To Maddi, part 1: The Woman Behind the Mirror
These last couple of days have been a bit chaotic and I couldn’t do what I had in mind, which is give a real answer to your question on what bodybuilding means to me. I am not exactly or directly into bodybuilding: I am a powerlifter, but I love bodybuilding and I coordinate a media project on strength sports in Brazil that includes Bb. So, the short answer could be “it means my life, and would sound somewhat euphemistic. I decided to give you the long answer, where “my life becomes quite literal.
I am looking at your pictures right now. I see this smiling, obviously happy, beautiful girl with prominent deltoids and biceps … all strength and power and femininity. I wonder if you were able to “see this girl behind the overweight, unhappy and confused young mother of some years ago. I wonder if you knew that that was just a perverse disguise made by so many little and big oppressive forces that insist to hide the real you. And it works: for a while (which can be quite a long while or last a lifetime), you actually lose yourself, since all you can see is that disguise.
The first thing I wrote about bodybuilding, I think a year ago, was playing with words: “body and “building, “self and “construction, “self and “recovering. So maybe this is the starting point. Bodybuilding or strength training are means, as powerful or more, than any meditative or religious practice, to find “the real you that has been hidden by the pains of life.
This is part 1 and I am going backwards. I am starting with my two last little deaths and recoveries … naturally, through strength and strength training.
On February 2004, I entered the Emergency Room again to get stitches for a nasty self-injury I don’t remember where. It was always ugly, sometimes life threatening and always took about 10 stitches to close. I was always very quiet and serene, even a bit apathetic. I came home to find important professional decisions to be taken. I had a dinner-meeting with a colleague and went, in spite of the pain and bulky dressing on the wound. At this time I was on Geodon (a neuroleptic drug), lamotrigine (a mood stabilizer), diazepam (a benzodiazepine anxiety inhibitor) and about three other meds. I guess it was a week later that I decided that I had had enough. I had dragged a medication-refractory bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness) plus a number of “interesting co-morbid conditions (”cool new disorders) for a decade and had been through most of the wonders Big Pharm (Big Pharmaceutical Industry) delivers into the greedy and uneducated minds of psychiatrists every year. I think I had practically everything there was to take at the time. And I felt as sick and miserable as I had ever felt. Geodon finally produced a radical change in my image, which had been deteriorating for years: a persistent twitch on my face muscles and a permanent contraction of some limb muscles.
One day, I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw the caricature of institutionalized loonies: expressionless, defeated and stiff limbed. I was dead.
But there was this ancient part of my brain that remembered the little girl of 14 that had been the national sports revelation of the year, regional, state and national champion in fencing. I remembered pushing myself through other hard times, around my doctorate, through my second and torturing marriage, by running, swimming and working out. I remembered biking with my daughter, the real Sun of my life, and feeling good. So I decided that, WTF, I was dead anyway, and maybe I should trust what I had never trusted before: my intuition. I had to recover my body.
I registered on a gym near my home and dragged myself EVERY SINGLE DAY to do something … anything. By March, I had dropped all but two of the meds. By June, I was med-free, and remain so until this day. By April, all of the involuntary twitching I was so scared of being something called “tardive dyskinesia, an irreversible collateral effect of psychotropic medication, had disappeared.
I was still very thin … weighed about 92 lbs. Today I weigh 123 lbs with about 16% BF. It was still not the “real me, but pretty closer to it than the corpse in the mirror of three months earlier.
By August or September I discovered weight training. Since I have a pretty solid biological background and became a scientific information specialist, I educated myself in the fundamentals of weight training. Bought books, discovered websites, started networking. By the end of the year, I had put on 13lb of pure muscle (still no fat, something around 10%).
Things looked wonderful and I fell on the euphoria trap: thought I had “cured all my conditions and for a while I neglected my training, while in another dysfunctional relationship (rings any bell of dependent variables?). Drug free and strong, I went into a very short period of violent mood swings. And one day, I ran to our family beach house alone and slashed my throat. For reasons I still can’t explain, since I was in a deserted dirt road, an electrician found me exactly at the moment I had done the cut, I asked for help and he drove my car to a very small hospital about 5 minutes away. I lost about 1 liter (almost 2 pints) of blood, since I had cut the jugular, but they managed to stitch me back. That was July the 4th, 2005.
I finally learned that there is no “cure for whatever I have. I just have to keep training … not a little bit: INTENSE TRAINING. I must provide enough testosterone (yes, I learned testosterone does the trick and that is why cardio sports don’t work the miracle) to keep my brain working well.
Today, when I look at myself in the mirror, I recognize the real me. All the other disguises … the real skinny white expressionless ghost, the fat depressed teenager filled with guilt, the twitching movie loonie … are gone. They were never me. I look at myself in the mirror and I wave at the 14 year old fencing champion and I thank her for giving me the blessing of body memory, the one thing that saved my life and led me back to Myself, through BODY-BUILDING or SELF-BUILDING, as you like.
February 25, 2007 at 8:40 am
Marilia,
I had such a strong and powerful physical and emotional reaction to your story. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing this with me, and I want to say to you, that THIS IS WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT.
I am no stranger to mental illness obviously. It runs on both sides of my family, and yes, in me as well.
I believe bodybuilding/weight training saved my life as well. I am so familiar with looking in the mirror, and seeing that woman who is not alive, but dead looking back at me. That expressionless and hopeless face that has gone past the point of despair and into simply blank nothingness. I remember feeling like a wraith, and trying to describe that but not being understood. Only someone who has lived it can identify. Everything you said resonated with me deeplyl. The disguise you mentioned…. That is exactly what that 100 pounds of fat was to me. Quite an ingenius disguise, and one that I nearly lost myself in forever. I believe our souls have shared a similar pain, though I believe yours has been even greater than mine. I know it is a day to day battle, but I encourage you to keep doing whatever it is that makes you happy. I know that there are biological reasons for depression and all of these various life destroying disorders. However for me, I have found that simple self acceptance, despite all of my many faults, idiosyncracies, and ridiculous amount of weaknesses, has made all the difference in my life. That and bodybuilding has become my two greatest sources of strength and work together hand in hand. I believe I have overcome more of my inner wars and turmoil through these two things alone, than any amount of medication or therapy could have ever done. The EXTREME EXERCISE I believe changes my hormones somehow, and releases SOMETHING that my body obviously needs to be happy. I sincerely hope that someday you will write a book on this subject. There is something to this. I know we are not alone in this lifestyle being MORE THAN A HOBBY, but our very daily breath. You could influence and inspire so many with your story in such a positive way. I could say so much more, but there really aren’t enough words. Thank you again.
Love And Light, Maddi
Ps….I have always been fascinated with the sport of fencing.
February 25, 2007 at 9:08 am
PPS…I would be very interested in hearing more about what you said about testosterone’s effect on your brain. I am considering trying a testosterone cream for awhile. I am wondering if you supplement your body with testosterone at all, or rely on the extreme exercise alone for your body to increase it’s own production of it.
Also, when and if you have time, I would love to hear more on the differences between bodybuilding and powerlifting. I am very intrigued with powerlifting, but have never had any actual exposure to it. So while I am incredibly interested, I am also incredibly ignorant on the subject. I want badly to learn all of the various powerlifts, but I know there is far more to it than that.
March 11, 2007 at 7:08 pm
I finally got chance to read your blog. Been really sick with my kidney disease. But I can relate to much of your story. I was diagnosed with a mental disorder 4 years ago when I was testifying at my best friends murder trial.
Everytime someone comments on how hard it must be to lift the weights I do, I tell them it is nothing compared to the weight I lifted off of myself when I decide to not let my disorder dictate who I was anymore!
Train hard and heavy!
Cathi