Dear me, I am sorry

By: Anonymous

How important is your body to you? For how long do you stare in the mirror and criticize everything that you see? How much time do you spend wishing you were different? I can't stop wondering at which point we stopped smiling to the reflection on the mirror and instead we face away. When did it happen? It seems like it was always this way, it seems like comparing ourselves to others is the only idea that never leaves our heads. This idea always comes back, with no warning, with no permission, and it just disintegrates every little part of us every time. We find ourselves standing in front of a mirror wishing we could see someone else in the reflection. We are constantly looking forward to having a body we can't seek. A body that we established as perfect and I think is ironic that we, the most imperfect living things on this planet, were able to put a shape to perfection. We don't even know what perfection means and yet we let it define us. 

This topic really put my nerves on the top because we have all allowed it to hurt us, or at least it has hurt me. During quarantine, I´ve got to realize that we are all going through the same things. We all think of what we eat, we all think of how we look, we all compare ourselves, we are all going around the same ideas in our heads, and I am so sick of it because it consumes us. We wake up everyday and compare ourselves to someone else, we wake up everyday and wish we were different, we wake up everyday and cry because of the fact that we don't look like all these women on social media. We hear all the time embrace who you are, but god dammit!!! what a difficult thing to do. 

It makes me so mad and sad to see and to know that almost every teenage girl wishes to look different, to be born in another skin. All these beautiful young women are comparing themselves, and don't get me wrong, I do exactly the same and I know how hard it is not to do it, but I am so tired of it. I am so tired of trying to have a body standard that I can't fill. This is why I wrote this, to say sorry to myself.

I am sorry that I compared you to others. I am sorry that I hated the way you looked. I am sorry that I tried to change you. I am sorry that I faced away when your reflection appeared somewhere. I am sorry that I made fun of you. I am sorry for not appreciating all the things you do for me. I am sorry that I wanted to make you smaller. I am sorry I talked bad about you. I am sorry for how I treated you. Nevertheless, the biggest thing I am sorry for is being your biggest criticizer. For being my own criticizer. I don't think of you all the things I used too, but I know that it doesn't matter how much I love you now, you will always be mad with me. I get it. It doesn't matter how much I appreciate my body now, she will always resent me for how I treated her.

I wish I could say something more motivating about this topic. I wish I could tell you what to do to stop thinking about these ideas, yet the truth is that I am still searching for the person that is going to give me those answers. So all I can say is:

Dear me, I am sorry.