On Saturday, She Loves Magazine (a great blog full of great women) hosted a synchroblog, asking all their readers to write a Love Letter to their Body. This is my contribution.
Dear body,
You and me have had an up and down relationship over the years, haven’t we? There were the good early years, when I loved what you could do – learning to swim, learning to cycle, dancing as many evenings a week as my parents would drive us to the studio, pointing toes, pas de bourrées, playing rounders in the school playing field.
Then later on things got a little more tense as you started changing and the familiar became unfamiliar. You grew in all kinds of ways (ways I sometimes tried to cover with my dad’s enormous jumpers) and I probably helped that growth with all those tubes of barbecue pringles I’d slyly eat between meals. I wasn’t feeling too confident of myself and I think I took that out on you. I’m sorry for that.
The last few years I think we’ve made an uneasy peace with each other. I’ve started to enjoy your better parts (your curves are pretty hot, and you can pull off red lipstick which is a startling discovery) and I am learning to live with what could be better (you know what I’m talking about so we won’t mention it here).
But just when I think I’m getting to understand you, everything changes. The child you were growing dies. Where I once found that aura of mystery you have attractive, I now find it threatening. Trust is built on knowledge and now I find I don’t really know you at all.
The blood test came back with that scary word – mutation – and I wonder what else you’ve been hiding from me? What other deadly secrets do you hold in your dna? It hurts more to discover this because I thought we were so close. I thought I knew you.
And yet I can’t hate you. I don’t understand why you acted this way. I don’t understand why the child you were meant to protect and nurture died inside you. But you and me are inseparable. I cannot live without you. We were made for each other, designed for each other. And in the same way as I have gone wrong – the jealousy, the impatience, the unkind words, the lack of love – in the same way you have been corrupted from the start.
It was not meant to be this way. But it won’t always be this way. One day, this new life I’ve been given will be completed in me. And as I am raised, so will you be raised. Just better. No more deadly secrets, no more decay, no more giving up on me. We’ll be the perfect pair, just as we were made to be.
Until then, I promise to keep learning to love you, your beauty and your imperfections.
Fiona
