OH YEAH – On Being a Bear

I’ve long struggled with my body and the way I see it.

Having always been a bigger man, I’ve always felt like I didn’t belong in a world that likes to feature muscle men or gentlemen that are thinner in stature. I’m guilty of looking, sure, but my first thought has always been, why don’t I look like that?

I have tried starving myself and tried weight loss diets. I tried not eating at all and I just ended up looking sickly. On the other side of that spectrum, I have been well over three hundred pounds, and I loathed my body. I never recognized myself when I looked in the mirror.

My journey with my body has been a long one. It was complicated by being in the gay community. In my youth, the men that I was attracted to tried to change me into their ideal man, someone who would look the way that they wanted. I let them instead of choosing to love myself. They wanted me to lose weight and made me feel ashamed of how I looked.

There was one man who told me several times, “You know, if you lost twenty-five pounds or more, you’d be perfect. I could even design a workout for you.” I struggled against this idea. I felt the fact that my boyfriend didn’t love me as I was something hard to deal with, but tried to change myself into someone that he would find attractive.

I’m not sure when I realized that he wasn’t the right man for me and let him go, but I think his perception of how I looked remained. I’m pretty sure its his voice that I hear inside my head when I look into a mirror and take in my body which should be a positive experience. Instead, the first thing I do is look at everything that I want to change.

Self-love should never be a challenge, but it too often is. I know that I’m not the only person who has struggled with this and nor will I be the last. I just have to continue on my path with love in mind so that every time I look in the mirror, I hear my voice instead of his.

When I saw the callout for the OH YEAH: A Bear Poetry Anthology, I knew that I wanted to write some poems for it. I thought of how I wanted to approach my relationship with myself and being considered (and considering myself) a bear. I wanted to take a look at it with all of its complications for me what with also being physically disabled and also living with a disease. How did having Multiple Sclerosis affect how I saw myself? I really wanted to take a deep look into how living with those elements of myself affected how I saw my body.

I wrote four poems for OH YEAH and all four of them were accepted.

Reading through the poems in the collection, it was astonishing to realize that I wasn’t the only one to have wrestled with their body image and feeling at home in their own body.  I knew I wasn’t of course, but having it all in black and white in front of me was somehow comforting. Having my words included along with all these beautiful LGBTQ+ people is amazing and such an honour. Each poem is like a revelation of self.

You can get your own copy HERE.

If you get a copy, I hope you learn something about how you see yourself and how we see each other.