My Body is a Chariot, and Other Things I Wish I'd known as a Teenager

When I was a younger person, I actually thought the purpose of my body was to get other people to notice it existed.

I was more or less a neglected teen. Well, my soul was neglected. My body was very much noticed. First by the adults in my life who were quick to criticize and then punish my body’s behavior, which they saw as defiant and unacceptable. And then, my body was noticed by boys.

Before I continue, I should first mention that the adults in my life had been there for me during my infant years — when my body was held and comforted and celebrated; when I was given rounds of applause after meeting each milestone.

But as I got older, this sort of positive attention faded, and it felt like no one had the time or interest in the new ways I was evolving, in the new ways I was trying to stand on my own two feet and find my balance.

And that’s when I began to feel neglected and disappointed, which made my body a very uncomfortable place to be.

As a tween and teen, I really began to crave that feeling of being embraced and celebrated, like I’d felt as an infant.

So much was changing about myself and my body and I felt scared and confused and anxious.

And I waited, with my eyes focused outward, for someone to meet my needs. To see I was struggling, even though I no longer cried like I did when I was a baby.

But no seemed able to read my cues or read my mind.

And it was around this time that I finally began receiving the attention I was craving. Eyes on me again. From boys.

Unlike all the others in my life, these boys wanted to embrace and celebrate my body. And they wanted to spend their time with me. Even at the expense of all the other things they could have been doing. And it didn’t take long to become addicted to their attention.

Yet there was a problem: Once I was embraced by these boys, I didn’t want to risk losing their attention by saying the wrong thing.

Because in my mind, I figured the reason I was constantly criticized and punished by the adults in my life must have been because I wasn’t special enough.

So I let these boys celebrate my body, and I pretended to be someone else I thought might be more likable, so I didn’t ruin what they seemed to like about me.

It turned out I was quite talented at being pretty much anyone, other than the self I experienced myself to be deep inside.

But I soon discovered, that the new attention I was receiving was only temporarily making me feel special and empowered.

Not only because I wasn’t fully self expressed, but because as soon as they’d leave, I’d be left, still outside of myself, as if floating out in orbit. Still longing for someone to see I existed, to take me in and embrace me, so I could avoid that sad space inside myself.

I began to realize that the stuff we get out in orbit can never fill the emptiness inside, because it can never travel with us. We have to always seek and refuel. Seek and refuel.

And at some point, a person gets too tired or too embarrassed to seek and refuel anymore, and they burn out.

That’s what happened to me anyhow…

I didn’t want the attention anymore. I wanted to relax for once in my life, to feel comfortable inside my own skin instead of being so exhausted all the time trying to escape it.

I wanted to be there for myself. To learn how to meet my own needs. To figure out what my needs even were.

So I tried meditating.

At first, spending time alone with myself in my body seemed like a punishment. I felt stuck, isolated and bored—just like that little girl I was who felt so neglected and uncelebrated.

Every sensation felt like a bad memory. Like a recording of all the unpleasant, painful and shameful feelings I’d ever had. All I wanted was to get up, get out of my body, and run out of the house.

And I did do this, but I also kept coming back and practicing.

And at some point it occurred to me—maybe I’m having all these feelings from the past, not because I’m supposed to keep feeling them, but because we literally internalize all our experiences. They actually get stored inside our bodies, and embedded even deeper, the moment we imagine that they’re still ours.

I realized that to feel comfortable in my body, I had to let the past I was carrying around exist on its own, as a sort of archived history of my life, separate from who I am now, and to do this, I needed to revisit this history, but from this new perspective of who I now was.

I needed to understand the stories of my past as my own personal scripture, to make sense of my journey so far—what I’ve learned about myself and others. I needed to learn that pain and sorrow and shame aren’t things to run from, but to learn from— and the only way to do this is by staying still and listening to what those younger selves were feeling and to have compassion for them all.

I began to see that who I was, was so much more than i imagined. Not only everyone I’ve ever been—a survivor, a spiritual being, a continuation of my ancestors— but I was also something brand new that was blossoming in its own right, someone learning to feel deeply and fully experience everything that was happening in my life.

When people say to find yourself, I think what they mean is to discover the vastness of who we are. That we have histories within us, archived in our bodies, waiting for us to understand it all through our present perspective.

I think what they also mean is that a person needs to find themselves again and again, because we’re always collecting new experiences along with new ways of experiencing them.

For so long, I was stuck with that icky feeling that something was missing, but it never occurred to me that what was missing, was me. I was missing—my own presence, at home in my own body.

The space inside our bodies is our home. And for those of us who’ve had a lot of difficult times in our bodies, it takes some getting used to, to feel at home in our bodies.

But our bodies are sacred. They are the gift we’ve been given so that we can experience our lives.

And in our bodies, we get to travel through the our lives without leaving our centers… Our bodies like chariots, taking the best parts of ourselves out into the world to share and to connect with all these others.

-JLK

All episodes written, performed and produced by Jessica Laurel Kane, and the music was made by Jerome Rossen at Freshmade Music.