I deliberately avoided evyan.whitney’s #sensualselfiechallenge from the first time someone posted about it on instagram. Empowerment through taking space without shame, sexual liberation and exposure makes all kinds of sense and nonsense, but it’s, more than anything, clashing with the slow unpacking of the very toxic relationship I’ve had with my body I’ve been trying to process these past few years.
i’ve been full of hate early on, for this flesh vessel that was never really my own, that was never fully me. As a brick in the wall of what became my derealisation condition, I have from the youngest age felt out of place, inadequate and plain wrong. From the playground to the doctor’s offices, I was called weird, singled out, bullied, and put on diets so early on that I have since to stop seeing myself as the chubby ginger kid. Today, still, this is who I am when I go grocery shopping, when I enter a new office for my first day, when I meet anyone at a bar, hidden behind my somewhat adult costume. Wrong wrong wrong wrong. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon pictures of me as an 18 year-old, so regular, red hair clashing on my all-black goth daily attire, and it broke my brain to realize what I actually looked like at that age. I had never met that girl before.
I have no idea what 35 year-old woman mean when they talk about wanting back their 20-something body, when those years have been nothing but trying to not think about how much I want this flesh to disappear. I thought I’d grow out of this rejection, but really, what I thought is that I’d get rid of that stomach, of those kid-like features. If most people think I’m 24 when I’m actually turning 30 soon, I’m blaming more than anything the fact that in most people’s minds, an adult woman is not supposed to have that kind of body. Wrong wrong wrong.
Not knowing that gal in the mirror slowly led me, in my mid-20s, to a knew strategy: to forget that I was invisible, inadequate and unlovable, I morphed into a loophole that would get me all the validation: I became the fuckable one.
Still chubby and not attractive as is, when walking to the pharmacy on a Sunday morning with the flue, but everywhere else, short skirts, tiny tops, boobs out, and the face you’re supposed to wear, so they know. So they look. Empty life, empty soul filled with empty flirting, with kissing people I found morally distasteful or plain uninteresting because validation was a stronger heat than anything else. I was told, I knew you wanted it. I was told, I could see you were a fun one. I was not told anything about myself, most of the time, or asked anything either; just a spillway on the way to the next day. What I wasn’t told is that I was pretty, that they liked my smile or wanted to hold my hand. I wasn’t held close in the night, or selfied together in a parc on a sunny day. I was hit on and fucked, and being willing temporarily erased the ugliness, in their eyes, and maybe also mine, I guess.
I’ve tried to reclaim my body by exposing it online so many times, naked pic after naked pic, but pretending to be empowered doesn’t work when you still angle yourself so no one sees you stomach, so your thighs are not pictured in whole, so you’re almost as hot as the hot ones.
For all those years, I’ve used sexuality as a way to hurt myself more and more, instead of just taking the healing route, the one that I wanna walk now, the very, very long one, the one I’m gonna fall of many times, I know it already. I’m still full of hate. If I’m being fully, completely honest, I still think looking the way I looks makes me, ultimately, a pity stock, and unlovable.
And there are no words for the few friends who have seen this in me, reading my pain between all of the noise I make, and who consistently let me know I’m seen, not when I look less ugly, but when I look like myself. You are helping me walk that line, and my gratefulness cannot be expressed enough. Sometimes, for a second, I fell worthy.
I’m mostly angry at the world, and full of fight, but still, and this is hard to actually confess, there is to this day nothing I hate more in the world than my stomach. And this is why I want to commit to hearing myself and fixing the gaping, endless whole in my chest that has been ruining my relationship to myself, and to the world and everyone else.
I commit to healing, whenever, wherever, and with all the struggles and missteps. It is not about feeling sexy, or hot or full of body love. Just taking space without thinking only wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
I feel so far away from many of the people from the #sensualselfiechallenge, and also, so very close. These are not only personal stories, it’s also a search for a space for all bodies in all forms and all expressions, without being policed, put into place, harassed or threatened. I hope to join that conversation when I am sturdy enough. For now, enjoy all of those gorgeous voices, and frames. And bodies.
All bodies are good bodies. We are never wrong.
