A letter to my body.

Over at BlogHer they are "launching a brand new Letters to My Body initiative" and I have decided to participate. If I would have written this letter a few years ago it would have been all about my disappointment in my body's ability to lose weight, not anymore.

Dear Body,

I wanted you to know that I am slightly angry with you, yet afraid to be so.

I am angry because my whole life I was raised to believe that the whole point in you was to go forth and multiply. I spent my whole life wanting to be nothing other than a mother. I sang songs about it. “When I grow up, I want to be a mother, and have a family, one little, two little, three little babies of my own.” As you know, the song even makes me cry while I am typing it. I am sure you have heard me singing that very song in my head over and over, heard me singing it in the shower, and most recently heard me crying it while I shower. You know that the shower is my favorite place to cry, it washes the tears you create away.

My whole life I banked on it. This was what I was going to do when I grew up. There were no other plans, no other options. Why? Because having a baby is what I was raised to do. That song? They taught it to me through church. The whole religion is very strong about women going on and having babies, and let me tell you, when I was younger…that church was my entire life. The church and knowing that I was going to grow up and have babies is what my whole childhood was about. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved that. I still do.

After working out all of the outside stuff to get this baby making business started (you know, money, stability, the lack of sperm) you took awhile to get the memo that this is what I wanted. Not as long as some people, and I am grateful for that, but still.

Then one morning you finally gave and in and did what you were supposed to, and you made me the happiest person alive. I was over the moon. You let me feel something that I had only dreamed about. I felt pure, unconditional, whole body consuming, love. A love that is so powerful that it almost scares me with how strongly I feel it. The joyous morning that that second line finally appeared on my stick some of the first words out of my mouth were “I am no longer a failure.”

You kept me in that peaceful, happy, full of love stage for four months, and then you took it all away again. You got to hold that precious baby for four months. I have to wait until I die to do that. You stole it from me. You stole memories that I was already planning. You stole me finally feeling like I had my family back. You stole everything, and I am angry at you for that.

And yet, I sit here afraid to type anymore. I am afraid that next month, when we get to start drugging you up again, that you will sit back and say “Look lady, I don’t care what you want. If you are going to be mad at me, I’ll give you something to be mad about.”

Please don’t do that. Let’s work as a team together again. Let’s work towards that goal of what I believe you were born to do. I will try to be patient with you, if you promise to understand that I do sometimes get frustrated. As you have already noticed, I am trying to get rid of some parts of you. Please don’t make the tummy growl too loudly when I am passing up the cheese fries for plate of steamed veggies.

We need to get together and make another baby. I need that, or you and I are going to be in a lot more trouble than we already are. I am finally dragging you and I almost out of the pit we were in, please don’t make me lose my grip.

I am going to thank you now. I know that in a few months I’ll be too busy planning new memories, because you are going to come through for me, so I will be too busy to write again. But you will know, since you house my brains and my heart, how thankful I will be to you.

Let’s get it right this time.

Signed,

Me