This is a Waltz Thinking about our Bodies.
Our bodies are mysteries, and we’re not treating them well. According to some scholars out there we’re just meat robots wandering around aimlessly in this world just by chance, and to others we are created by a higher being for a specific reason. I’m not sure where I stand. Well, one thing is for sure: I don’t believe in a higher being other than myself — but that alone can be considered a spiritual path, as you all know, so I leave that question unanswered for now. But whatever path you’re following, all of them wants us to take care of these strange vessels of muscles, bones and blood.
What I do now is that the body is the weirdest, oddest thing I’ve ever encountered. To be honest, my own consciousness is way easier to understand, with all its roads and gateways to insights, memories, plans, emotions and other shenanigans.
I get that, it’s understandable.
But the body, what the hell is this? In 2016 I had a personal revelation, which began with my mind and continued to the body. A diabetes diagnosis that came a bit later was one of the most important keys, a tool to unlock a huge part of myself — and I mean huge. At the most I weighed 135 kilos, but after understanding that I had to quit candy and soda and my beloved unhealthy living, I managed to slowly (and I mean slowly) get down to 87 kilos. The first year I took it slow, but during 2019 the kilos dropped like the napalm in Apocalypse Now. Effectively erasing the old me, a scorched earth adaption of the person I had been since my late teens.
It wasn’t my plan to lose so much weight during such a short span of time, but when I came home from a two months project in Africa I saw that none of my clothes didn’t fit anymore — they were like tents — and when the beard went off a different face met me; a stranger of some sorts.
I felt like a butterfly, in lack of a better metaphor. Someone else was looking back at me from the mirror, someone I had dreamed about for the last thirty years or so. Isn’t that great?
All is well and done.
Hip hip hurray.
Super body deluxe.
Sexy mothereffer.
No, not really. Instead I went into — and still is in — some kind of minor identity crisis. I’m used to be a big guy, a big guy with beard and with a round, smiley face. That’s how everyone around me had perceived me for many years now, and suddenly that person wasn’t there anymore. I laughed at what I saw in the reflection, and friends was shocked when I met them for the first time after coming back to Sweden. One man in my circle of acquaintances started to cry and thought I was suffering from cancer. My doctor told me to not lose more weight, and instead gain back some if it instead. This was confusing, as I didn’t know how to relate to both myself and my surroundings.
Had I lost what was me, or had all that fat revealed who I really was? Did the layer of flesh work as a protective shield and what would happen now when it was gone? Did my personality lay in those kilos and not in my mind? We’re all labels and names and so on, all the things that build what we perceive us to be to the world — was my body part of that illusion? Bones started sticking out, bones I’d never noticed before. I discovered a broken — but healed — rib, from a car accident in 1988.
Around my neck I’m bonier and veins are popping out on my hands and arms. Along the way I got wrinkly and leftover fat started to hang from my belly, which at least made one of the cats happy — a totally new, soft surface to walk on. It’s my pleasure, Buster.
My legs and feet aren’t as heavy as before, it feels I’m walking on clouds — and to be honest; it’s a bit annoying. In the middle of my chest there’s a pointy bone, where the ribs connect. I can’t stop touching it, to the degree it’s almost become a tick.
It felt like I was in a David Cronenberg film, mutating into a new lifeform. A metamorphosis, a transformation. Long live the new flesh!
But to what?
I’ve been dancing this body waltz for a long time, constantly either avoiding people because of how I look — and attracting others for the same reason. What I started to doubt was if my mind was part of this dance, or if it was just an empty, superficial shell waltzing around like gloomy, yet smiling, spirit in a haunted house?
When I first met my mother after the weight loss I noticed how similar I was to her, with my facial features and body language becoming more visible. We have the same chin and intensive eyes. That made me happy. A while later I cut my hair and started to let my beard grow back a bit and what appeared to me was my father, a younger version of him.
Like all other families my own have always been a bit complex, and I’ve never been an overly social animal — but this made me see where I came from, when the shell fell off. Not just the looks, but my personality — or personalities. I’m the result of two other beings, who are themselves results of others. I’m not saying I am my mother and my father, but without a doubt I’m part of them.
A human fractal, imitating and exploring — and evolving.
None of us are the same persons we once were, with our bodies constantly rebuilding themselves — and our minds finding new ways to go, in all directions. Our existence is a waltz thinking about our bodies, to paraphrase Thom Yorke’s stunning work Suspirium, composed for Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria, a film that deals with both inner and outer transformation.
If we handle that waltz well, not stepping on too many toes and following the melody of our own choice, we might get somewhere. This journey will always continue, in one way or another, and our bodies tells us more than what we think. Comfort eating is a way to deal with our awareness, and the fat can be — or not — a manifestation of how we feel inside. That’s how it worked in my life. As my mind is getting more peaceful my body follows, and I’m grateful for the insights that brought me here.
I don’t know about you, but I’m going to continue this dance and see where it leads me. It will be exciting, I’m sure of that.
Let’s take it from the top, 1 2 3 …
Fred Andersson is the author of Homo Satanis: How I Learned to Love Satan and other Insights from my Childhood, available on all Amazon sites. Join him on Facebook, Twitter and Patreon.
