Beautiful (Journal#4)

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You're beautiful, another comment on a picture of me glowing and pretty, you're beautiful. But you don't see me when I wake up, when I sleep, you don't see me when I eat everything and anything. You are beautiful said the unknown man behind the computer screen, but he didn't see that stretch mark and that one dimple on my thigh that I wish would die, he doesn't see me. I wish I could be more like you, but all you see is a picture with a million filters blocking my freckles, spots, and wrinkles, blocking who I am and what's inside. You are beautiful. Ten people say I'm perfect and one says I'm not, that spins around in my head like a merry-go-round, but a merry-go-round isn't so merry. You're not, you're not, you're not worthy. When I was ten I was fat and not cool, I couldn't be a part of your crew. I still remember those words that burned in my brain until I believed it myself, I am not beautiful. Those words in my brain leak down my cheek until I could not speak and you silenced me, you are not beautiful. The girls in magazines aren't even the girls in the magazines, their imperfections with unattainable goals that we think are beautiful, even I think are beautiful. You're beautiful said the boy in my class but just for a laugh, his friends said it would be funny but it's not because I know I'm not beautiful. It's just puppy-fat, you're just big boned, why don't you stop eating then it will go. Okay, I won't if that's what it takes to be beautiful. Binge after binge, purge after purge, whether I got thin or fat my grandmother still told me you are beautiful. With the sweep of a blade maybe you'll see the pain, paint it on my skin because tears don't stain. I'm proud of my scars but I'm ashamed of them too, they tell me they're just battle wounds but it's not perfection, and perfection is what I want because I want to be beautiful. You lost weight, wow you look great. One hundred likes of a before and after. You're such an inspiration, well done, keep it up. Now you get to be what we expect you to be, now you get to be happy, now you look good. Did I not look good at a size 24, and being a size 20 mean I'm so much more beautiful? Does every pound I lose make me a better person, a more socially acceptable person to others? I don't even know what I want to be anymore. The ideas of perfections have been shoved down my throat like the cake I ate yesterday, no like the two cakes I ate yesterday. Does my body and my shell mean more to you than my heart or my brain, or do your brains wish to think the same? Is everyone else standing in line to be a size 0 at the same time? You are all beautiful. Girls want a thigh gap, collar bones, hip bones. They won't eat dinner because they can, yet across the ocean a girl won't eat dinner because she can't, or breakfast, or lunch and you're still beautiful. I'll be the first to say all bodies are good bodies, all bodies are real bodies, don't hate your bodies. I'll say it to thousands of people, thousands of times but when I look in the mirror and say it to myself, you are beautiful, it feels like a lie. I went to a sleepover and a girl told me that my arms, my legs, and my thighs are not beautiful. I still remember that girl that said you are not cool because you are not skinny, 10 years later to this day she has forgotten her words but they hurt just the same. We teach our daughters the way we want it to be, we project what we think is beautiful and we don't even know that while we're stepping on those scales she is watching. Your little girl is watching, and learning. Teach her to empower girls because girls become women and women need to empower each other because empowerment is beautiful. Bones are beautiful, fat is beautiful, brown hair and pink hair are beautiful. Brown skin, white skin, every skin in-between is beautiful. Tall, short, old, and young, we are all beautiful. I am beautiful, you are beautiful.