Something I Should Have Learnt A Long Time Ago

In honour of body positivity week, I wrote an open letter to my body and along with it is a collage of my derpy face and me trolling around

An open letter to my body

An open letter to my body.

Dear me,

Thank you.

Thank you for supporting me even when I didn’t want you to. Even when I hated you. Even when no one believed in you.

Thank you for staying so strong. Despite me constantly bruising, grazing, cutting, starving and hurting you, thank you for holding it together even though I didn’t.

And you are not perfect; no

You give me frequent stomach aches and chronic back pain

Constant dizziness and sickness, anxiety attacks

But I forgive you because we make it through that. We always make it through that.

Once,

they cut into you, like paper

Long gashes, prodding around; like this body was some doctor’s playground while they put me away

And in my wake we were all stitched up but sore still, like the knives were left jagged in our skin, each and every time we moved

But you healed

It still feels a little different but it’s hard to pinpoint how

Subtle like a brick somewhere is just a different shade

But you fixed us up. You fixed me up.

You, despite my fad dieting, my starvation and hatred towards you, lifted me up.

You got me to finals, you allowed me to be an athlete.

We jumped higher, ran faster, trained harder

Even when people told us we couldn’t. Even when I told you we couldn’t. Even when we told ourselves, we couldn’t.

But we did.

We got to finals, we went to China, Australia, Nationals, Internationals, we did it all.

All while I told you, you were fat and ugly.

While I told you, you were useless and pathetic

While I injured you and pushed you

While I drew rivers in your land

You proved me wrong.

I stressed you out and neglected you whilst obsessing over school work,

But you still gave me the intelligence and the ability to keep going.

I deprived you of sleep, I deprived you of food, I deprived you of love

I thought because you didn’t look like that picture in the papers, or on the screen, that you were inadequate.

And every time, the mirror would tell me lies and cohere with the scales to conspire against you

I believed them.

I believed your worth was related to that tiny number that appeared on the screen, that always appeared too big

I shrunk you down and stripped you of everything. I stripped me of everything.

I fell into a downward spiral of numbers and figures and everything about me became a competition and in the blur, I became a statistic.

Sadistic.

Yet people still told me I was beautiful and I didn’t know why.

I always searched for the number for beautiful and tried to beat that but then I realised.

I would never find it.

Because beauty is more than a character on a page.

Beautiful is more than toned lines on a stomach or a teeny tiny waist.

It was more than size 0 or 4 or 6 or 8

Beautiful was me. And you.

What was beautiful was our kind eyes that told stories of the things we had seen

Beautiful was when we lit up other people’s day.

It was when we smiled at a stranger

When we laughed until we cried

When we talked, and understood, and created.

It is the soul beneath the scars

The strength beneath the tears

The person that refused to give up against all odds

It is that fiery undying hope for the world that refused to be put out by the frosty cynicism and bitterness that came with the hardships we endured.

It is that passion that we have when we swear and cry and laugh and argue

And boy do we argue

The stubbornness and uniqueness that moulds us.

It is us

It was always us

So thank you.

Even as I had my eyes closed and was blinded to these truths

You continued to lead me

You continued to be me

And I’ve finally realised that,

Me, is enough.

We, are enough.

I, am enough.