Dear Sam

Dear Sam,

Today was hard. Harder than I would like to admit. I feel overwhelming guilt for my weakness but I know you would tell me that I am only human. I know we are healing and you are reading this, healed and happy, looking back at how far we’ve come. You understand balance and moderation like I wish I could now. The logging has helped, the tracking has educated me. I just want to be you already, but I realize that hard work is the only way to see progress and fully heal. Writing to you makes me want to make you real, it inspires me to move forward. My body is a machine, requiring energy to function, and working more smoothly with some fuels than with others. I love my body, myself, and you. Thank you for being there so that I can remind myself of that.

-Love, Sam

I close my laptop, and collapse onto the bed. I have been writing to my future self for inspiration for about a month now and I think it helps. Or at least I like to tell myself and my Mom that it does. She is worried about me even though she would never say it outright. I don’t think she understands what I struggle with, I mean it’s crazy for you to hate your body, right? Shouldn’t you be your own biggest fan? I mean, I’m not even fat, why what is there to hate? Valid point, I guess, but honestly it would make much more sense to be disgusted by yourself since you are comparing your raw footage to the endless stream of highlight reels thrown in our faces everyday on social media. I would explain this to my mother, but I prefer to save my breath for battles I can win. And for running. I plop my feet back on the floor and will myself into a standing position. I walk over to the full length mirror against the door and resist the urge to body check like I do every single time I pass a reflective surface. I am stronger than this. I turn around and walk to the window. Opening the blinds, I peer out onto the calm afternoon street. It is May now so there are leaves on most of the trees and the color is returning the landscaping. I love this time of year, other than the fact that it means track season. Don’t get me wrong, I love running. Running is my passion, but what I simply can’t stand is attire and the swarms of girls who seem so confident in their athleticism and their bodies. This wasn’t an issue for me last season, actually I looked forward to the tight tank top and shorts they require us to wear. I saw nothing wrong with the way that I looked, I loved myself and I appreciated what my body could and still can do, but this year, the pit in my stomach is more than just pre-race jitters, and I genuinely don’t know what sparked the change. I suppose the best comparison to this feeling would be how in movies when a superhero is saving someone from really high up like on a building or something and they tell them not to look down because they'll get scared. The character inevitably looks down and begins to shake, not able to escape the fear now that they are aware that they are in danger. That is how it is for me. Now that I see the parts of my body that aren’t perfect, I am in constant fear of anything other than progress towards fixing these areas. And even though I look better than I ever have before, the depressed girl from ten months ago is still somewhere inside of me, burdening my life with all-consuming guilt. To the point where eating a celebratory cupcake at school today was enough to give me a mini internal panic attack.

The clock downstairs chimes 5 times pulling me out of my thoughts and back into my room. It’s a mess. I should clean it before I do my homework. I grab some hangers from the closet for the clothes strewn across my bed. It is 5:23, my room is now clean so I open my binder to begin my homework. My stomach grumbles. When was the last time I ate? Noon. My lunch was like 500 calories plus the cupcake plus breakfast plus a fry off of Abbi’s plate and I’m sure I'm forgetting something, there’s no way I deserve a snack. I’ve had plenty, too much really. I return to my work. I type a paragraph of my essay. It’s 5:34, my stomach rumbles again. I’m not hungry, I ate too much already. Wait a minute, wasn’t I just telling myself that I was healing by listening to my body? I push away from my desk and stomp to the bedside table where I left my journal. Opening up to the bookmarked page, I add another entry.

Dear Sam,

WHY. Why do I keep doing this to myself? I lied to you like I lie to my current self every time. I am not healing, I’m hiding. Maybe if I were truthful with myself I would actually start to heal. Hey, this journaling thing might not be too bad after all. I mean you are the only person that really understands what I am going through and if I don’t quit overthinking, then you will never exist, or at least you won’t be who I want you to be. I am going to go have a snack in moderation to satisfy my hunger because my body is telling me that I need more fuel. Thank you Sam.

-Love, Sam

I hope no one finds this journal because this is embarrassing. On my way out of the room I successfully pass the door mirror without body checking along with mirror 1 on the way to the stairs, but the mirror at the bottom of the stairs caught me off guard and I lifted my shirt out of habit and didn’t even realize it until I was leaned backwards and sucking in and flexing. Is this normal? No, definitely not. How is it rational to think that if I don’t check all the time to see if my body has changed then I won’t know and it will get out of hand. I need to chill. I continue to the kitchen, praying that mom isn’t in there. I turn the corner, big surprise, she is. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mom, but she is just so optimistic all the time. It’s unrealistic and quite frankly, annoying. She also sucks and listening, especially when talking is the other option. “Hey sweetie!” She says when she hears my footsteps on the tile. “How was your day at school?”

“Fine.” I brush past her to get to the fridge.

“Well my day was much better than fine, I finally talked to Jim about my new idea for the expansion to-” She turns away from her cutting board. “Wayward par- oh Sammy, what’s wrong?” She shuffles over to me. “Did someone say something mean to you at school? You know kids only bully because they are insecure and they want others to feel their pain, right?” She grabs my head. “Or do you maybe have a headache? There’s some ibuprofen in the cabinet, I think you can take 3.” She reaches past me into the fridge. “Ooh do you want something to eat? I have apples in the lower drawer, yogurt straight ahead, and, oh my gosh.” She spins around and heads to the pantry. “I just bought some new gluten free snack bars from Aldi’s and I need a second opinion on the flavor.” She grabs the box and turns back around. “I can’t tell if they taste more like cardboard or rice” She rushes around the kitchen and continues to talk rapid-fire like she has been isolated and lonely all day. I turn back to the fridge and pull out a yogurt cup. I don’t even know if she knows that I haven’t been able to answer any of her questions. I sit down at the bar with my spoon and dig in. I absent-mindedly read the nutrition facts as I eat. Only 100 calories, I can live with that. The yogurt is actually really good. I eat a few bites. I have to finish that essay though. “Well, I really have to get back to work, Mom, dinner at 7:00?” I start backing out of the kitchen. 

“Yes sweetie, I am going to head out for a walk in a bit so you will be here alone, make sure to keep the doors locked while I’m gone.”

“I will Mom, don’t worry” I take the stairs two at a time and plop down at my desk with my half-finished yogurt cup. I shuffle my Taylor Swift playlist and knock out the essay in record time. I excel at two things in my life, running and writing. I love to run and I have gotten pretty good at it, but that isn’t even the part that matters to me. The work is so much more satisfying than the medals and the cheering. There is nothing better than seeing how much your body can endure and then watching it adapt to be able to endure even more. I am also super competitive so all of it works out to make me moderately successful. The other thing that I love is writing. I have a bunch of half-developed story ideas in my notes that will probably never come to fruition. I write some killer school essays and poems, the words just seem to flow out of me and it makes me so happy. I love to read, run, and write. Sounds like a lonely, nerdy, and unteenagery life but I have genuinely never enjoyed myself more than I do now. The most freeing thing I ever did was give up caring what other people thought and found that I actually love hanging out with myself. If I could go back and tell myself one thing it would be that other people will like you better and you will have more fun if you know yourself and are confident. Wait, I could just write to my past self too. She needed to hear this.  I spin around and grab my journal, opening to a fresh page.

Dear Sammy,

I love you. You are so precious and beautiful, I never want you to let anyone tell you differently. Do what you love, be who you want to be, and never change for the brainless jerks that say hateful things for no reason. You were created for a purpose and you can never reach your purpose if you change your personality for every little stuck up 7th grade girl that doesn’t know you or care about you. Someday you will fall in love with your intelligence and tenacity, never let them hold you back. You are amazing. I love you Sammy.

-Love, Sam

I push away from my desk and slump in my chair. That was even more freeing than writing to my future self. Seeing how far I’ve come in my journey to loving my person is really inspiring and it makes me think that maybe in the future I’ll be able to look back and see how far I’ve come in my journey to loving my body too. I rip out all of the pages from the journal that I have written over the past few weeks and I pull open my top desk drawer, the one holding my stationary, and pull out a chunk of envelopes. I spend the next 10 minutes folding, inserting, and sealing all of my letters to my future self and dating them to read one year from the day that each one was written. I go to my closet, pull out an empty shoe box, and shove all of the letters into the box. I bury it beneath a pile of shoes for safekeeping and plop down on my bed. I wonder how long my recovery will take. Is one year long enough? There are times when I feel so much better than I have in a long time and there are other moments when I feel like my mindset is back to day one. I guess I’ll just have to trust the process.