An honest look

I’m five years old. I love to run. I can’t think of any single thing more fun than feeling myself fly around the playground, outrunning everyone else.

I’m ten years old. We've moved to a new town. Everyone’s southern accents are thicker and everyone is blonde and whiter than me. I hit my growth spurt early, sprout breasts and hips, shoot up six inches in as many months. My mom signs my sisters and me up for dance classes. The teacher looks at me in my leotard and tap shoes, in tights at the top of the little girls’ sizes, and pronounces me too large. I stop going to dance class.

I’m twelve years old. I've discovered I have a lot of loud opinions on things and they’re usually the opposite of what my teachers and class mates think. I don’t have much of a filter and things generally come flying out of my mouth. I’m taller than everyone else at school, boys included. My hair has realized it’s half Persian and it grows puffier every day. I think I’m fat because no one else in my class has hips or a butt. I dress in baggy clothes. Boys discover there are two ways to quiet an opinionated girl: call her a lesbian or a fat bitch. They employ both tactics, but neither seems to work. I just get madder and louder. Exercise is running myself ragged on the stair climber, blasting loud music in my ears, until I stop being so pissed off. I make it onto the basketball team and my coach tells me on the first day that I’m not good, but I am taller than everyone else, so that’s enough.

I’m seventeen years old. I am even taller with even bigger hips and larger breasts and better thought out opinions. I am louder. I tell myself I care less when boys call me a fat bitch. I stop playing basketball. I don’t participate in gym. I decide that if I can’t be skinny, I’ll be really, really smart.

And I am really, really smart. I go to college and get even smarter. I fall in love and get my heart broken. I have internships and take hard classes and do the right things. I even get a Master’s degree. I have a job I hate. I meet my husband who loves me completely and tells me so. I move across the country twice. I have four jobs in between. I lose and gain about fifteen pounds and I have a love-hate relationship with my body. I am champion of the “is she fatter than me” game. I realize after a while that usually, no, she is not fatter than me.

I’m twenty seven. I’m larger since my mom was diagnosed with cancer a year ago. I see two pink lines on a pregnancy test. My husband and I dance around our tiny apartment. I cry because I cannot believe our good fortune. We tell our families. Everyone is elated. My mama cries. Two days later my back starts to hurt. Five days after that, I start bleeding. A week later, the midwife confirms there’s no more baby. I feel like a complete failure and I tell my body it’s worthless.

I am twenty seven, nine months, and two days. I’m larger since my mother died four months ago this week. My weight gathers in different places and I realize in the middle of a Zumba class in front of the giant mirror that I don’t like my body, that I kind of hate it. That’s odd for me because despite an entire life of people reinforcing that I should definitely hate my body, that it’s fat and that makes it ugly, that there’s something wrong with it, I still love it. So it’s weird for me to look in the mirror and feel such terrible things about it. I suddenly realize I've been punishing my body. I've been punishing it for not holding onto a baby I desperately wanted, for not giving me another one, for never quite going back to normal. I've told it, “I’ll love you when you give me what I want,” which isn't really love at all. I realize I've been telling it that it’s fat and not as pretty as it used to be and unsuccessfully trying to put it on a diet because it’s been bad and must be punished. I realize that I have not been practicing self-love. And I don’t want to do that anymore.

So, here I am. I've decided there are going to be rules.

1.  I love my body. You should know that I am very good at love. When I love someone, it doesn't go away. I give them almost infinite chances. I believe that absolute best of them. I tell them frequently and with abandon that I love them. I give them everything I've got and I listen to them. I have most certainly not been loving my body.

2.  Loving my body means I’m not trying to change it. I will take it for what it is and love it in exactly that way, no hidden agendas, no secretly wishing it were different. Just pure love.

3.  I will give my body what I would give someone I love. On bad days, I will encourage my body. On good days, I will cheer it on. I will accept when it wants to do something I don’t necessarily agree with (like eat lots of chocolate if it’s sad). I will give it fresh air and sunshine and exercise.

4.  I do good things for my body BECAUSE I love it. I will not exercise because it’s been “bad.” I will exercise and eat delicious things because that’s what you give someone you love: the very best you have to give.

And because this is America, I’m blogging about it.