A letter to my younger self: concerning a good body

Dear Savannah,

I've told you already how people will paint your body with angry hands and cruel colors. I've said that they will tear down your body, bruising you with their harmful remarks, prodding you with every passive aggression.

And I've told you that you will eventually learn to hate your body.

Because that's the easiest explanation. When you're young, you'll have no idea what to think of the curves of your hips, or the soft creases along your torso. You're made up of gentle bends and delicate careening lines. You'll find very few sharp edges, and much fewer points. Everything about you will be rounded off and sanded down.

Your breasts will fill in to the point where you'll feel outlandish for wearing them out in public and wish you could fold them away. Your thighs will rub snugly against each other as you walk, and your hips will sway along to the rhythm.

And all of this will feel so painfully awkward while you're in high school.

Because the pretty girls in high school are slender and lean, narrow chests and tight abdomens, smooth hair.

"Effortless," you'll think to yourself.

Your beautiful friends will tell you how pretty you look some days. They'll point out how nice your butt looks in certain pants. They'll tell you how envious they are of your chest.

None of it will feel quite right. You'll wonder to yourself whether their comments are sincere or if they're being kind to you because they like you. You'll thank them and make a point to hide those features better next time you go out.

And then, little creature, you'll meet a girl with unruly hair and the curves of Aphrodite herself. She'll be something straight out of a Botticelli paint, or a figure that Michelangelo mercifully freed from marble. You'll see her and you'll see those familiar lines, curves and gentle bends, those curls, those soft, bohemian corners; you'll see this girl like your reflection on the surface of a lake.

You'll see her, and she'll be the most lovely thing in the room. When previously you had felt so inexplicably wrong against your backdrop of slender, tight-bodied friends, you'll see her and realize how misguided you were to see yourself as a anything but marvellous.

This will start a quiet revolution inside you. Cautiously, as if you were approaching a sleeping feral beast, you'll admire yourself in the mirrors of your house, taking inventory of those once infernal curves. It'll be a slow progression. The ugly voices in your head from high school will jabber on, but you'll begin to tune them out.

Once you cross that fine threshold into adulthood, your body will start to feel more appropriate and desirable.

Like, hot damn.

I know this is hard to imagine, especially after battling those harmful voices in your head for so long, but there will come a time when you will long to retain the shape of your body.

I'm not saying you won't have rough days. Those are inevitable.

But, little one, you will love the body you have. It's a good body. It's a body that is pleasing to the eye, perhaps even to the touch. There are men who will look at you as if you are a divinity. There are women who will long to have a body as "effortless" as yours.

You've got a heart for strength and for pumping blood through your system. You've got a stomach for poetry and for nourishment. You've got legs to support yourself and to stand up for the downtrodden. You've got hands to hold and to heal.

Sweet little thing, you are valuable and your body is good.

Love,
Yourself

A letter to my younger self: concerning feeling unloved

Dear Savannah,

There are plenty of people who love you without condition or reason. They love you because you're kind to them, or because you listen to them, or because they've watched you grow since you were fresh out of your mother's womb.

There's a sea of people who love you for all of the quirks and flaws and skills and difficulties you have. These people will rally up beside you in adversity and will defiantly take your side when all seems lost.

And yet...

And yet, regardless of all the people who adore you, you'll still look around and ask, "But where is the one? The one who is supposed to make me feel whole? The one who will bundle me up on rainy nights and cuddle me close? Where is the one my heart craves?"

Savannah, I know you're too young (too wholly misunderstanding of the complications that await you), but I ask you to bear with me while I explain:

You'll have your heart broken. First, it'll be the Trickster boy. Eventually it will be the incredibly short-lived flirtation with a boy who lives very far away. (There's another story that will have to wait until I've fully digested it myself.)

You'll have your heart torn to shreds by a boy you hardly know, but who you'll convince yourself is God's choice for you.

And despite these heartbreaks (and perhaps because of them), you'll begin to see boys through narrowed eyes, considering them a lot more closely than you had before. There will be no more of this, "I don't deserve someone like him", but rather "I deserve to be with someone who truly cares".

This is where you'll realize that what you crave is an endangered species.

"I need a boy who loves Christ," you'll say.

But most of the boys you know who "love Christ" speak of women as a right of passage. They're first concern is finding a woman who will be submissive, and their next concern is the state of her virginity. They would rather memorize chapters of Deuteronomy than show love to people who need it. They'll be quick to judge a girl on the length of her shorts rather than on the tenderness of her soul.

"I need a boy who understands my need for art," you'll say.

But most of the boys you know don't know what that even is. The church-going ones will call it idolatry, or vanity, or pointless, or whatever negative adjective suits their fancy at the time. They'll call you selfish when you talk about pursuing your career, your dreams. They'll see you sprouting wings and shoot you down before your feet can even lift off the ground.

You'll ball your fists up tight, eyes puddling with tears, and you'll say, "I need a boy who just..."

And you'll stop there. Because what are you even saying anymore? What do you need from a boy that doesn't contradict itself?

You want

You need a boy who gets you. And that will sound so awfully cliche that you'll want to tear up the words as soon as they leave your lips.

No one will understand, and when they say they do, they don't. Not really. Because everything is very cut and dry for everyone else. Their needs don't contradict each other as much, and they'll be more comfortable with compromise, and they'll be better at other things so it will just work out.

God, if you even found someone who matched your heart, who managed to fill all the empty spaces, who could refill you when you've poured yourself out for others, if someone like that even existed, what would you do? You're inexperienced and scared as all hell. If he touched you, you'd apologize. You've been told how gross and clumsy and plain you are for so long that you wouldn't want him getting anywhere near your body for fear of him running in the opposite direction.

But, oh God, you want to be good enough.

Savannah, I've wondered for a while why you (why I) like the rain. Plenty of people like the rain, I know. It's not exactly ground-breaking to like the rain.

I've decided that you like the rain because there's something weirdly comforting about it. It's almost as if, perhaps, something is out there saying "It's ok, little one. I'm sad with you." Or maybe because there's someone else in the world standing out in the rain with just as heavy and longing a heart as you.

Or maybe you just like wearing big sweaters and how the rain makes your hair stick to your face in a very Jane Austen novel way.

Little one, I don't think we find anyone for us. Because our demands are too unruly and complex, and because boys in real life aren't like boys on pages.

It will get to the point where you'll begin scribbling the word "lonesome" on your arm, as if you need a reminder.

Your friends will tell you that you'll find someone, and that you're too pretty to not fall in love, and that you'll marry someone who is just perfect for you, but little one, I don't think he exists.

One time, I was working on a puzzle with hundreds of pieces, and as I got to the end of the puzzle, I realized I didn't have all of the pieces to finish it. That's how I feel about finding this person. He's the piece that got wedged under the couch or tossed out in a dustpan, or perhaps this puzzle was just mistakenly made without a piece to finish it.

Savannah, I don't want you to think that this pain is intolerable, and though it certainly stings, and though you'll stay up until 3AM on most nights with a restless heart, you as a person are still loved by too many to count.

You are valuable, and I love you. It's okay to cry yourself to sleep. It's okay to be hurt and lonely. We make it through.

Love,
Yourself