An Apology to the Body I Starved

Dear Body,

For everything I’ve put you through this year, I’m sorry.

For punishing you just for being you. For calling you weak just because you wanted to live. For starving you when I should have been nourishing you. For hating you when you needed love most. For feeling ashamed of you when you enjoyed food. For pushing you well beyond your limits and ignoring your pain. For neglecting you and expecting you to be OK. For giving you no other option but to start cannibalizing yourself just to survive. For believing I wasn’t really hurting you. I know you did your best to please the beast I was to you, and I want to thank you for keeping me alive, even when I didn’t think you deserved to live.

If I’d treated my children as I treated you, they would have been, rightfully, taken away.

I’m sorry that I have to learn to love you again. It will begin with respect and trust. Not on your part but on mine. I’m so sorry, little body, that I forgot what a miracle you are. You’re designed to work beautifully without my interference. I hope I can find the courage to just let you get on with it as I nourish you as best I can.

Little body, I hope we can be happy together. You deserve it.

Love and God bless,

Hannah

This post originally appeared on Gloria Is Not Me.