the right to bare arms

This blog title came to me through twitter when someone was talking about the US constitution.  Their spelling mistake about the right to “bare arms” made me snicker at first…but then, it made me think about the tremendous freedom I find in my own right to bare arms. i mean to expose them–show your skin to the world. not feel ashamed. celebrate them even. this blog does relate to running – just bear with me. I have to put a few things in context.

muted

self-confidence and esteem comes naturally to so many people. it’s always been a wonderous thing to me. i grew up with an extended family and my grandparents lived with us for a time. they weren’t very nice people and had very fixed and limited views about how little girls and young women should be. i wasn’t allowed to socialize after school – just to go there and i had better do well. i had to help my mother do the housework after her long day at the factory and sometimes i had to help her clean up after my grandfather threw a plate of food at her for being too cold. i had to read the mood of the house as i walked in and quickly learn to become invisible and hide so that the fight of the day wasn’t centred around me.

picked apart

as I grew up, it became harder to not want to be ‘normal’. in middle school, the rules tightened around me. my grandmother would scrutinize my body and pick it apart for its flaws. it was daily, it was constant and it went in so deep.

poisoned

here’s what I mean. She’d look at the shorts I’d worn all summer when I was 12 and then when I went to wear them when I was 13, she took them out and measured their inseam with her fingers and said they were too provocative. nothing above my knees was permitted now. All my shirts had to be baggy and have sleeves to my elbows. I couldn’t wear my hair down long now and had to put it back. Don’t even think about makeup. She’d then make insinuations about how girls provoke men. She was a mean, spiteful bitter woman and she poisoned everything those days.

slapped

my father, fed with the same paranoia, would drive by the school to ensure that I was there and not ‘loitering’. i cannot tell you how much i fucking hate that word. there was a constant sense of being distrusted and dirty for existing. harsh words, yelled abuse, slaps and hits w a shoe or some random object. 

shamed

my mind never conformed and i found small ways to rebel and to reclaim the little things so i could cope.little private victories. i knew it wouldn’t be forever – one way or the other, i’d get out…now it seems as though that world hardly existed. but it does. maybe not for me, but for any little girl that is shamed for her existence.

deformed

i don’t watch the news often for this reason. the poison continues to destroy little pieces of girls everywhere. it’s pervasive and though i’d like to think it’s not permanent – it’s gotten in pretty deep. it seeps out and then i stumble and sometimes even fall …sometimes it seems like my grandmother now lives inside my head.

fuck it all

running, wearing my cute little tanks, booty shorts, tights, and embracing the freedom to move with grace through my world is something that frees me. I am so grateful to have the right to bare arms.to bare legs, to bare any damn part of me i want - including my soul. it’s my rebellion and my strength. running is just one of the ways I keep that bitch dead. she'll never break my spirit. nor will anyone else.

no pain is forever. happy endings do happen.

NB --  the next blog post - the one i was going to do but then had to get this out of my system, will be about body image just to emphasize that the issues cut across culture and gender. it's all just as toxic.