Blessedly Average

Oh, my thighs! I was eight years old and attended after-school tap and ballet classes. We all wore black leotards and pink tights. Until that time, I hadn’t especially noticed my thighs, but they suddenly seemed huge. They were huge on my body and huge in my mind. They didn’t look like the thighs of my two friends, who both happened to be exceptionally thin, but I didn’t know this at the time. I also didn’t know that I was a totally normal-sized kid.

From that time on, it was as though all I could see or focus on was the section of my body spanning from my belly to the tops of my knees. My obsession took over, and the distorted vision expanded from my thighs to include my backside and belly. I remember always keeping my head down, eyes trained on my midsection, wondering why I was so huge and lumpy, why I couldn’t look like the other kids.

My first summer in recovery, 15 years ago, I had lost 50 pounds and was in a right-sized body for the first time in well over 10 years. I tried on an adorable little sundress. For the first time, my thighs didn’t touch. It was hard to believe, and I had to check myself frequently when I wore the dress to make sure it still looked the way I remembered it looking earlier.

Do I have perfect thighs today? Certainly not by magazine standards. My thighs carry the battle scars of my struggle with food addiction. Sometimes I still feel ashamed of their wiggly spots, the cellulite, or the shadows of stretch marks from the rapid weight gain of my teenage years. But then I remember that my thighs are not burning from the chafing of too much flesh with no room to move. That they are now blessedly average.