when i was 11 i started to hate my body. i didn’t like the way i looked, felt, my small boobs and big thighs, my stomach, my butt, my face, my feet or toes. and i made myself suffer for this, a fucked up cycle of but you would be perfect if you were thin. please, please, let me be thin. and people say, but you are so beautiful, honestly. and i think, that is sweet of you, but i’ll be even prettier when i’m skinny. and i measure my self-worth with how much i weigh. and i’ve lived with this for seven years.
for a while i was happy. i stopping starving, stop berating myself, stopped avoiding mirrors and baggy clothes that made me look smaller, stopped selling myself short to boys with hands that burned, who didn’t look me in the eye, who didn’t care. because this is what love does to you. it makes you forget that you are worthless. it lets you sag your shoulders and embrace someone else’s warmth and smile. i was in love with a boy who made me feel beautiful and no one had ever spoken to my soul the way he did. and i was free. i had no chains, no worry. i ate healthier and i ran and i made love and i looked at myself naked in the mirror and i was okay.
but now i don’t have this boy. and that’s okay, he’s better off, with a girl who will love him more and treat him better and listen to his fantastical ideas about space & art. i will always miss him, he was always been an open wound in my chest that every so often i will press my fingers to, just to remind myself . i am in a constant dull ache, and i’ve started to pick and prod, you are not good enough, you could be better. you could be beautiful if you tried. people would look and say, that girl is so lovely & thin. you could work for this. and i know, i can feel the hatred creep into my veins like hot tea down my throat, like the meals i have started to skip, like the excuses in my brain when it points on that doing to this only makes weight loss temporary, that if i’m good enough, i’ll finally look the way i’ve always wanted.
and i think, i am so alone. i left alone with these thoughts and fuck if i’m that girl who is co-dependent. i am free and wild and full of heart, and i am smart and educated and pretty, and for a reason i wish is that someday, somehow, i will be the girl i see inside my dreams, weightless and feather-light and wispy like a willow. i will be thigh gaps and dainty arms and rib-cages, i will be a shadow, sneaking along your the corners of your heart, hiding, waiting, poking, this is what i have become. this is seven years in the making.
and just know, i am okay. i am strong. only a small part of me is suffering, like a constant ache in the back of my mind, and it is in silence.
