Woman Apologizes to Her Body

Fruit PhotoI’m sorry I lied.

I’m sorry I lied to you every day of my life.  3, 4, 5 times a day or more.  I told you I would take care of you.  Good care.  I told you I would change.  I wanted you to just roll with whatever I sent your way and never suffer any consequences.  Not wanted, expected.  After all, you were mine.  I owned you.  You were nothing without me.  I drove you, I moved you, I kept you up late and made you get up early.  I took you places. I drank.  I ate.  I ate.  And I ate.

I tried it all, all the fixes.  The healthy ones and the unhealthy ones.  I desperately wanted one of them to work.  Everything from a liquid diet to therapy to a 12 step program.  It all ended in disappointment.  And in my world disappointment was equal to devastation.  Trying became too hard.

So I abused you even more.  Because it was too intense.  Or lonely.  Or fearful.  Or joyous. Or empty. Or excited.  Or uncomfortable.  Or habit.

It didn’t fucking matter.

Occasionally I would take care of you: a massage, a facial, a personal trainer, a few random trips to the gym always with promises of more.  There was that time when we did yoga every day for a summer and we both looked and felt great.  But it never lasted. And it was always nothing more than a band aid for the real problem: I couldn’t handle life.

I mistreated you.  I punished you.  I asked you to hold all my feelings inside for me and to make sure that happened I fed you so there was no way for them to come up.  I fed you so that I wouldn’t need anybody else.  I am a rock, I am an island.  The fear turned to terror when I realized I was no longer capable of handling even basic emotions.  I was an adolescent trapped inside the body of an adult.  A very well masked adult.

When you couldn’t take it anymore you broke.

I cried. Sobbed actually.  More promises.  I would change.  I would fix this.  I promised through heaving chest that THIS time would be different.  I knew I had been letting down all the people in my life, myself included.  Tomorrow was going to be different.

All lies. Tomorrow will never be different.

But today, today is different.