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Every night after a hot shower, I stare at myself in the steamed up mirror. I wipe the condensation and run my fingers across my chest, tracing the bones that gently jut out. I feel the sharpness of my collarbone and feel sense of relief. My collarbones are my favourite part of me. When I stretch my arms up, I can count each of my ribs slowly. I follow the outline of them against my goose pimpled skin. But then I glance down at my legs, my thundering thighs that skim past each other when I walk. I think of that time in school in an open assembly about eating disorders when an image of a girl with big thighs was put up on the screen and the boys around me snickered. I think of that time I went swimming in the ocean when I was maybe eleven and I developed a rash on the inside of my legs. My mother suspected I had been stung by a jellyfish. But I knew better. The ocean’s sticky salt and the pale skin of my thighs rubbed together creating friction. I don’t wear shorts anymore, not feeling deserving of it.
I have fat knees. If I point them out, you’ll tell me I don’t but I know I do. I’m getting married next year and when I looked at wedding dresses, my mother pointed out that I might prefer something that covers my thighs. That I might not like my legs on show. She’s not being cruel, she’s right. She knows how much I want to hide the most unfavourable parts of my body. I feel the ghost of shame stretch its webbed fingers around my back, pinching my love handles as it rolls its way across my body like a slow wave. If I lie down in bed, my stomach sinks into my body and my hips stick out like two sharp hills. I wait for the mattress to swallow me whole. When I shift onto my side, my body tips out and the rolls appear like hills, soft and tender. There’s an indent that runs across my stomach, a place where the sections of my stomach have piled onto each other for years, since I was a child, and having now made a permanent mark on my body. I pinch my sides. I feel the rough patch of skin near my elbows. I stare at the wedge of soft fat that appears between my armpit and chest. In the mirror I keep trying to keep my head high and straight to remove the shadow that appears beneath my chin. I wonder if it’s noticeable to anybody else. In photos, it’s all I can see. Aside from my mother’s short temper and impatience, I don’t think I’ve inherited her thin genetics. My father’s Irish blood courses through my veins — wide hips and broad shoulders are part of the package.
There’s a unique type of agony that comes with the feeling of discontent over your own body. Of feeling that the home that houses your soul isn’t enough. And while I should put it into perspective and think of those people less fortunate, those whose bodies are not even functioning, of those without a full set of limbs, I can’t dismiss the sadness that works its way through my bloodstream, making a nest near my heart.
I don’t starve myself or exercise excessively. I don’t do trend workouts or wear waist trainers, I don’t even google it. I’m healthy, I balance my meals and eat my proteins and veggies and I get my ten thousand steps in and I hydrate and it’s not enough. There’s probably a thousand more words I could write to breakdown how I feel on my lowest of days, but I don’t. There’s no amount of writing that could satiate this feeling of hunger, not literal hunger, but like an empty depth to myself that I can’t fill. There’s no end to this madness and I could point fingers at every institution for making me feel this way, but I also believe that sometimes we are responsible for the things we do, the information we receive. I’m living inside my own head, letting the irrational take the wheel.
The desire to be thin, I think, will forever be something chases me like an imaginary friend who pesters you non-stop. I won’t tell you that writing this has made me feel better or that this is a one-time feeling because it’s not over. Like a shitty hobby, I’ll probably come back to this place again, and maybe one day I won’t be so sad to talk about it.
Thank you for your beautiful honesty. I think we can all relate to your words in some way. Wishing you the ease and comfort and serenity we all deserve 💛
May you find ease, pleasure, and contentment in the body you have, the body that makes you possible, the body that is the way you get to exist in the world.
For better and worse, it is not true that life's pains, difficulties, and dissatisfactions stem from our bodies. The body is only the vehicle through which we experience them. That's because we don't have any other way to do it.
A wise person named Glenn Marla once wrote "There is no wrong way to have a body." I have been repeating that phrase to myself (and other people) for decades now.