Down shift

Man, spending three weeks with my mom really fucked me up

Now I look at pictures and in the mirror and I can't tell what I look like. I thought I was a slender and generally attractive young woman but now I see an enormous mutant who isn't worthy of eating even the healthiest of foods. According to my mother, even plates of vegetables are too gluttonous for someone like me; she watches each bite and exclaims over my portions for the duration of each of our shared meals. Do that three times a day for three weeks with a mind predisposed toward disordered thinking. Keep doing it even after you've told your mother that it's harmful to your mental state to have her shame you for everything you eat—for eating, period—and could she please stop because you worked really hard to be okay with eating, you almost died because for so long you were not okay with eating, and she says okay but then keeps doing it. The fact that I'm still eating normally = I'm a motherfucking powerhouse

(Remember that, June)


Still. It is weird not to be able to see yourself for what you are, to truly have no idea what your body looks like at a given moment in time, even with the assistance of photos and mirrors. I suppose it's possible that my thighs and my ass are thicker than they were at some point in time, but what is certain is that in the last seven days I have run, hiked, and biked upwards of 100 miles, and today I biked halfway up the side of a small mountain, I mean straight fucking up it, by the end I was roaring and that is what my thighs and my determination can do. I have earned every pound of muscle on my body, and I have earned it all back after a variety of near-catastrophic injuries, and I continue to earn it, just as I have earned my healthy mind, and I will continue to ferret out all that toxicity that was bred into me and force-fed to me because that is what I will not stomach