Hide-and-Seek

My body is undeniable.
it is here. it is willful. it is willing to engage, it wants to be seen.
it is a force to be reckoned with.
All those years I've spent hating it's vitality. Despising my blood, organs, and flesh.

always having the audacity to remaining equilibrium. Nevermind the destruction I tried so hard to hurdle at it.

Meetings with doctors, height of bulimia:

"Your labs are normal," they say.

"Your bad at this dying thing," I hear.

Trying so hard to ruin the vessel that carries me. Failing so profoundly at my own unnatural mission of extinction.

My body is unstoppable.
No longer able to deny its' presence, I try to learn to tolerate its' softness, its here-ness, its' unwillingness to be ignored.

I've walked through the world for so long imagining myself invisible.
As a child I thought playing hide-and-seek meant covering my eyes standing up against a wall.
As a teenager I ate lunches of cheese sandwiches in the bathroom stall, lifting my feet up whenever someone entered, willing myself not to breath to avoid detection.
Now I grapple with the undeniable reality of a body that is tired of hiding, tired of being stuffed and ignored and starved and pinched and despised.
my body stands before me in my reflection, impossible to ignore and tired.
And yet there is something so lovable about this body. So innocent. So sweet and affectionate, despite thousands of lunches denied it and years spent bent over the toilet, heaving, leaving, gone.

So i take the first steps towards the exit.
I try not to wince too hard as I emerge from the shadows of my own making.
It's time to stop hiding.