FRIEND OF MINE

Loren Rae FRIEND OF MINE

Self-hatred is a friend of mine. If that’s how you could define her constant presence. I remember meeting her when I was just a little girl, maybe shy of nine years old when, I noticed that my tummy poked out from my favourite green and pink sparkly skirt, when I noticed I was the only one wearing glasses at dance class, when I couldn’t run as fast as the skinnier girls. You would have thought I would have left that imaginary friend in the past, right?

Wrong.

I feel her when I cover my arms, when I instinctively conceal my stomach, when I act bubbly so people won’t know I’m flat. I see her when I commend other women’s confidence but can’t muster my own. I hear her when I laugh off fatphobic comments. I come face to face with her when I pull my shirt upwards to reveal underneath what feels like a horror scene of slashes that ravage my frightened skin.

My body feels like a crime scene. Like I have police tape over me, saying ‘do not come near, do not touch, do not enter.’

We’re all survivors of a pandemic; we fought, we sacrificed, we changed in order to live. But for some reason, my body still feels like a disease. With the culprit of transmission being the infection of media, expectations of gender performativity, and the ever-changing and unattainable vision of perfection that is needed just to feel wanted.

For so many years, that is what the experience has been, so it fell into a singular question: am I wanted? Or more than that, am I worthy of being wanted? My mind, which has been moulded by generations of expectations, tells me no. Every day, in every moment. No, you can’t wear that, as you’ll look bigger in it. No, you can’t go out running because you’re too slow. No, you can’t participate because you don’t deserve to.

No.

The word puts a heaviness in my chest. I can see the word connected to my body shame by a road. A road which has been paved, painted, and driven on for years by tabloids, social media, diet culture, and body-shaming. It feels as though I will forever hold onto that shame-driven resentment, stopping myself from living life for years to come.

It’s only recently that I have truly started noticing the way my loved-ones flinch when I say something horrific about myself, all because sitting with self-hatred is a regrettably comfortable place for me. I am only now noticing the years of self-deprecating humour, not just chipping away my confidence but bulldozing the building-bricks of my soul. I am crushed, not moving, not breathing. Only believing that somehow, someway, I will survive here.

I won’t.

If I stay here, I’ll die.

So, perhaps it is time to take a turn. Get off this road and drive somewhere else. Respect that a pandemic occurred, and that my body moving from straight sized to plus sized is simply that: a body that is moving. That I have permission to live and breathe, experience and participate, and love every day as I am. If one turn lets me understand that my passion for loving others should equally belong to myself, then the turn is worth it.

Wish to walk through life without believing that my weight defines me, that I have value as I am. I hope that others who are close with self-hatred learn to leave that friendship behind. I hope we can all stop covering ourselves as if we aren’t magnificent. And whole. And so beautiful. I hope we can learn to break through the black and yellow tape. That we can respect that we faced something of nightmares and still emerged strong in the daylight. I hope we learn that love is the antidote. And that with that cure we realise, I like I am realising, that we are wanted. Wanted by one another, wanted by ourselves, wanted as whole, learning, and transforming beings.

Self-hatred is no longer a friend, and yet not an enemy either. I simply no longer have room for her. Not while I have, or hope to have, myself in all beautiful tremendousness, and within that, all the love and desire that I need.