body image – The Messy Middle 🖤

Taking Up Space.

Not your usual before and after, but this journey for me is about embracing all of the things about myself that I don’t like and turning them into loves.

I wear a size 12W.

As if the 12 is not enough, my feet are also wide, probably because I live in Texas and flip-flops are life.

Everything about me just always seemed so big. If I could have somehow made myself invisible, I would have.

I never knew how to take up the space that I do. That seems like a really wierd statement when I read it back to myself, but I don’t know how else to explain it.

I just felt tall, and awkward, and big, and there. I wanted to not be as noticeable, fade into the background like a nice clock on the wall, but there I was, in all of my glory.

These ‘big’ things about myself just made me feel…not feminine. In my head, to qualify as feminine, I felt I had to be petite, and everything about me had to be small.

But there are so many of us in so many different shapes and sizes, that means that statement is just simply not true.

So, shoes were never something I fell in love with like most women. They were even worse to shop for than clothes. This made special occasions or even bowling something to dread.

I decided to revamp my shoe space – from a pile of clown shoes to an organized section of my bedroom – and I also added some fun shoes to my collection like platform sneakers, cheetah, gold, and even sequins.

I’m going to take up space in style.

Today, I’m wearing some cheetah print flats to work and the compliments have been rolling in.

My feet might be long and wide, and I won’t be able to change that – but I can still take up space with them fashionably.

They’ve taken me wherever I’ve needed to go during my 31 years on this earth.

So, they are pretty damn special and beautiful when I think about it.

I’ve also been stealing glances at my new shoe area in my room and smiling.

It feels like I’m finally starting to grow into the space that I take up and own it.

–S.

Stretching in the Direction of Wholeness.

I’m grateful for how my body grew to accommodate me; more specifically, stretchmarks.

I know you’re probably rolling your eyes, but hear me out.

They showed up, I don’t know, pre-teens, I think. I say this like they just walked into the building unannounced, but they kind of did. Didn’t they?

I was always the chubbiest kid in any group. They showed up early. It seems like one day I didn’t have them, and then I did.

At first, it’s so…final. So…permanent. So…there.

I want to barter with the universe. I’ll give you back ALL the late night pepperoni hot pockets and beef ramen cups, if you take them back?

The Universe doesn’t respond.

I’ll cry! You hate to see me cry, don’t you?

The Universe doesn’t respond.

I mourn.

The Universe doesn’t respond.

And then they are so…angry. So red.
Or maybe I’m angry, so I’m projecting that onto them.

But we’ve been together over 15 years now, and it went how it usually does.

Breasts.
Arms.
Thighs.
Knees.
Love Handles.

And I promise myself…I’ll do the work. I will get it right. I won’t get ANY more.

But I got bigger. And there were more.

So, there I was. And there they were.

And….here we are now.

I hated them for a long long long time.

A deep sadness ran in me for something that couldn’t be undone.

Like their appearance diminished everything good about me. Like I was no longer a daughter, a sister, a cousin, a best friend, a friend, a college graduate, the list goes on and on.

And if someone saw them – it’d be social suicide.

But as time went on – I saw them on other people, and they just didn’t look ugly to me ON THEM, just on me.

The angry colors faded and so did my hate.

It turned into acceptance.

And eventually it was like a mole or a freckle or a battle scar.

I used to think it made my body…not soft. Not worthy of being touched.

But sometimes, late at night, right before I drift off, I run my hands over my stomach.

It made me softer.
And dare I say, more interesting.

I lived through something.
I’m still fighting it today.

But now I see fireworks, lightning, thunder striking the earth, shooting stars, hidden paths on a map.

I’m STILL me.

And if someone EVER tried to talk down to me about my stretchmarks, they’d get ghosted like the Universe ghosted me when I was trying to trade them out for something better.

One of my favorite Cheryl Strayed quotes is –
“How wild it was, to let it be.”
And honestly, it really IS wild.

I spent so much time thinking self-hate and negativity would get me somewhere GOOD.
It never did.
So, I’m trying this self-love, self-acceptance, and positivity thing…and I’m growing.

I’m watering the dirt. Flowers are blooming.

I hope that right before you drift off to sleep tonight, you take a moment and just touch your stretchmarks.

Literally touch yourself.

How soft. How magical.

How there.

How YOU.

–S.

I Was Wrong.

As a child, my parents would say hurtful things about my weight. They never flat-out said that I wasn’t beautiful or that I wasn’t worthy of love, but I took the words they did say and basically felt as if I heard them say I wasn’t beautiful and that I wasn’t worthy of love because of my size.

This became part of my identity at a very early age.

My entire identity wrapped itself around these false statements that I gave power to.

I imagine growing around these false statements like your body tissue forms and grows around a breast implant, or a bullet fragment, or a donated organ, or an injury.

They became a living, breathing, part of me.

They became true for me.

But, I was wrong.

So fucking wrong.

They were, and are, false statements.

There is no way that I am worth less than the person standing to my left and to my right anywhere on this earth. There is no way that I am not beautiful.

Today, I choose to give different statements power as I unwrap my identity around these false ideas I have carried about myself for over two decades.

I imagine the tissues dying off as their blood source is taken away.

Today, I made myself breakfast.

I packed my lunch for work. I did an entire skin-care routine.

I made my bed. I am going to go workout after a closing shift.

All this time I thought that I didn’t love myself, but I did.

I was just showing it with unhealthy coping mechanisms that didn’t look too much like love, but I think they did look like someone who was desperately trying to move forward while believing that they were less than.

It looked like a losing fight.

I did these things today as a healthy form of self-care and self-love.

I’m only able to do these things because I actively love myself and want to care for myself.

I am reinventing myself. I am leveling up.

Like a 2.0 version of myself.

I’m taking apart all of the false ideas and negative thoughts that I had about myself to find out who I really am.

I’m coming for all of the energies taken from me.

I’m focusing on turning all of the losses I took into wins.

I’m coming for all of the love I wasn’t given and giving it to myself.

As for weight-loss – I’m going with what feels good.

The idea of an ideal weight, I’m scrapping it.

When I was 16, 170 pounds was my happy space.

I have no fucking idea what my happy space is at 28.

I snatched my weight-loss board off of my closet door.

I ripped up the reward system that I wrote out for every 7.5 pounds down.

I’ll know my happy weight when I fucking get there.

I’m not rewarding myself for weight lost because I’m not going to tell myself that that’s the only reason I deserve to be rewarded.

I gave so much power to so many things that were so wrong.

I was so wrong about everything.

I realize that it is totally okay for an idea you had about yourself to not be true. It is okay for you to realize that it was total and utter bullshit. It’s okay to say you were wrong.

I feel

naked,

afraid,

nervous,

excited.

I’m having to step into who I really am now and it’s terrifying and it’s beautiful.

I could never truly be me because I was always carrying around the dead weight of the dead tissue with me. It weighed me down.

So much of me was wrapped up in lies.

Today, I am more me, than I ever was before.

Like – WILL THE REAL S PLEASE STAND UP?

I don’t know why the hardest person to forgive is yourself. Probably because you’re the only physical – living and breathing – entity on this earth who knows who you really are – you’re the only person who knows who you are at your core. You know every nook and cranny of your mind, heart, and spirit.

So, when you’ve let yourself down, it is like a million hearts breaking.

But the first step to get to the point of forgiving yourself – is to acknowledge the wrongdoing.

Cheryl Strayed wrote in the book Wild –

“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I’d done something I shouldn’t have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I’d done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything differently than I had done? What if I’d actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”

This quote always stuck with me and I finally figured out why.

Because I was so very fucking wrong, but I could still be forgiven.

I did what I did out of survival.

Emotionally eating. Being hyper-critical of myself. The men I dated. The friends I kept. The money I spent.

I did what I did because it was the only thing I knew.

But I can still be forgiven.

So, I forgive myself today.

Because I didn’t know better than, but I do now.

I always loved myself, just not in the way that was best for me.

But it was the only way I knew how to love then.

Today, I know better.

Today, I am forgiven.

I imagine that flowers are now growing in the places where the tissue died off.

–S.

Do you have these in a size wide?

I’d hated their width and length most of my life. They were anything, but feminine in my eyes. I never got to be obsessed with high-heels or sandals, the way some woman are – because they were so difficult to find.

Now I realize how far they’ve carried me.

How they never failed me.

No matter the circumstance.

–S

A Glass Castle.

Terrifying.

That’s the word that comes to mind when I think of telling someone my deepest insecurities. You’re basically giving someone the power to turn your heart into ground hamburger meat. Although terrifying, you feel such freedom having spoken those insecurities out loud – as if you have given them over to someone else to care of for a while.

You’re somehow lighter.

So, I tell you.

I tell you and I close my eyes really tight and no explosions go off around me. The world doesn’t collapse in on itself. Volcanoes don’t erupt. Streets don’t cave into sink holes.

Everything is still okay. You look at me the way you always have. Nothing seems to have changed.

I’ve lightened my load – unzipped the backpack on my back entitled ‘childhood traumas, bullshit I deem necessary to carry, and emotional baggage’ taken out a few items and handed them over to you.

Nothing seems to have changed, but really – everything has changed.

How could it not have changed?

Not only do you have the power to break my heart, but you have the power to break me.

But I trusted you with that power, A.

I really thought you would never use it. Never wield it against me.

But you do.

And if I could sum up in four words how it made me feel – I would say,

blew

away.

Into another universe. Completely obliterated me –

blew

the

fuck

away.

But if you wanted to know a more detailed explanation of how it devastated me –

I would tell you to imagine a glass castle.

A castle where everything is entirely made of glass.

Mirrors line the glass walls in every glass room.

The day you wielded my deepest insecurities against me like a sword,

all the glass and all the mirrors shattered at the same time.

I imagine you snapping your fingers once and the castle is in shards at my bloody feet.

–

It took me a long time to find the words to say how you hurt me, how you devastated me.

To this day, I still don’t understand why you picked up that sword.

Do you know that it is impossible to rebuild a glass castle from nothing but piles of glass shards?

You have no choice, but to build yourself back up, but stronger.

–

I don’t wish you great pain like the pain you have shown me. I simply wish you whatever the Universe feels you deserve in this life. Whether that is great pain or great joy – is none of my business.

–

You should at the very least prepare yourself for emotional sword-wielding monsters.

Because the Universe’s cousin – Karma, is a motherfucker.

–S.