THIS RIGHT HERE.

I really sort of LOVE this girl. She’s probably at least 20 years younger than I am and she’s GOT IT. She gets what it’s taken me most of my life to get.

I’ve said it before, here and on my old site: I have been a size 4. I have been a size 14. I won’t tell you what size I am now, because it DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER.

I am not a size 4 anymore. I’ll say that much. To be a size 4 required almost superhuman effort on my part to maintain. It meant not eating very much. It meant obsessing over what I could or couldn’t eat. It required way more counting and planning and denying than I could keep up with, so I stopped. And then I wasn’t a size 4. And I didn’t keep any of those clothes in my closet. I don’t refer to clothes as being “fat clothes” or “skinny clothes” anymore. They’re MY clothes. And they’re really, really nice. My body is really, really nice.

My days of clobbering myself over my body, of agonizing over what I should or shouldn’t put in my mouth, are nearly over. Hopefully. It’s almost like early sobriety. I’m counting days since the last day I stood in front of my mirror and said something completely hateful to myself.

Think about your body. It gets you around. It can do amazing things if you let it. Why insult it? It’s like telling your friend that drives you everywhere that her car is ugly. I saw a tshirt that said something to the effect of: “If you talked to your friends the way you talk to your body, you wouldn’t have any friends left.” That hit home. Here’s just the short list of what I’ve said to myself:

Fat
Disgusting
Pasty
Doughy
Gross
Huge
Pig
Cow
Stupidfatcow
Whale

Why do we talk to ourselves like that? It’s ABUSIVE.

As for whether I was “healthier” at size 4 as opposed to where I am now? No difference. My bloodwork is always A-OK. Blood pressure is ridiculously normal. I belong to a gym (two, actually). But I’m not a size 4 because that’s simply not the size I’m supposed to be. And it’s okay.

I’m going for ice cream.