I have been forcing myself to write almost every day. Waking up before 5am to get in 20 minutes. Getting in my reps… Nothing has been coming out. I am rewriting the same pages over and over and over…
Today is different, this is pouring out of me. These words are in my fingers and I can’t move on with my day until I shake them out.
My body is not your business. Not when it was larger, smaller, or now.
(Your body is none of my business)
Today some creep asked me if my boobs were real (they aren’t). This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a creepy DM, but this is the first time it has bothered me, made me pause and question what I am doing, if I am showing too much, “asking” for attention.
My body is not your business… not before, not after....but I allow it to be, I need it to be in order to help.
I have so many stories to tell. Scars I want to share. I have lived so many dark days feeling trapped inside a body that wasn’t mine. Feeling suffocated and paralyzed by layers I thought I needed to shed. I’ve hated this body into such darkness, done things to myself that fill me with so much shame, all in the name of trying to change it. Trying to free myself from myself. Living in the story that I was not good enough as I was, and in 10 pounds, 50 pounds, 5 pounds,
2 pounds I would be worthy.
Laxatives. Purging, which somehow sounds better than saying I would shove my fingers down my throat in hopes that everything I just ate would come back up. That I would be clear again, free of it. Free of my bullshit.
I haven’t shared those stories though, over a fear that I would make you feel bad reading them, or you would think I was being dramatic. Was I fat enough then to have made these wounds? Do I need to share a picture to justify that I was in pain; by showing myself bigger will I earn the right to share my truth…
I see that now all over the internet. Body positivity and body shaming.
If you are skinny and share something you are cocky. Full of yourself. Looking for attention. OR you are applauded! #GOALS! #fitmom! Babe! Inspiration!
If you are larger and share something you are brave. Bold. Courageous. OR you’re Gross. Your body doesn’t belong here. Put yourself away.
WHAT IS IT? Who gets to choose these things…
My body is not your business. Your body is not mine.
What I want to say: I get it. I know what it feels like to wake up in a home (body) that isn’t yours. To look in the mirror and wonder what the fuck happened. When did I get like this? Was I always like this? This is hopeless… I know what it feels like to lay in bed feeling the fat on your stomach spread across the mattress thinking you are the most disgusting thing in the world. Unworthy. Unlovable. In need of change.
But can I say that? I don’t know what I weighed then, I know it was under 200 pounds… do I have that right to tell that story?? Where is cut off? Did I earn the right to feel shameful at 180 pounds?
I know the glory of the opposite. Lying in bed feeling my hip bones, barely protected by the thinnest layer of skin… scared to go downstairs because there is food I can’t eat there… To be told how wonderful you look,
what are you doing? You look so healthy!
(…
so healthy. Eating 1000-1200 calories a day, no carbs, cardio for an hour, binging and purging whenever I messed up….)
SO HEALTHY! I was 117 pounds, is that small enough to tell that story?
My body is not your business…
All the self help books in the world, all the mantras, the crystals, the prayers, the journaling… I looked at myself today and thought I would look better if I lost a few pounds…
I’ve never been an addict, but I know it well, what is looks like, what it does to you, how easy it can pull you in…
So maybe I have been an addict. Because those voices are still there….
I can’t seem to get rid of them. The ones that look at my cellulite, or remember my stomach looked better when I was leaner. And the fucked up thing is, I am an excellent dieter. I am SO GOOD at it. I know that if I wanted to I could get myself down to LEAN quick… the discipline I can call in scares me, because I know it doesn’t last forever and I know what comes next.
(Never take advice from a skinny girl with a six pack. She has no business telling you to use some restraint, she may be the unhealthiest person in the room, don’t let the internet fool you)
I eat candy bars now to remind myself I can. I have pizza on a Tuesday when I don’t even want it, when I would actually prefer a salad, because some days that voice is so loud I have to show it I am in control. That I am OK now, at this size, in this body…
I am overly confident, full of pride, not afraid to be seen.
And I am terrified. Worried I don’t have the right to be here, with this voice, this small platform with a strong desire to grow it as big as I can. To help and talk to all the women I can find… (Like the quote says, Who am I to be this brilliant… Who am I NOT too…)
I am the most confident insecure contradiction you will ever meet. And, I have figured out that smallness doesn’t benefit me, never will, nor will it help anyone. I need to shed that coat.
But was I big enough to be a victim of the thoughts I had? Was I justified?? Are you reading this thinking – get over yourself? Because that is the story I am telling myself, I am simply (not easy, but simple, like a lot of things) choosing not to listen or play into that.
I’ve engineered smallness; never talking about how bad it was because back then we didn’t have phones to capture our darkest moments in the mirror to show the world later in a boastful before and after. And typing that out, I will fully admit my largest is a size was somewhere many women would love to be… so again…do I have the right to tell my story. The right to look you in the eyes and say “I get it”.
(I can promise you, I get it.)
Our heads can be really fucked up places. Our eyes can see things that aren’t there. Imagine stories so clear and loud that we forget that
we are the ones creating our reality, and what we are creating isn’t real UNTIL we make it real by believing those thoughts.
I don’t want to be anyone’s inspiration… I want to help women be their OWN inspiration. I want to tell the women avoiding the mirror, avoiding their naked body- her home, I want to tell her that it CAN get better.
There is a way out of those thoughts. I know (logically) that because I started that at 22, before I Phones could capture it all, that my voice here is still valid. I understand the years of hopelessness, the ups and downs that feel like mountains and absolute hell, mostly hell.
It’s ironic. I am aware I paint a pretty picture on Instagram, and its valid,
life is good now. Like really, wonderfully, loudly good. But it has taken years, active and constant effort, and acceptance.
A supreme trust that my body knows best. Letting it be, staying kind, consistent, and meeting it with love, trusting it will find its place. It has. It feels good, even on the days it doesn’t feel good.
So why this post? It’s a calling in, to me, a goal marker I am laying out as a promise to be open even when I don’t want to be. Ladies all over are struggling in their bodies and I can help them stop, help them find peace. I want to, I feel strongly called to do so, now more than ever.
It’s also reminder to you that nothing you see is really as it seems. I’ve been really struggling with sharing body positivity self love stuff because I know my past. It wasn’t always the rainbows it is now. It was ugly, what you see now is years of a dumpster fire, calorie counting, macro counting, cardio abusing self harming mess
FOLLOWED BY years of learning to trust my body, RE-learning how to eat- what feels good and what doesn’t, messing up and stepping backwards over and over but also committing to moving forward, lifting (like a lot of lifting) and can’t forget botox, a few lip injections and a boob job (or two)…
Stay tuned. We are going to talk a lot more about how to like yourself most days… cause this is never easy all the time. It sucks some of the time. And it is wonderful a lot of the time…
(And again still- be very leery of advice from a skinny girl…)