To my body,

An old letter

Involuntarily, I have put you through hell and back. Involuntarily, I have deprived you from all the goodness you deserve for serving me my whole life, for allowing me to thrive intellectually, for supporting the craziest of my pursuits physically, for making me the person I am today. You are who I am. You form my external appearance and you shelter my internal existence. You are shape and you are home to my soul.

Thoughts infiltrated my mind in times of weakness, they presented themselves as appealing, and I dismissed you. I gave into compulsions, starving you for years, and still, you continued working your ways to keep me alive, to help me achieve the great things in life.

You supported me all along, so how can I ever doubt that you will fail now. I won’t.

Every time I face a thought, I scream back. I painfully watch myself disobey and then, I sit in silence and power through. It’s so hard. Battle over battle the thoughts hardly loosen their grip, but I keep going.

In times like these some humor cannot hurt. And so, I revert to a silly saying I used to throw in random work circumstances. For every mandatory meal, every forced bite, every scary food, I hear you scream: “help me, help you”. So I do, I swallow. For every self-loathing outbreak, I still hear you: “help me, help you”. So I do, I sit. Let it be. Breathe. Remembering none of this will matter in the long run.

You’re going to be ok.

With love,

AK