Dear body
Tags: Storytelling, Love Yourself, Body, Body Positive, Love

Dear body,

I would like to thank you for a start. For always being strong, for standing by my side and not letting me go even when I led you on, even when I didn’t listen to you, when I didn’t want to listen to the signs you sent me when you were exhausted. I also want to thank you for evolving, growing and building up to become so strong, you are able of bringing me anywhere I want, surpassing yourself and becoming stronger. Thank you also for following me and being able of recovering so quickly of all the changes that I decided to do: the travels, the sports, the parties, the adventures, the diet. In these times of health crises, I also want to thank you for being so resistant to the virus that paralyzes so many people but you stay up, strong and healthy.

I would like to apologize. Apologize for everything I put you through by trying to get the perfect body. By listening to people’s opinions about my body, wanting to look like this shaped bodies, I didn’t listen to you and I wanted at all cost to transform you, to shape you according to criteria you couldn’t reach. So yes, I pushed you to your limits even when you were exhausted, hungry and suffering. I would like to apologize for letting so many people talking about you without defending you, without highlighting you, without loving you even more. And I apologize even more for having neglected, underestimated and belittled you myself, and especially for still doing it.

I think I’ve taken a real interest in you and cared about you a year ago. I really cared about the vision I had of you when I walked away from the people I knew.

The first step was when I stopped inflicting all the hormones that I’d been giving you for almost 10 years. So yes, I started taking the pill thinking that it would help you, I wanted you to stop having so much acne, it wasn’t aesthetic at all, I felt ugly and all the girls around me had smooth skin. These hormones change you, you had less acne, the stomach flat, but nothing was real. You weren’t making periods naturally, you weren’t making me feel pain, a lot of the signals were blocked. I wanted to release you from all this, I wanted you to get back to your original shape, your primary sensations and release those hormones. But you didn’t understand what was happening to you, you panicked, you wanted to reject everything, free everything that you had kept for so many years. You started to recreate acne pimples, to stop sending me satiety signals so you keep asking me for food, to retain water, to weaken during sport sessions. You couldn’t do it anymore, too much was happening for you. So I gave you time, mainly good foods, food supplements to help you get rid of the bad hormones, I let you rest and I pushed you less to do sports. I learned to listen to you, to understand when you were hungry or not, when you just wanted to eat to heal a wound. And step by step, after one year of a more respectful cohabitation, things went back to normal, the acne was gone, you asked for food less often, you regained your strength and started running again without difficulty. And it helps me love you even more.

This stage was psychologically hard for me, because on one hand I knew that I had to give you time but on another hand I didn’t feel cute and I had hard time accepting you. In retrospect, I realize that this event was really beneficial because I also learned to detach myself from you. By giving you time to heal, I focused on my inner self, on what I was outside of my body, what what was my vibe. I didn’t forget about you but I put less pressure on my physical aspect to focus myself on the psychological and discover that I was more than my acne, more than my few extra pounds.

The second step had been to get away from everyone we knew. We made a fresh start, we got away from everything we knew, we went on an adventure.

And this change made me realize that for some time now you no longer belonged to me, at least the vision I had of you was not the one I had decided to have. During some time, I forgot to look at you. I forgot you in the eyes of my partner or my friends. I loved what they loved on you, I used to show you the way people liked you without asking me any questions. I had to destroy everything I knew, learn to look at you again, to ask myself what I loved about you, what I would like to improve, what I wanted to enhance. But I had to do that without external distraction and that’s difficult because, not to mention friends, the social media send you a certain image of bodies. So without judgment, without pressure, I looked at you, each of your parts to get an idea of what you really looked like.

And by analyzing you from top to bottom, from right to left, I noticed that the color of your hair was naturally beautiful and I never had to hide it because it suited me. I saw that your eyes, that I would’ve preferred blue were bright and smiling, that your nose didn’t look like a potato, at least it was a cute little potato, that you had lips that created an amazing smile, that your skin wasn’t smooth but it told a story. And then your strong legs that allow you to run for miles, your hands with long fingers that allow you to create, your belly not always flat but that undergoes so many changes during the month without ever letting go, your feet that support all those hours of dance. Each part of your body has a functionality that allow me to enjoy every thing that I undertake. So THANK YOU.

This reconsideration hasn’t been easy psychologically and it is far from over. But I think we’ve gotten past the stage of meeting and discovery. We’re slowly reaching the concession stage where each of us has a vision and we’re going to find common ground. But the biggest step is over, we got out of that toxic relationship where one was a slave to the other and that’s the most important. I’m happy we’re living together and I can’t wait to see what happens next.