Stagnant

I'M GOING TO LOVE MY BODY

I'M GOING TO LOVE MY BODY

The mantra planted into the crevices of my mind has been the instinctual sense to hate myself. To grab the nearest penknife and hollow myself out, so that I can be an empty log and the wind can blow through my fragile torso.

I have spent more than ten fuckin' years digging myself, inside out, erecting the tombstone to my own grave.

And the first time the boy I loved says: "You're a fat bitch."

And when I hear the people close to me tell me: "Love yourself after you've fixed yourself."

And then I hear myself: "Hollow hollow hollow."

I've shredded my own skin, punctured my stomach, dragged my fingers over my ribs in the hopes of hearing a beautiful, chilling melody bursting through my eardrums coming from the sound of protruding ribs and hollow bones.

I'm not allowed to love my flaws. And when people urge for me to try to climb into the shell I've been built for, the same individuals scrunch their noses with their forehead crinkled in disgust as if they changed their minds and I became the monster. And they whisper little quaint things behind my back.You're not allowed to love yourself. 

(If you think I'm a bitch, I want to hear that in my face, asshole. Not behind my back, where you have that knife poised against my abdomen, ready to slide in-between my ribs.)

It was when my friends and I were comparing the size of our eyes, the somehow holy-as-fuck double fold above our eyelids, and the first time I was yearning for something sterile and artificial and plastic to be embedded into my skin and morph to become a part of me.

To the boy who called me 'fat' and 'bitch': Fuck you.

To the society I've been conceived like a mutant into: Fuck you.

To the people who tell me that I am worth less because of the way my nose is shaped, or the precise measurement of my waist in centimetres: Fuck you.

I will wear these buns, and I will plait my hair, and I will don these chokers, and I will eat healthier and exercise more—and none of these things are because I want to look better to you. These are the medals of the intrinsic war that I've fought—and these things, are only statements for me. I wear these because I know I'm worth a damn thing. Because I know that your asshole opinions aren't opinions at all. And because I'm going to love my body the only way I know how to love: in whole, or not at all.