The Split (PART 1)

The road from girlhood self-hatred to womanhood self-love

I’m a natural athlete and always have been. I spent my childhood as a gymnast competing at an elite level, my adolescence being a mediocre right wing on my soccer team, and my teen years running and setting local records as a mid-distance runner. I’m not a natural academic. Not because I don’t like learning—if you know me, you know that’s furthest from the truth—but because I never learned how to play by the rules of academia, to read the code and speak the language—or more simply put, no one was around helping me with my homework so I just didn’t do it. I had to harness my athleticism to get into college and wound up landing a full ride scholarship to a D1 school called Rider University. I didn’t like the school itself…the campus was ugly and located in an uninspiring suburb of New Jersey and I also very quickly realized I didn’t want to be such a serious athlete at such an unserious time of life, but didn’t have the option to lose my scholarship.

Before leaving for college in the fall, my mom took me to the mall to get some new clothes. It was a continuum of the annual back-to-school shopping tradition we shared, one that made me feel really special and anxious, not knowing if my picks were too expensive and feeling careful not to cast a shadow of shame on the spirit of our spree. I grew up in the early aughts when jeans were asscrack low and the it-brands were Seven and that devil-stitch-denim True Religion. Those brands were always too expensive so I typically wore Gap, Old Navy, and Express. On this particular trip to the mall though, my mom told me I could get a pair of Seven Jeans for my college adventure. It took me over an hour to find my perfect pair and once I did, I was changed to my core, finally the fashion status I always knew I deserved. I cherished these pants and treated them like heirlooms: my daughter and my daughter’s daughter would certainly wear these Sevens. I wore them to college orientation, my first day of classes, first track and field team meeting, to the grocery store, on job interviews, to parties, to class. I wore my Sevens seven days a week.

I was an amazing college athlete and ranked high on the status of the team. I was put in the main 4x4 relay with the junior and senior runners and built a confidence to compete at this intense level. My race times were getting faster and faster, blowing past my high school records and this was because I had a nutritionist perfecting my diet to a science and lifting weights with the trainer almost every day of the week. Never in my life had I lifted a weight, but mid-distance runners need to be lean enough to carry explosive speed and muscular enough to explode. I always had an athletic build, but was never too muscular or too lean, I lived somewhere in the middle and basically just looked great in my Seven jeans.

One night, about halfway through the semester of being an amazing athlete, mediocre academic, and impressive weight lifter, my roommate and I were going to a party on campus. I obviously was going to wear a cool top with my Sevens and had laid them out on my bed to throw on before the other girls came over to pregame in our room. Upon popping a leg in, I noticed they felt a little snug, but assumed this was because I had just washed them so I shimmied my body, sucked in and went for it. Still feeling snug, I ventured into the mistake of a deep squat and the earth split ass open…my beloved Sevens shredded from ass to crotch like a fourth degree tear. One side of the crotch seam hung lifeless down my inner groin.

The reality was that I hadn’t gained weight, I had gained muscle. I had bulked up from lifting weights to the point of needing larger clothes and it frog-in-boiling-watered me because at that time I carried less body shame so was generally less sensitive to tight clothes and trusted that my Sevens looked amazing at all times. Until they didn’t because they split in half. It was unbelievable. A shock. A rush of humiliation, anxiety, and grief. I had never had an article of clothing so expensive or nice, an article of clothing that felt like a part of my personality and that held within its threads a direct line to the pride my mom felt for getting a full scholarship to go to college…the first in my family. It felt like death and I wanted to die. I didn’t know I could feel such love and identification with things. I didn’t know I could feel such dispair and hate toward myself.

Being an athlete had always made me aware of my body, but not conscious of my body. All of a sudden, I was self-conscious. Were my hips too big? Shoulders too broad? Quads too bulky? Were my calves too severe? Back too manly?

This split tore the last yard of innocence from my psyche and introduced me to a hyper-vigilant inner-dialogue that changed my relationship to clothes, food and sense of self. This is where I started hating my body.