum. If you've heard anything about Tulum, it is probably in reference to its celebrity visitors, its pristine beaches and coral reef, and general status as an exclusive tropical paradise. And you would have heard correct. This place is awesome and I feel comfortable here. Comfortable in the same way as I do in Cambodia, and Southeast Asia in general. Comfortable in the same way as I do in New Orleans. What draws me into these specific areas, what vibrational frequency attracts me to these similarly humid, wild, swamp/jungle, off-beat and often partially off-grid hybrids of first and third world? Just that. The razor thin edge separating developing and developed, the intermingling of Western amenities and technology, with the preservation (hopefully) and immediacy of indigenous cultures and ways of life. It's the option of how to live; the option of living well but simply. You can stick out your tongue and taste the potential along with the moisture and heat; a chance to set things right with the world, or at least a part of it. Rebalance and harmonize industrial advances with the environment. Reshape the collective consciousness in a blending of ethics, cultural and environmental preservation, and technological advancement. Without the rigidity of cemented regulations and cultural preconditions, the power to effect change is permeable. There's the haunting and pressing urge not to let this precious piece of earth gather the momentum of going down an increasingly steep path to which other parts of society have succumbed, oblivious.
Much of the Yucatan is collectively owned by the Mayans. The land, and the beach front in particular, is largely off grid and cannot support extensive power usage. These are both good things, as it sets natural limits on potential development and exploitation. This area will never be able to support the crowded high rise hotels of Cancun or Miami. Thank God. Still relatively exclusive, there is already much that needs to be addressed; the bleaching and inevitable pollution of the reef, blatant corruption, increasing taxes and a backwards incentive system that gives rise to an underground economy that functions particularly ineffectively (yes, some underground economies function well enough, having been created in response to a system that doesn't...not optimally though, obviously), and--this is the part that interests/concerns me most--terrible waste water management.
The land in this area of the Yucatan--and certainly elsewhere though as of this moment I am not familiar enough to address other geographical regions outside of my immediate area--is particularly vulnerable to bad environmental practices. The top soil is very thin and there isn't much underneath it; any natural filtration system provided by that layer is nonexistent. Sewage, bleach, pharmaceutical refuse, are dumped and all sink straight into the aquifer, untreated. It's not just hotels and restaurants who are culpable but local residences without viable alternatives. Quintana Roo also has the largest underground river system in the world that remains an essential source fresh water and ecological support. While I hold to the fundamental economical, environmental and spiritual principle that everything is interconnected, this basic tenet has never been so obvious or immediate as it is in the ecological system dynamics that make the Yucatan so unique and beautiful.
I came down here with no real agenda other than to get better at Spanish and put my professional SCUBA diving license to good use. I was hooked up through a mutual friend to the two premier cave divers in the world who have been discovering and mapping the underground river system here for over a decade and who I now work with. I am leading eco park tours, learning Spanish and Mayan, and getting my cave diving certification. I am also watching, waiting and gathering as much information as possible. As it must be obvious to anyone who knows me or reads any material I write (mom!), I like to get my hands dirty and keep busy. And I see something on the horizon, right now, telling me to get ready because when I zip around town and back roads on my scooter, explore Cenotes, and visit with the small business owners trying to proactively impact and contain the development of Tulum, I stick out my tongue and I can taste the opportunity.
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