Since elementary school, when I was never able to get my body to move the way that other kids could in P.E., at recess, or even just walking around without banging my head into a door, I’ve had a sense of living slightly outside of my body. I almost feel like I’m watching myself from an outside vantage point, and maybe that’s partly because of the trauma of being bullied so often that it was easier to not be inside of my body and feel pain. Being distant from pain also makes me distant from physical pleasure, and for most of my life, I’ve been willing to live with that trade off.
I’m aware that I have a body, mostly because of how often it reminds me in annoying ways, like making me eat food when I don’t particularly want to or not being able to sleep because of pain that won’t just go away when it would be convenient. I was always good at cerebral things, and when my attempt to do well on the swim team in high school failed, I told myself this was because I wasn’t made for physical activities, only for mental ones. So yes, I have a body, but it’s mostly a vehicle to carry around my brain.
Even though I am an endurance athlete, do marathons and ultramarathons, and Olympic distance and Ironman triathlons, I often feel slightly outside of my body while I do these things. In fact, the intense pain of these pursuits is part of the reason that I am drawn to them…
