On the nights I could sleep, my body would awake choking on stomach acid or hot bile, needing to vomit, reminding me of pregnancy. 

Pregnancy: Every night needing to spit, the flow of saliva returning to my mouth as quickly as it exited. Linking my inside self to the outside world visible, transparent & flowing.

During this difference your body had no comparison to mine, mine felt everything felt different. Every effort was carefully manoeuvred into place so as not to cause extra stress or increased chemicals. I mainly lay on my back, sometime having phone calls, sometimes not.

I almost became psychic. In moments I knew everything and the problems of myself, peers and the world hung above, statically cast, ready to examine and critique and comment on. The invisible became graspable  – a map – both electric and frozen

Currently I find myself exploring a sponge of bodily emotion, reaction or something. 

I become my own observer. Due to felt of lack feeling or connectedness to myself I am left to watch over, feeling my way through a weight of experience. When I visualise this matter it is pink and yellow – part clown, part fat cut away from the body.

In my mind’s eye it exists in the place where I currently exercise, an insignificant fraction of what was carried out before yet significant enough to make this observation resonate or wobble.

I draw strings from this sponge in the hope that it was not all wasted experience, but also maybe that I get to know ‘feeling’ or response? Or knowing? 

Like Pinnochio’s dreams of becoming a real boy, I too dream these of strings experience will connect to a real body. 

I hope this letter finds you energised and well.

It is a huge challenge you are undertaking at the moment, I understand how you must be tired and feeling stress, not only in mind but also through your body.

I know the competition you were planning for has been cancelled due to the pandemic and that you are still trying to maintain a ‘competition body’, not knowing if or when you will be able to compete. The world is in chaos and we are in parallel lock-down, you in Spain and me in England but I know your current thoughts are most likely you won’t be able to compete any time soon. If an opportunity arises it won’t be in a natural bodybuilding association.

If it’s any reassurance to you, I understand where you are right now, I can empathise with the precarious position you are occupying. Only for you, it must be tougher than my own experience since you don’t a coach to hand over to or make the decisions (whether right or wrong); you have chosen to be your own judge, master and slave! A self-powered and self-styled manifestation of will and discipline, expressed through your physicality.

Writing in response to your piece “Transmogrification. Between Carving and Bulking. Destroying an Evanescent Body searching for Self-Identity” there were many parallels I wanted to highlight from my own experience I wanted to share with you:
You mention a lack of interest in feeling “feminine”, something that has struck me strongly in myself in many different points of my life. I also lost my periods for many years, even before bodybuilding, so I had an awareness in my life that with effort (controlling what I ate, and the entire spectrum of eating disorders or certain forms of contraceptive) that it was possible to halt my period. I guess that kind of control either made me feel god-like or somehow sick and abnormal, as if I had worked out the secret code to overwrite the body’s ‘natural’ will.

For me, it is only now that as I enter perimenopause my period is reinstated, in fact I have dieted and missed it (or it is late this month)! It’s interesting that as women, this cycle in no way colludes with or assists the rhythms and cycles of bodybuilding, but it connects us to that idea we must attempt to take control over the long-understood value of female reproduction. In fact, for me, the thought that whilst in competition mode that oestrogen may destroy my hard-won work against the body.

Don’t let me project my thoughts on to you though, I am eager to hear yours.

I reflected on how you talked about the discomfort of your growing body and how I understand your feelings and experience, but also, how I feel differently now. Reading this helped me remember how much I disliked the felt exposure of that fragile competition body that superficially looked strong. The exposure I felt was like I could not hide my form, my skeleton and that there was no comfort in my body, that my bones hurt on the bottom of the bath. I enjoyed the adrenaline of competition but the distortions and baring and frightened me. For those reasons, I don’t like the look of my bodily fat but I now appreciate how it feels so much more than before.

I know at the moment you are listening closely to your body, managing what it is asking for and what you can give it. I wish you good sleep and hope you can keep that critical eye in check.

Are you practicing posing and heels? How is it going?

Thank you for letting me share these thoughts with you.

Looking forward to speaking again,

Francesca

It’s so long since I’ve written, now I try to start the process, I’ve begun to poison myself. 

The feeling is coming from my aromatherapy diffuser. It sits in the background of my Zoom calls and dowses my carnivorous plants in rainwater and eucalyptus daily.

Not only does the humidity look after the plants, the smell of eucalyptus is a signifier – it sets the stage to work. The smell familiar, clinical and inspires a new environment within the known. It cleanses both breaths and thoughts in the pandemic scene.

In my desperation to write, to produce something, I’ve tried too hard. 

I’ve become over generous, wanted the setting to do the work and now I’m choking on eucalyptus. 

The vapour sucking oxygen, is taking my brain and sucking that too.

I cannot think, I also cannot see. 

I feel for a window, I open it.

Clear the air.

Body begin again.