SUMMER BODY, PART 2:

Dear Summer Body,

Where have you been? Do you know that I’ve been looking for you for years? Ever since I can remember really. Well, there was this time when I was young. There was a time when my body shape was the last thing on my mind. I didn’t know about you then. I was learning how to move my arms and legs and use my body to live. My mind knew only movement and color and light, joy, passion and sadness, a growing world, fear and loneliness and wonder.

Oh how I looked for you when I learned about you. My Summer Body: the body all women were meant to have if they just tried hard enough. I saw you in magazines, on tv. I saw my friends grow into bodies that were closer to you than I was able to reach. People with their summer body were lucky, or blessed, or normal, popular and healthy.

In my search for you I almost died. Anorexia got me as close as I could be to you and still, I did not have you, My Summer Body. In leiu of you, my physical body began consuming my vital organs and I had to choose between my vision of you and my life. Today I am grateful for my choice, however, at the time the choice between you and my very breath was terrifying because more than most anything in the world, I did not want to be called fat anymore. I wanted the utmost in life. I wanted you.

You got that right, Summer Body. I would have rather died than give up my chance to meet you, to see you as me. I would work myself to bones for the breasts, the flat stomach, the languid legs, slimline shoulders and hips, long sensual neck and the hair, lips, eyes and skin like those “real life” models.

Today I know that you were there all along, that I am My Summer Body, that my search for you has been costly. But the struggle was then, and continues to now. It seems I am destined to ask questions about what body type would make me feel happy and loved and fabulous.

Dear Summer Body, would you do me a favor? Would you fit me? Would you settle in on my shape? Could you be happy with me the way I am and stop needing me to nip and tuck to fit you?

Big Love,

Brett Jenae, The Anxious Girl