My Fitness Journey

Her skin was the color of coffee with a little cream, her hair; milk chocolate--and eyes too. This never changed. It seemed as though everything else did.

Image hadn't crossed her mind until it was planted there. Like a dandelion seed, a wispy thought swirled through the air from the wind in one field into hers, and soon the field filled with odd, yellow flowers. They swayed and sang yellow flower songs. She'd walk out into the field with a glass of lemonade and chat with them. Sometimes they'd tell her stories they'd heard in the other fields, of love, of adventures, and of sad things. One dandelion told the coffee colored girl that she was beautiful, that her nails were a lovely shape, that her colors and shapes were desirable. She hadn't thought about this before, about her nails, about her colors, about her shapes. Suddenly, she'd become aware.

The eyes found new meaning, they were promoted from observer to confidant. You see, the mind had a whole new system to figure out with this newfound awareness. It was an awful lot of work, so he figured he'd ask the eyes to help him with a certain task: judgement. If they could not only view colors, shapes, and more, but analyze them, he would be able to tell the coffee girl what to make with these new thoughts.

The trouble was that judgement wasn't meant to be made by the eyes in this way.

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Each day, when the girl woke up, she'd make pancakes for herself and grandpa. Some Days they had blueberries, some days; chocolate chips; butterscotch chips; sour watermelons (not good); M&Ms. And after a lovely breakfast, she'd make her way to the powder room to be rained on and soaped, to scrub her pearly whites, and powder her cheeks pink. As she'd look into the mirror, on occasion those nails would catch her eye, and she'd be reminded that someone thought they were pretty. Sometimes she'd remember that the rich color of her hair was enchanting. And this gave her butterflies.

She became bashful about her appearance, realizing that people noticed her lips, freckles, and smile, realizing that sometime soon, she might find herself being kissed! One day the milky chocolate girl strolled out the back door, down the steps, and into the dandelion field. She told them about her new ideas and they oohed and ahhed, saying "Yes, I've heard about this in the stories my lemon colored girl used to read to me," and, "Oh, yes! I've heard too. A kiss sounds wonderful," and, "I wonder if it might be that neighbor boy that stopped by last week," and, "What makes you think that you're pretty enough to be kissed?"

...

At that, the field hushed. Every yellow flower turned to find a leafy little something with eyes unkind. The dandelions told him to be quiet! They told the coffee girl that he hadn't known anything at all. She told her mother, who came and picked that leafy meanie out of the ground, but he came back in twos, fours, and tens. That thought consumed her. What made her worthy of love?

She picked herself apart in the mirror, noticing things she never had before. It consumed her. She stopped eating, she obsessed about the contents of the food she did have, and how much of it she could burn off in a day. It consumed her. Her light went out. Her glow dimmed and dulled until she became someone else. Despite recurring reminders of her brightest pieces, those slivers that she found in her skin to be wrong were the only ideas that she took for truth. If someone told her she was beautiful, she thought they must've been lying to save her feelings.

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And then her body couldn't take it anymore. It ignored the eyes and mind as much as it could and took matters into its own hands by fighting her strategies. If she planned not to eat, it would make her. It would overcompensate, fearful of not knowing when it would have the chance to eat again. Thus began a new cycle of strain, the battle between starvation and overcompensation.

It felt to her, like she could never get out, like she'd be in this war for the rest of her mortality, like she'd never be worthy of love from anyone else, and that she would never find anything to love about herself. Until one day, I couldn't tell you when or why, she just stopped. Those grassy thoughts stayed in her mind, but she stopped acting on them. It didn't feel like a choice. It felt like a miracle, that she could eat without immeasurable guilt and stop when she was full, that she could move without the hammering obsession of burning fuel. It wasn't immediate. It did have to do with the choices she'd made.

And it started with the choice to write in a book with purple dandelions on the cover. She took it to school and filled it with thoughts about books she'd been reading, people she'd encountered, and eventually, things she noticed about herself that she loved. It was finding bits of personality that she could adore that created this idea that she did deserve love, if only for her heart, habits, and home-y nature. That seed of love evolved into a field of yellow flowers that she planted on her own, digging beds for them, pouring them showers of water.

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And eventually she met a place where she could take action without falling back into obsession. The coffee girl had found acceptance by letting go of any thoughts on appearance. She had gone back to that innocent state of unawareness that she'd come from. The next path at hand was that of new awareness.

A gingersnap appeared before her one day and told her that she could do anything. After some time, she believed it and began consciously taking care of her body for better reasons than before. It wasn't vain or visual anymore. It was about feeling happy, having endurance to play in the backyard for hours with the little ones she'd nanny, having energy, and ensuring that she'd live a life free of medical bills, pain, and discomfort. She began eating intuitive, balanced meals, going for walks, going for runs, doing squats, and anything else that felt wonderful! She loved the idea of an hourglass shape and began doing certains exercises to create it, without falling into a bad place. She did everything out of love, and she still does. She doesn't take care of herself out of a feeling of unworthiness, of need, of lack. She graces her day with health and wellness for the purpose of being happy, of being capable of anything, of being better able to help those around her.

She lives her dream life, in her dream body (even on bloat-y days), in her dream home, with her dream people. Because she decided to accept, then improve from a better place. Because she believes that she can. Because she follows through.

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That's my story.

It's something that I've come to love and appreciate more than I thought possible.