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Shirtless, Smiling, Giving Thumbs​-​up in a River

from My Big Break - volume 1 by Ben Seretan

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On Sunday evening I had the wind ripped right out of my sails upon seeing a picture that features me shirtless, smiling, giving thumbs up in a river. I cannot help but notice - objectively, I feel - that my body looks weird. And not in a way that I am particularly proud of or fond of in this moment. I see paleness, I see fat, but in an almost impossible contradiction I also see the extreme lack of fat, I see loose skin, I see a deflated quality that, instead of making me look slim or making me look like I run as much as I do, actually makes me look like I'm sick. I see someone with whom there is ​something wrong. The phrase "wasting away" comes to mind. I see how thoroughly I stick out from the group - I am the only one whose body looks this way. And what's perhaps most challenging about this is that I look supremely happy, I am giving two huge thumbs up and beaming, in fact right before this photo was taken I told the whole group to give big thumbs up and my friends are doing it, we all look goofy and blissful, it's a wonderful photo taken by some passing strangers on the opposite bank. And there I am in the foreground, caught absolutely unawares, happy, waist deep in the bend, contentedly grinning - am I that oblivious? How can a person with whom there is clearly something wrong be so unbothered by having their clothes off, by having their photo taken in this state? Is this really what I look like?

It is so surreal to feel this way all of a sudden. Not that it's entirely unfamiliar - an extreme and viscerally negative reaction to my appearance is something I've lived with for most of my life - but in the process of losing a bunch of weight in the last year or so I have all but shed that outer layer of anxiety with the pounds that have slaked off. I am, if I'm being real, obsessed with how I look now, how I've gone down multiple sizes of pants, how my cheekbones and adam's apple are more clearly visible, how you can actually feel my hipbones. I have made multiple friends feel my hipbones, nobody likes this but me. When I see myself in the mirror I am, more often than not, pleasantly surprised. If I go too long without checking in on how I look I start to feel the old estimations of myself seeping in, my self-image slowly balloons up over the hours, gathering loathing like dust. So when I do catch my reflection I feel something like, "hey, not bad." I am often shrugging at myself in mirrors. In what felt like a huge leap forward I recently saw myself naked in a mirror with someone else and I actively ​liked what I saw. I was into it. I have briefly considered sending nudes. This all would have been unimaginable one year ago, as impossible as the sun not rising in the east tomorrow morning.

But now all of a sudden I've gained an entirely new set of what feels like unsurmountable concerns about my body. The looseness has gotten to me, it can't be unseen or unfelt, it disturbs me, and this week I've caught myself feeling different parts of my torso to see how my skin holds its shape. I have never done this before, it's a new compulsion. I am now dressing with this looseness of skin in mind, which honestly doesn't make any sense and I don't know how this translates to a selection of clothing, but I thought about it anyway while I was getting ready this morning. It feels completely awful, I'm stuck - if I continue losing weight (which I desperately want to do) I assume my skin will get looser and looser. I don't quite understand yet why it makes me feel so godawful, but I think it has something to do with this: the loose skin is the weird, fleshy ghost of my being fatter, and it shows that I once was one a different person, a person who was weaker, a pushover, more prone to indulgent and gross behavior, in need of the sensual comfort of eating and scared of the joys and terrors of physical exertion. It shows that I was once very depressed. It shows that I have done irreparable damage to my body by being as fat as I was for as long as I was, my whole life until now, basically, and it shows that despite all the work I've put in over the last 18 months or so I will still probably die young, my heart will just give out and my friends and family won't be surprised.

I know it's not at all logical, or sound, or kind, or body positive (to be clear, I feel this way about my fat and my loose skin only, other larger people I meet or see on the street get my unequivocal support and when they appear to be feeling themselves I am almost moved to tears). It stems from a very deep dark place that I am not sure how to excavate. I've only just acknowledged it. The fact is that I feel that I deserve the body I have, both now and when I had 60+ pounds more on me, and I really think that somewhere I feel that I have been given this corporeal vessel as a curse, because I am bad, I behave badly, and I am not beautiful or good, inside or out. And I think it's far easier to hate something physical about your body than it is to reckon with your shortcomings as a human being, to see the shriveled darkness of your heart. In fact it is safer, in some ways, to have a body that is a convenient scapegoat - I often assure myself that my failures are at least partially to blame on my physical body when the truth is that, no, maybe I'm just mediocre overall and, what's more, my physical appearance has aided any triumphs I've had over the years, and yet I never give my body credit for those. It's not logical. And no matter how I look or how much weight I lose or how much running I do I will go on feeling this way, finding new things to feel terrible about, localizing dread about my worth, until I deal with that. But it feels like I'm at the bottom of a well. And I suspect many other people feel the same way (but these are hard convos to have, are they not?).

I've had a good amount of success since summer 2017 with deriving my self-esteem from my actions in the world. If I did my writing here, if I sent out the music, if I ran the right number of miles each week, if I lost enough weight, I was Good, I was at ease, I felt like I had value. I took comfort in the fact that these were measurable, quantifiable actions. And conveniently, I haven't failed to meet my high expectations of myself all that often. When I think about my life more zoomed out I see that this fuels a lot of what I do - putting out music and making whatever else are actions that I can derive value from. But there are dire outcomes from taking your self-worth from your actions, just as there are dire outcomes to taking your self-worth from other people's estimations of you: what do you do when you fail to act in a way you're proud of? What do you do when the people you've relied on for your self-worth are unavailable or, what's worse, turned against you? How do you let yourself off the hook, cozy in the idea that you are of value, no matter what? How do you extend this consideration to other people?

I recognize fully, too, that most people would see the picture that set this all off or what it is: a group of friends caught in an openhearted swimming hole moment with a medically overweight but nevertheless charming man up front, beaming, who looks happy and unencumbered by volatile loathing. A nice afternoon.

(I am doing okay, by the way, it is helpful for me to puzzle through this stuff in a semi-public forum. I think addressing it all where there is some accountability / feedback is important work for me. I would be very open to discussing this with you further if you have thoughts. I also got a haircut and trimmed my beard which has helped me stabilize a lot of these feelings, a good haircut is magical.)

Also: I can’t bring myself to finish the self-help book my therapist recommended to me in the winter. I’ve renewed it three times already. I can’t help but read something into this, an unwillingness.

Self-actualization: I would like to do something like this for a larger portion of my life - a big creative project, working on stuff, writing, making music, whatever. I want more. I am going to have more in my life going forward. I am going to be somewhere else in a recognizable way in one year’s time. I will be toward something.

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from My Big Break - volume 1, released July 16, 2020

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Ben Seretan Climax, New York

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