Pain as Progress: On Bodybuilding, Poetry and Transformation

Before I chose to live a life of lifting weights, all I wanted was to not have a body. In my early twenties, I measured my worth in how clearly my ribs pronounced from their cage. The addiction to starving started in college, in the wake of being sexually assaulted, when it hurt to catch even a glimpse of myself naked. To do so would bring me back to that night when the boy who threw himself on top of me said it was my fault I wore a dress. My body was not the vessel which carried me while I danced, while I walked my dog to exhaustion, while I traversed the dirty city streets—no, it had simply become a conduit for shame, the reason I’d endured so much violence. 

I was convinced that if I could erase myself with dieting and cardio, I would subsequently eradicate whatever cloak or shadow was weighing me down. Grief, I thought, could be undone in this way—and hunger was a container bigger than the one my pain lived in. For years, I thought hiding in that void would shield me from any greater discomfort or grief, and yet, I knew that hiding, paring myself down to a sparse chamber of bones was not a permanent solution. But as much as I wanted to reclaim my body it still hurt too much to hold her. 

Bodybuilding has taught me that revision isn’t inherently bad; there is power and freedom in one’s willingness to change.

So I started working out. And ate minimally. And the dopamine hits thundered inside my newly wired brain. As Melissa Febos writes, “Pain is unavoidable, but it is a luxury to get to choose yours.” Before bodybuilding there was only running or churning endless miles on the Stairmaster. Sweat, it seemed, was a good way to measure how much of myself I’d erased that day. How close I was to becoming anew. 

In The Body Keeps the Score, Van der Kolk writes that trauma survivors need movement to free themselves from the prison of PTSD. “Being able to move and do something to protect oneself is a critical factor in determining whether or not a horrible experience will leave long-lasting scars.” It makes sense why I was prone to running, biking, and even now—lifting weights. Movement helps me feel free, in control of my suffering. It reinforces the notion that I am equipped to escape or can assert autonomy—choose to stay and fight. Learning this, not just in my brain but in my body, has been crucial in helping me learn to survive. 

My descent into bodybuilding hasn’t always been accepted warmly by the people in my life. My mom, a Cuban refugee who spent most of her early life in a thin body, asked why I’d want to get muscular like a man. I asked her why wouldn’t she want to have armor to protect herself from the world? 

I wish I’d told her that all I really wanted was to be tough as newly blooming violets. Their lilac petals like diaphanous muscles protecting their could-be-ruined hearts. 

Or, I wanted to look at myself and feel strong, beautiful, knowing that if a man ever threw me down again, I’d have the strength to fight, to get up, to survive any kind of pain. Weightlifting was an antidote to feeling powerless. Pushing and carrying and pulling heavy weights taught me to get comfortable with breaking in order to become stronger, more resilient. It showed me that my body wasn’t an error, but a beautifully crafted thing. It also taught me that breaking our muscles down through exercise was how we get bigger, stronger. Rupture is a prerequisite for reparation. Hurting couldn’t be avoided. Hurting was the point. 

Bodybuilding is a sport that is just as much about muscularity and beauty as it is about symmetry and angles. It isn’t enough to have capped delts, a cinched waist, full glutes—half of your score on stage is based on how well you present your physique to the world, how you pose. Can you capture light on your body in such a way that the shadows enhance the seam between two ligaments? The crease between sinew and bone? Can you walk in stilettos and flex while looking fluid, present your body to a room of strangers in such a way that your oiled skin refracts the stage’s fluorescent glow, presenting you as flawless, feminine, unique? 

I have been trying to figure out how to get the world to see me clearly all my life. Bodybuilding is not so different from writing. Both mediums are platforms with which I wrestle to revise and bring my best self forward. I ache to create a metaphor that is inevitable and surprising in the same way I ache to build my hamstrings so that they might prove to a panel of judges that I suffered to make them and survived, made something miraculous from my wrecking. 

When I was addicted to running and being small, the point of revision was to whittle away. Bodybuilding has taught me that revision isn’t inherently bad; there is power and freedom in one’s willingness to change. What it comes down to is intention. In bodybuilding, it feels good to take up space, to demand to be seen, to work tediously toward perfecting a thing and not feel shame about sharing with the world that I made something beautiful from my suffering. When I write poems, my objective is the same.

Both the practice of making poems and bodybuilding have taught me that pain can be a tool we use to progress, to tell important stories, to connect with others.

Lately, writing means figuring out how to present myself in such a way that my flaws aren’t obfuscated by the sheen of who I say I am, of who I hope to be—but rather, are prominently on display. I want to be seen and seen wholly. 

On show day there is no hiding. It’s you and the physique you’ve carved, you’ve suffered over, presented for the world to see. Both the practice of making poems and bodybuilding have taught me that pain can be a tool we use to progress, to tell important stories, to connect with others. One of the biggest ways bodybuilding has influenced my writing life is that it’s illuminated the revelation that self-acceptance is a lifelong endeavor, and it’s showed me the importance of achieving candidness and honesty, more transparency with my audience.

When, at 21, I moved to New York to begin my MFA in Poetry at Columbia University, my body was small and so were my poems. Short, lithe, constructed in neat little stanzas, I hid my truth behind convoluted metaphors, so much highbrow artifice. Now, my poems are longer, unafraid to admit that the speaker is flawed; and the pursuit of control, mastery, and perfection has helped me learn that falling short is also beautiful because the ability to strive toward something greater than what we first thought possible is what helps us discover our magic, makes the grieving worth it. Aching toward myself instead of running away from who I am, all the pain I thought I wished I’d never felt, gives me confidence because of what I’ve learned to endure. Surviving makes me feel autonomous. 

The truth is the world will always be on fire, but becoming comfortable in the flames has helped me face my grief head on. Bodybuilding has helped me become a more confident writer and woman, unafraid to say she has hurt and may hurt again, but as long as I can progress, make something beautiful out of that pain, then that is an endeavor I can be proud of. After all, who’s to say brokenness can’t be beautiful, a precursor for our next best act? Yes mama, violets do it best—blooming and enduring despite the rough summer heat. These days, all I want is to be as audacious as them. To make something I can look at and be proud of, to say I deserve to grow here.

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Someone Else’s Hunger by Isabella DeSendi is available from Four Way Books.