I Want a Perfect Body

And I want a perfect soul.

If you really love something, then you treat well, I think.  I've heard that somewhere at least.  It sounds true enough to me, anyways.  Let's for a moment, except this as truth.
I've been thinking about how I treat my body.  Not very well.  I must not love it.  I think I should love it.  It's a gift.  It allows me to do anything.  It allows me to feel, and touch is my favorite of the senses.
I torture it sometimes.

When I wake up in the morning, I pick out an outfit and go into the bathroom.  I take off every scrap of clothes that I wore to sleep and do a full evaluation.  I shudder at the fullness of my hips and  the lumps on my thighs.  I suck in my stomach and try to press it in with my hands.  I begin the process of putting on my clothes.  I contort and twist my body into fitting into whatever items I have picked out.  Sometimes I wear sausage-casing-esque "shapewear" in order to make the bulges look smoother.  They're fine at first, but after hours of wear, my body begs to be freed.

Once I'm dressed, I begin the process of plastering colors on my face.  Mascara, eyeliner, foundation, powder, bronzer, eye shadow, sometimes blush and lip gloss.  When I was 13 my dad noted that mascara was Spanish for mask.  I think about that sometimes.

I fill it with junk.  Or what's worse, I eat raw vegetables for about 8 hours until my withdrawal-shaken body lashes out and I then eat way too much of whatever it begs for.  Usually sugar.  Sometimes potatoes.  My body has weird cravings for potato products lately.  After I do that, I think about how weak I am.  I am filled with regret.  I drove my body to want this, but yet I look at it so disapprovingly.

This is not the peak of my body mistreatment.  In high school, hardly a day went by where I didn't skip meals.  Being hungry and then overly full seemed to be the regular.  And eating in front of people was always a struggle.  I went through a period of time where after binging, I would take laxatives in order to try and erase all the bad I just ate.  But then my body would just feel as sad as my mind did.

I don't always feed it so poorly.  But rarely do I let it move the way I should.  For most of my life exercising was admitting that my body was disgusting.  It was like saying - hey I am fat so I need to go to the gym.  Every invitation to do physical activity was perceived as a slight on my physical appearance.  And I grew to dislike it.  So, so much.

When people didn't like me, usually I blamed my body.  Let me clarify.  When boys didn't like me, I blamed my body.  I told myself that if I wore clothes that had a size with only one digit they would all like me.  That what separated me from the girls who had boys chasing them down was the number on the scale - and I hated my body all the more for it.  And that lead me to treat it worse.

At night, when I go to take a shower, I do a repeat of the morning's body check.  I stick out my belly to see how far it will go.  I get mad at my wrists and ankles and calves and shoulders and knees and thighs and cheeks for not having the decency to be small and feminine.

I'm not going to censor like I usually do and not post this.  Usually when I mention how I actually feel about my body, I am met with half-hearted attempts at telling me that I am actually beautiful and that I should own my body and that here's how I can be healthier and that my body is divine.  Sure, maybe all of those things are true.  But sometimes, its all I can do to not hate my body.  To simply just know that it is the way it is and not be mad at it.