Like most women (and, these days, many men), my body image issues are EPIC. I’ve hated those issues, studied them, talked about them, yelled about them…everything you’ve done, and then some.

But I was hit recently with an interesting insight that had never occurred to me: I don’t just hate how I look. No, I’m scared of my body.

My body is a wild, uncontrolled thing that punishes me for my sins and it is impossible for me to anticipate in its moods. The idea of being held hostage by my body is not a new one, a lot of women experience it. The mutual antagonism is not new, but the perspective of actually being afraid of my body is a surprising realization.

It hit me when I tried to run a sprint the other morning. I was, literally, terrified. I was not scared of twisting my ankle or falling down or giving myself a heart attack; I feared the retribution my body would bestow upon me for daring to run.

I’m not in shape, and while my change to living a paleo lifestyle has made dramatic changes in my health, I’m still weak muscled and overweight. I’ve never been an athlete, and the thing I am most jealous of when I look at athletes is less their particular physique but rather the comfort they display in their body. They can show it off, push their endurance and strength to the breaking point, and wallow in its pleasures (that they have their own hangups I don’t doubt, as I’ve known many an athlete whose body-hating makes mine look like child’s play; but I am talking about how I perceive them).

I want that feeling of owning my body, of being proud of it, and of working with my physicality the same way I work with my brain. (And, also note: we are totally ignoring how I am addressing both my body and brain as separate entities, when they clearly aren’t. Moving right along.)

I should be able to say, “I’m going to sprint to that tree and back” without fearing plague or ruin. Yet I stood frozen in the park where I was walking, warring with my instinct to protect myself from the terrible retribution that would be visited upon me if I dared to expand my physical horizons.

As I look back over my life, this “terrible retribution” has usually been the result of brain/body miscommunication. I push myself because my brain says I should do something in particular, while my body argues that it is too taxing. I end up with sunstroke or heatstroke or a weakened immune system because of the cascading system failure caused by the warring factions. Alternatively, my body wants to move – walk, dance, something – but my brain shuts it down because I have “more important” things to do sitting at my desk. I end up with a sore back and swollen feet and yet see this as another punishment my body has visited upon me.

It is not rational, but then the whole “body image issue” isn’t logical, ever. And I know I’ll always be a little curvy, because you can’t wear a size 38DD bra and not bow to reality. This isn’t about how I want to resemble a twizzle stick.

This is about trusting my body as a functioning part of my own identity. I don’t, but I want to; and I’m honestly not sure how to win that cooperation, other than acknowledging the fact that this war of attrition has not really succeeded at anything other than self-defeat.