Imagining, and a July 26, 1987 greeting card

"We think of ourselves as floating outside of our bodies...big heads just floating outside," said Mary. She stood at the front of a graduate school classroom in chunky heels and layers of old-lady clothes. She was chubby, talked a lot, and loved to tell embarrassing stories about her clients when the students laughed. I found her sharing stories about clients with substance abuse issues urinating themselves while their mortified family pretended nothing was wrong as part of her comedy act in poor taste and questionable ethically.

What Mary was trying to say in an inelegant way was that we often perceive ourselves as a conscious entity that exists separately from our body. The real "me" isn't locked into a meat sack, but exists in the ether. When we think about being loved, we want people to love that body-less self—what some might call a soul.

I spent most of my life feeling separate from my body because it was something that I mentally wanted to push myself away from. It was a prison that I was trapped in, not "me." When I fantasized about being loved by someone, I couldn't put myself in the picture. I had to inhabit another role, another body, another person. I was an actor playing a part in my own fantasies because I couldn't bear to see "me" as being with the body I was in.

I wondered if Mary, who was physically unattractive, talked about this mind-body disconnect because she also wanted to distance her sense of her consciousness from her physical body. I had read her book in which she had had a meltdown because she was in love with her partner in her therapeutic practice and he didn't want her back. She spoke with disdain about a woman "in a sparkly tube top" who interviewed for a clerical role that this man fell in love with. It was clear that she felt he loved a body, and not a person because she would have been his choice had he been less shallow.

Given my experiences with Mary in the class that she was teaching, I think she overestimated her appeal on a psychological level. She admitted she had attention issues, and she did. When she was in the room, she had to be the one speaking and the center of attention. She was also prone to crying and having mini-fits any time a student disagreed with her and had one big meltdown in front of us. With that sort of emotional manipulation and lack of control, I'm not sure her partner would have found her appealing spiritually either, but Mary imagined she was much better than "the woman in the sparkly tube top," who she felt was unworthy of even having a name and Mary reduced to an object.

When I lost weight and felt more in tune with my appearance—though I never entirely got there—I felt more aligned with my physical presence, but I still struggled to imagine myself in the picture as a corporeal entity. It didn't help that the "me" that Tito fell in love with at a distance was actually pure personality. Unlike most relationships, he really did fall in love with my conscious self as I did his.

Once we declared our feelings and made a commitment, I had to make purposeful efforts to align my thinking with the idea of being physically in the relationship as well. This was the hardest part for me given my body image issues and fears about physical rejection. It was an act of will to see myself as a (relatively) "normal" person in this way since every "relationship" I'd ever entertained in my mind to that point was my mind in an imaginary person's body living that person's life.

This card was a part of the process of pulling the physical "me" into the relationship with the conscious "me." (Note: this previous note pages on Calvin Klein stationary were included in this card, which is why every square inch isn't scribbled all over with words.)