My phone chimed with the familiar, woody note of bamboo. Dominik. A man thirteen years my junior who, through his sheer kindness, has become a coveted notification on a Sunday afternoon.
“I’ll be waiting for you in the morning, looking forward to it very much.”
A year ago, I would have perceived such a message quite differently.
In recent weeks, alongside my writing, several layers of my self have begun to coalesce. Design is surrendering to prose. Convictions I held for years are dissolving into a truer version of me. And my body — slowly, without fanfare — has embarked on the journey back to me. I first lost it more than twenty-five years ago.
The longing for a child was so profound it ceased to be a mere thought. It settled in my very marrow. In the ritual of waking and measuring basal temperatures. In the waiting. In the daily pregnancy tests, where I was capable of practically drawing in the second line myself, just to see it there. My hitherto perfect body became a question without an answer — an answer that only a fertility specialist could provide. During such times, a woman’s body ceases to be a given; mine became a promise. It was undergoing a trial. It was a prayer without words.
It softened under hormonal treatment. It retained water, sorrow, and expectation. In my youth, I mislabeled this change as loss. Swelling as failure. A different reflection as betrayal. After my young daughter became the centre of my universe — the very axis of my world — I reclaimed my body.
At least, that is what I called it. Reclaiming one’s body. What a peculiar phrase. As if there were a single “true” version of a woman, and all others were merely temporary detours from the correct form. As if our body in youth were the original, and everything thereafter merely a gradual departure from it.
I worked on myself. Disciplined enough, though at the time I lacked the enthusiasm for calorie counting. So, I decided to do it differently. My own way. I recall my recently departed physician, Gabriel. An elderly gentleman who, after twenty years in conventional medicine, delved into the study of TCM; he was one of the kindest souls I have ever encountered. Acupuncture point measurements identified the foods my body inherently rejected, and I began to avoid them religiously. After two years, my devotion bore the desired fruit.
I once again possessed a body I could carry with pride. A body in which one could pretend that self-confidence emanates exclusively from within.
It does not.
Not always.
I did not judge the woman I used to be. She was diligent. She was vulnerable in a way she masked beneath her relentless discipline. I did what I knew how to do. Just before my 41st birthday, I ended up in hospital. The National Institute of Neurological Diseases. That morning, my legs simply stopped listening. They refused to walk. A diagnosis I did not want to name. And, truth be told, I still don’t — because I never quite believed it. My body ceased to cooperate according to the old rules. Muscle, energy, strength, endurance — everything took on a different weight. Fatigue became a part of me. Initially, I thought I was losing my fitness. In reality, I was losing the old contract I had with myself: that silent pact that if I were disciplined enough, I would be safe.
Out of fear, my body stopped moving, and my emotions were soothed by emotional eating — not quite an eating disorder, but an uncontrollable period where I forgot everything I had agreed upon with Dr. Gabriel. I truly adored that old man’s serenity. He seemed to me like a Buddhist monk in a white coat. And my body changed once more. Slowly, so that it felt entirely natural, never acute. It took some time to gain fifteen kilograms. Who would have noticed?
And then came forty-five. Until then, I wouldn’t have believed that those harrowing articles about perimenopause — which lasts for years before the actual transition — were not scaremongering, but truth-telling. My 45th year was like a boundary drawn in the sand, unmarked yet recognised by my body with laser-like precision. Suddenly, my practiced old strategies became laughably inadequate. What once worked in a fortnight didn’t work in two months. In fact, it didn’t work at all. My body suddenly had its own unwanted rhythm, its own decisions, its own memory — and the hip replacement, a consequence of chasing perfection through dance years prior, did not help. I gained another ten kilograms. In a year.
That sentence is simple. In reality, however, it carries an entire world. It carries the clothes I stopped viewing as a play of colour and elegance, which instead became a negotiation. It carries the photographs I avoided before they were even taken. And it carries the male gaze. It was never unpleasant to me. Sex appeal, thankfully, was never lacking, and I bolstered my self-confidence through it. A satisfaction that masked a quiet struggle. Outwardly a confident woman. Inwardly — a nostalgia for my former self.
The world loves to tell us women to love our bodies. It says so with the very same voice that spent years implying our bodies are our most vital project. First, it teaches us to measure our worth by the circumference of our hips and waist — and let’s not forget the bust — then the firmness of it all, down to the smoothness of our skin and our age. Then, when these things begin to fade, it expects us to be spiritual enough not to let it hurt.
But it did start to hurt. Doubly so. For one of those pains remained the symptoms of the diagnosis I had successfully ignored in my mind all that time. To such an extent that I had halted the progression of this seemingly “interesting” diagnosis, leaving fatigue as the sole symptom. The fatigue of my muscles; of me. And the pain began to teach me humility. The genuine kind. Humility teaches you many things. Especially the kind earned over the years. Such as the fact that your body is not a lifelong audition for love.
A month ago, I called Dominik. He isn’t just a personal trainer. He is a person who touches me with such gentleness that every workout feels like his manifesto of recognition. Of trust. Of respect. And I have begun to perceive my body again. I am entering this slowly, with reverence. I am teaching my muscles to remember they are mine. I am teaching my body to exert itself once more, to hold me, to lift me, to carry me. There is an extraordinary tenderness in it. I want to save this body. I want to save it from abandonment. From indifference disguised as acceptance. I want my body never to lose me. I want to be healthy. I want to use my muscles. I want to walk, to travel to see my daughter in the Netherlands, to stand, to dance, to work, to write, to love, to age. I want to breathe. Because the lungs, too, are a muscle.
This body will write my essays. This body will walk into the coming years. This body will sit with my morning matcha. This body will grow strong again. This body will grow old. This body will wear white, my perfume, the exhaustion after a workout, laughter, my daughter’s embrace, the touch of a man, future journeys, further sentences.
It is not perfect. It will never again be innocent in the old sense. But it is mine.
“Yes, I’ll be there at 9.00. Thank you.”
With love,
Nicolette xx
