To my beautiful, 45-year-old body:
This week, you crest the hump of your 40s. I’d like to say I looked at you, in all your glorious nakedness this morning, and did back-flips over how incredible you look—but that would go against my life long pattern of picking you apart, body part by body part, and criticizing even the tiniest of flaws.
I noticed the other day, that I mentioned to someone how I used to have an eating disorder. I did this in the same way I’d mention to someone, “Oh, my hair used to be brown before I started highlighting it.”
So casual and flippant, like I was talking about some fun childhood game I used to play when I was growing up—instead of the cunning, baffling and powerless disease I used to fight on a daily basis from the time I was 16 years old.
Oh yeah—just this little eating disorder thing. Didn’t I ever mention it?
Yes, I can talk about it now—with a lot less shame and a lot more wisdom. Because there is no shame when you don’t even understand what it is you’re doing to your magnificent, perfect, youthful body, at such a tender age. There’s so much wisdom in having defeated it after many many setbacks, relapses and difficult lessons—once I was able to wrap my head around the reasons I treated myself with such contempt.
I consider myself to be a kind, thoughtful and loving person, and I’d never treat a perfect stranger—even one being a complete jerk to me—the way I treated you.
Shame on me.