Peace with My Quarantine Body

“My pants don’t even fit,” a friend admitted to me on the walk. It was something I listened to a lot and felt comfortable with, no one’s pants fit after this last year. Many of me join the club to buy time to buy new clothes, except for a couple of pounds of weight gain …

… even more than 20 pounds. I swam last year when it stretched from one panic to another. Before I knew it, I had won two dress sizes. A familiar panic washed my skin when I realized I needed to increase my size when buying shorts this summer. I’ve struggled with weight since I was in elementary school and I felt like I was ending up with a familiar fear of being in a body that didn’t look like it. Then came the guilt of gaining weight in a romantic relationship with someone. I still struggle to accept my partner’s unconditional love when she meets my body when she looks awful. That’s complicated, because in my head, thinner, because it’s another person with a different life. That person could get a boyfriend, but that person can never.

“You know it’s just a number on a scale, don’t you?” The other day I heard my therapist on the phone. That scale number is flashing in my head again, like many times a day. What if I treated the number as it is – information about the body that is not related to my dreams or what kind of friend I am or even necessarily my health?

I was arguing with a friend that it’s made to be our bodies and even more so he meant be – different sizes at different times, and that our weights will go up and down and that’s fine. It is not until we are led to believe the lies of culture and fatphobia that these data about our body teach us. This did a little more for me and made me feel human – as a human being I had the right to go through the natural advances of my body’s grief and survival. I started thinking about ways to embrace my body as it is, even when I wanted to remove the skin and get away from it.

So I allow myself to really be there this body, not looking for my old weight 13 months ago. I walk through my neighborhood to make my body feel connected to nature and because I want to feel good and strong. I’m buying myself clothes in larger sizes, with a deep breath. This summer I’m going to swim in the ocean, probably in a bikini, wear short skirts and laugh at a higher volume suitable for brunch. I’ve hated my body too much time and I’m tired of wearing it. I don’t want any more. This ever-changing vessel has the right to enjoy what has survived.

PS “My boyfriend weighs less than me“And”I thought I accepted my body, then I got pregnant“.

(Photo by Chelsea Victoria / Stocksy.)