Where is the line between losing and loving yourself? Body Image is Tricky |
My inner child walks along the foliage-dense path Picking wildflowers Fisting their stems in my tiny hands Like my dad's hands Grabbing my waist Spinning me around Our laughs filling the wind with joy I was flying Weightless And I have spent every moment since Chasing that sensation So much in life connecting my body's size, that weightlessness, with love and connection With an earned deservingness Women must use their bodies to pay our rent in the world Be skinny and be pretty Become what that means in the eyes of every person you meet The eye of the beholder Their stares grope every tress of your hair, every stretch of your shirt, every pull in your pants If I just change my body everything else will fall in to place They promised If I became weightless If I paid my dues If I did as I was told Did what was expected of me If I was a good girl, I would find companionship, meaning, love Sure, I'll get cheated on, Ill be lied to, Ill be abused, I'll be hunted, but those jeans from high school didn't fit anymore, so what did I expect? They would rather have a thin woman with a deadly illness than a fat woman exist So what did I expect? My payments were overdue, but I couldn't afford it anymore. I am sick Poisoned by the expectations of others Chipping away at myself My soul like a marble sculpture Where Michalangelo found a masterpiece I found pieces Marks of an ancient, vibrant being Full of joy Smelling of boisterous laughs carried on the wind Lay bare and barren I caressed the crumbling fragments In my tiny fists Alongside the wildflowers Oh, How nature can create and destroy Beauty It is in the eye of the beholder But my eyes have never been mine Only seeing what others said made me undeserving A collage of all our insecurities, laid out in one bleeding portrait Only seeing what wasn't Instead of what was And now when I look in the mirror All I can ask myself is When did I cross the line? |