Putting a Body to Rest

I wake up to a new text/ my mom sent a collection of photos from five years ago. Or more. That’s not the point. The point is, I hadn’t eaten in them. The point is, I was a scared thing playing small and you can see it in my eyes/in the photos I’m scrunched up, held back, arms crossed, eyes closed. I still look for the flaws in the photos. Still lament how there’s somehow still weight on my thighs, wonder if that’ll ever vanish completely.

But then you have to stop yourself before the thoughts turn into a slide because to still criticize a body that hasn’t felt full in a year is madness. A body that lulled herself to sleep by telling herself she’d get to eat tomorrow. To still foam at the mouth for that body and criticize is is absolute madness. Madness that only an eating disorder can truly create. That I created with it, one hand on the wheel, one off the road.

I’m putting that body to rest because there isn’t another choice anymore. To live a life in constant argument with myself is the epitome of insanity. To still, to this day, turn that way in the mirror and flinch. You dedicated years to a sorry cause and have nothing to show for it but more sorry. You never felt like your arms were where they were supposed to be in space. You never truly felt anyone hug you because you were too busy maneuvering so that they wouldn’t feel that part you don’t like.

To put that body to rest is to thank it. To bury it underground. Put roses on the grave. I used to protest it by setting old clothes on fire and tossing them into rivers. This year it’s a silent revolution because I am very tired. Of fighting this war. That should have ended before it started but heaven forbid the girl take up space. Heaven forbid she breathe all the way out. You know? No one’s been in this with me for a while. It’s just me, and the click clack of my feet in the grocery store, the rising panic when my skin shows. I want to feel my arms in space again. I want to feel the space that I take up, envelop it.

So you dig the grave and you thank that body. You thank it, you love it, you thank it. Because without her you would not be you. Without her you wouldn’t consciously straighten your spine like you do when you walk, dare to expand. Without her there wouldn’t be pride and love for this body, now. I pick the nicest flowers. I sing to the body. I have to put this body to rest because to do otherwise is to live a life of chaos, a chaos of my own creation. And I think I speak for both of us when I say that my body and I are ready to finally, finally be at peace.