I often glare at you in the mornings. I will inspect the ways fabric folds over and around you - clinging in all the wrong places, unfavorable and unflattering.
There are long days in our history of wild, rampant hatred over how I believe you have failed me. You used to be fit, tight, flat, and strong. The fury that fills my veins over you no longer being this way is enough to blind me to all the intricate beauty in this world.
Admittedly I cannot go on blaming you for failing me - for putting you under the weight of fault - because it was never your job to take care of the rest of me . . . Certainly, I have failed you gloriously.
I have broken you down.
Seasons of my life were filled with weekends that existed around testing how many fluid ounces of alcohol I could fill you with before I stopped remembering. I just wanted to forget all the ways we no longer looked the way we did at 16. I wanted to toss to the wind just how much I missed being looked at lovingly. I needed to stop recalling what being called beautiful felt like -- it hurt to much to remember hearing it and realizing it had stopped happening at some point. When did I stop hearing I was beautiful?
In the midst of the consumption of what it took to stop the memories I put you at additional risk. Soft sheets, cold sheets, bedrooms poorly lit, and therefore forgiving, became a part of the landscape of a heart brittle with thirst.
I created friction until you were raw with the wanting.
You continued to get me out of bed each morning -- after gluttonous extracurricular devastation -- after overeating every last single feeling -- after raging screams of how hideous I found you to be. Every morning, we woke up to another day.
How many times have we been here? Me promising to make it better, make you stronger, starve the hatred to nonexistence. Innumerable.
I am a liar in the face of an oblivion of promises.
When did it change? Where the sweat began to be welcomed - because I was doing something for us and us, alone. When did it stop being about who would notice an entrance into a room and begin to be about how much hope came from each minute of exertion?
You never stopped working for me. I simply stopped caring and let you down.
There will be dark days. Without inquiry, I will say something unkind towards you. But this feeling -- this elation at how all your parts continue to get me through each work out, through each day, out of bed each morning -- I want to implant it into my memory.
It won't be easy -- a love affair with the shell that carries my soul. Because the soul, it's wild, and my heart is wandering, and critical judgment comes too swiftly in the valleys.
But it is worth this high.
I really am trying -- I hope the exquisite ache in the muscles is proof of that.
I am so sorry -- for failing you. For putting you in danger. For not realizing what a gift it is that I can move and dance and gesture wildly at any given moment.
And thank you. For helping me realize the wonderment that can come from realizing our own strength.
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