Procrastination. . .
I just read something that really resonated with me. I wanted to post some excerpts that I strongly identified with, just to record them somewhere.
. . .
sccccrrrrrr, goes the velcro on my binder each morning. sccccrrrrrr goes my brain as I put it on, desperately wishing I didn’t have to wear it, feeling the uncomfortable, yet comforting, tightness as it flattens my silhouette. I have to wear it because I’d feel naked without it, I’d be so self-conscious to the point that the feeling of everyone staring at my chest would consume my thoughts. So I put it on, everyday, just I’ve been doing for a year and a half now. A binder is that, binding - like a contractual agreement between you and your chest. You’ve made it look good once, you can’t ever go back. (1) The confidence I exude when wearing it, is just as easily is deflated when not. It allows me to walk out the door, and no longer look down at my chest wondering if anyone is noticing that (dare I say it) something is there.
. . .
However healing a binder might seem, it is actually quite painful. It’s painful to wear - as I sit it clenches my ribs, since it knows not to only compress my chest, it compresses chest, back, sides, everything. The more I wear it the more it hurts. That ever-present backache will follow me around as long as I wear a binder. And the long term effects of this are plain obvious. Note that I’m not saying it’s excruciatingly agonizing - I’ve always maintained comfort over looks - but wearing a binder is not a walk in the park. It’s not something you put on and forget about. It’s a constant reminder that I’m not free. That from now on I am forever bound to it. It’s a constant reminder of why I wear a binder in the first place - bluntly, to get a flat looking chest. (2)
. . .
I’ve always wanted a flat chest. When I had one, I cherished it, as I knew it was to be a temporal joy. When I came close to losing it, my chest pounded with the impending doom. Then it grew, and all hope was lost. (3) How could I have known ten years ago that people actually went and got rid of these things, for no other reason than that they never wanted them?
. . .
1,2- There's a lot to unpack in the first; I feel the "you’ve made it look good once, you can’t ever go back," but that's in direct conflict with something more complex. Which brings me to the second: this is exactly how I feel about binders and bras. They constantly and equally remind me that something is wrong with my chest that needs to be fixed, one way or another. I feel more comfortable with my appearance when binding, but I feel more comfortable with myself when there's nothing around my chest at all. The problem is that binding breaks down tissue, and feeling skin-on-skin triggers dysphoria in its own right. I'm not certain I experience this because I bind enough to cause tissue damage or because my chest naturally changes size/elasticity throughout the month, but I definitely don't want to do anything to make it worse, because then I'd be even more dependent on some external thing (the binder, in this case) to able to function. I hate that the most comfortable way for me to present myself is inherently at odds with another sense of comfort with my body.
3- Oh, I remember that time. I attended a small private school until seventh grade, and out of the forty students in my fifth grade class, only five were female (but every other grade in the school was gender balanced). One day in the after-school program I was in with three of the girls, the two who had already hit puberty decided it was their duty to sit down with the other two of us and tell us what to expect. While I appreciated that they wanted to give us some warning about changes they'd experienced without that courtesy, I was completely horrified. I hadn't realized until then how little time I had left to be a boy. Even though I'd always hated sports, I developed a sudden interest in all of them because I knew I only had a couple years left before I wouldn't be able to do it at all. In sixth grade, I even won an award from the phys. ed. department for "most improvement," which elicited laughter at the awards ceremony. I really feel I took advantage of all the time I had between then and puberty, but I still desperately wish I'd had longer. I started wearing training bras early on because we had to change in a locker room for gym class, and I didn't want to be the only kid not wearing one. Because of that, I didn't really notice when my chest started growing. I guess for me the point when all hope was lost was when I was thirteen and my mom told me that my sports bras were too small and wanted me to wear real ones.
*sigh* That ended up being more depressing than I'd hoped. Anyway, back to proofreading my personal statements. Happy New Year to anyone who's reading this!
. . .
sccccrrrrrr, goes the velcro on my binder each morning. sccccrrrrrr goes my brain as I put it on, desperately wishing I didn’t have to wear it, feeling the uncomfortable, yet comforting, tightness as it flattens my silhouette. I have to wear it because I’d feel naked without it, I’d be so self-conscious to the point that the feeling of everyone staring at my chest would consume my thoughts. So I put it on, everyday, just I’ve been doing for a year and a half now. A binder is that, binding - like a contractual agreement between you and your chest. You’ve made it look good once, you can’t ever go back. (1) The confidence I exude when wearing it, is just as easily is deflated when not. It allows me to walk out the door, and no longer look down at my chest wondering if anyone is noticing that (dare I say it) something is there.
. . .
However healing a binder might seem, it is actually quite painful. It’s painful to wear - as I sit it clenches my ribs, since it knows not to only compress my chest, it compresses chest, back, sides, everything. The more I wear it the more it hurts. That ever-present backache will follow me around as long as I wear a binder. And the long term effects of this are plain obvious. Note that I’m not saying it’s excruciatingly agonizing - I’ve always maintained comfort over looks - but wearing a binder is not a walk in the park. It’s not something you put on and forget about. It’s a constant reminder that I’m not free. That from now on I am forever bound to it. It’s a constant reminder of why I wear a binder in the first place - bluntly, to get a flat looking chest. (2)
. . .
I’ve always wanted a flat chest. When I had one, I cherished it, as I knew it was to be a temporal joy. When I came close to losing it, my chest pounded with the impending doom. Then it grew, and all hope was lost. (3) How could I have known ten years ago that people actually went and got rid of these things, for no other reason than that they never wanted them?
. . .
1,2- There's a lot to unpack in the first; I feel the "you’ve made it look good once, you can’t ever go back," but that's in direct conflict with something more complex. Which brings me to the second: this is exactly how I feel about binders and bras. They constantly and equally remind me that something is wrong with my chest that needs to be fixed, one way or another. I feel more comfortable with my appearance when binding, but I feel more comfortable with myself when there's nothing around my chest at all. The problem is that binding breaks down tissue, and feeling skin-on-skin triggers dysphoria in its own right. I'm not certain I experience this because I bind enough to cause tissue damage or because my chest naturally changes size/elasticity throughout the month, but I definitely don't want to do anything to make it worse, because then I'd be even more dependent on some external thing (the binder, in this case) to able to function. I hate that the most comfortable way for me to present myself is inherently at odds with another sense of comfort with my body.
3- Oh, I remember that time. I attended a small private school until seventh grade, and out of the forty students in my fifth grade class, only five were female (but every other grade in the school was gender balanced). One day in the after-school program I was in with three of the girls, the two who had already hit puberty decided it was their duty to sit down with the other two of us and tell us what to expect. While I appreciated that they wanted to give us some warning about changes they'd experienced without that courtesy, I was completely horrified. I hadn't realized until then how little time I had left to be a boy. Even though I'd always hated sports, I developed a sudden interest in all of them because I knew I only had a couple years left before I wouldn't be able to do it at all. In sixth grade, I even won an award from the phys. ed. department for "most improvement," which elicited laughter at the awards ceremony. I really feel I took advantage of all the time I had between then and puberty, but I still desperately wish I'd had longer. I started wearing training bras early on because we had to change in a locker room for gym class, and I didn't want to be the only kid not wearing one. Because of that, I didn't really notice when my chest started growing. I guess for me the point when all hope was lost was when I was thirteen and my mom told me that my sports bras were too small and wanted me to wear real ones.
*sigh* That ended up being more depressing than I'd hoped. Anyway, back to proofreading my personal statements. Happy New Year to anyone who's reading this!