an open letter to my body

Hello,

I wonder how to greet you because we’ve never done this sort of thing.
But here I am smiling. Maybe I’m getting the sense that you get me.
And I feel it now, that you like me too.
I’m sorry that the feelings are yet to be mutual - that I both get you and like you.
On the surface, sure. But you and I both know the truth.
Oh, thank you for your patience, by the way.
For holding me up at this laptop way too late.
You know Hannah called me, and I’m going to a birth with her later.
I’ll ask you to do a lot; you know how births are.
Taking it on the chin like you always do.
The deprivations you endure, so I can *shine* for a moment.
You’re crying. Or is it me? Feels like both of us…
This is long overdue, huh?

Thank you for being here.

For always being here.
And if I could go back, I would love you.
I just didn’t know how. I believed loving you was wrong.
I’m sorry I couldn’t hold the oxymoron’s of the faith handed down to me.
Made in the image of God, corrupted by my flesh.
Flesh, that’s you - the blood I nourish, the bones I move, the skin I dress.
Evil. Vile. The face of my separation from God.
It’s no wonder I hated you.
Then made you pay the price for anything I couldn’t make perfect.
Thank you for taking the blame of my un-worthy existence.

Were you as confused as me?
Which was it?
Fearfully and wonderfully made in your mother’s womb?
Or made a sinner through your conception there - brought forth in iniquity?
Both apparently.
I forced you to choose, because I didn’t like that answer.
This is the holy war you’ve been fighting.

Thank you for fighting.

And for the messages, even when I couldn’t hear them.
Johnny Love has been the best yet.
I hear you now more than ever thanks to her.

I looked at you tonight in the bath.
Like really looked.
Toes and knees and hips and belly and hands and anything my eyes could reach.
The closest thing to my soul. The current embodiment of it.
The temple of the Spirit laid out on a pink tub.
Why do you feel so foreign?
It felt like I was looking at my fingers for the first time.
The same fingers that rubbed my mother’s cheeks while I nursed.
That dug for shells in the gulf every summer.
That braided my sister’s hair.
That caught me on the beam during gymnastics competitions.
That gagged me all of highschool.
That wrote every word of every journal entry.
That’s typing this now.
I’m just now seeing you, fingers and all, and my heart is swollen with gratitude.
You’ve served and served and served and served.
Hardly, the evil master they warned me about.
When I learned the body can only ever respond.
It started to click.
If anything you’ve been the slave.

Thank you for serving.

And in case I’ve never written in publicly, I love you.

Let’s do this more often.

XX