Dear Body,

You are not going to get better if you don’t change the way you live each day. You are going to continue to wake up every single day feeling empty and awful until the day you wake up and make the conscious choice to stop treating yourself like you are trash. Stop allowing people to treat you like you are trash. And most importantly stop walking around thinking you are trash. You are not and have never been trash. You are not the leftovers of someone’s story. Until you can see that, until you can really believe in your heart that you are more than garbage every single day will continue to be a burden.

You break my heart. You shatter me to pieces with the hateful thoughts you have in your beautiful head. Every morning you look in that mirror and criticize yourself. You look at layers of skin and think that defines who you are. You think your body is a prison love, when really it is your temple. It is your home, it is the place your soul rests in. Stop trying to be a number, stop trying to fit into a size, stop forcing yourself to be someone you never will be physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. It’s okay to be yourself love. It’s more than okay to be who you are.

The tears come because I look at you and it hurts to know that you are in all this pain. You smile and laugh even while you are bleeding out. You give your time to everyone else but yourself. You stuff food into your stomach to make up for the love you starve your heart of. You buy things you don’t need to feel temporary joy, but tangible happiness will never satisfy you. Happiness, my dear sweet child is not something you can buy, it’s a choice you have to make. It’s a battle you have to fight for. The happiness you are hungry for is born inside of you.

I love you. I love you so much, and I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know how these wounds became so infected. I neglected you. I made you hide that you were dying inside a little bit each day, and now you are so broken. It kills me to be you, and to watch you destroying yourself. You deserve your own love and affection. You have all this hatred for yourself, but it’s uncalled for.

You don’t have to be perfect to be worth loving.

You don’t have to figure it all out to be worth my time, or the time of any other. Just being you is enough. Love is more than enough. You are sick, and you will never get better if you keep putting all this weight on your mind, body, soul, and heart, all this pressure to be a certain way, to live a certain life. You are unhealthy and you are killing yourself from the inside out. You know better, then choose better. It’s going to be excruciating but it’s what you need to do to get better.

The sun won’t come out until you let go of the darkness. Until you decide you want the light and the warmth. Until you fight, nothing is going to change inside or outside of you. What happened to you all those years ago as a child and in college don’t have to be the burden you carry for the rest of your life. You don’t have to relive the nightmares each night. You don’t have to look in the mirror and see what they did to you, and what they made you feel about yourself.

The monsters don’t have to win, if you choose to fight back. If you choose to believe that you are more powerful than anything that has happened to you.

I know it’s hard to breathe, and that each day feels heavy, but you just have to hang in there and seek out the good and the love and the light in today. Focus on today. Focus on how you can be good to yourself today, and worry about tomorrow when it comes. Focus on this breath. Focus on how you feel right now, and not how you “should” feel.

Do not keep using food as a weapon against yourself. Do not keep stuffing things into your body to punish it. It doesn’t deserve it, and you don’t deserve it. Food is a gift, it is to be enjoyed and it is to be moderated. It is not a weapon to hurt yourself with. Stop cutting yourself open with each bite. It doesn’t fill up your soul the way you want it to, and it never will. That is not what food is for, and you know it.

Rest. I mean it, please rest. Please stop feeling guilty for needing space, and silence, and for seeking solitude.

Please stop living your life as an apology to the world for needing things. Rest your body, rest your mind, and please rest your heart. Whatever rest is to you, please do it. Read the book you want to read. Sleep with the music on. Just lie there and breathe in the day. I need you to rest, and I need you to know it’s more than okay to need it.

You need to know that you are allowed to make mistakes. You are allowed to screw up. You are allowed to not know the answer. You are allowed to feel lost, lonely, weird…etc. You don’t need permission to fall; being alive means there will be times when your knees get scraped up and you stumble.

You don’t need to have it all figured out beforehand; you can learn as you go. You can take the same path a million times until you find your way. You can detour around and find a new road. You can completely destroy this current road and make it something new. Whatever you do or don’t do, you will learn, and that is what really matters.

Stop lying to God. You can’t actually lie to him. You can’t hide from him. So stop trying to be perfect when it’s never real.

God never asked you to be perfect, he asked you to be faithful.

He made you, and He loves you, and you need to trust in His love above everything else. Be vulnerable with Him. Be real and raw and let Him lead you out of this storm. He knows the way, and He wants to see you safe. Go to Him, and stop holding yourself back from the One who has and will always love you for exactly who you are, and forgive you for everything you are not.

Talk to the people who love you. They want to help. They want to hug you. They want to be there for you, but you have to tell them how. They cannot read your mind. Speak to them, write to them, do something to let them know you need their arms around you and their strength within you. They have your back, and you need to stop trying to carry everything on your own two shoulders. We were made for one another in sickness, in health, in the chaos, and in the peace; let them love you.

You are lovable. You are their friend, their family, and they need you as much as you need them.

One last thing, please be gentle with yourself. Please be patience with each day. Please don’t let the wounds you have be the only part of you that you pay attention to. There is so much more to you than what happened then. Don’t let them twist you into someone you aren’t because of what they did to you. Be gentle especially when the wounds begin to bleed again. It’s going to take awhile to stop the bleeding love. And even longer for the wounds to finally heal.

It’s a process of forgiving, letting go, and accepting what was, and trusting in what can be. Abuse doesn’t define you. Assault doesn’t limit you. They thought they broke you, but they didn’t.

The damage they did to you can be healed, and all those broken pieces can make something absolutely breathtaking. They didn’t take away who you are, they never could. You are radiant, and you are more than the wounds they gave you. My love, please I beg you to stop punishing yourself for crimes they committed. Stop hating your body because nothing good comes from hate, love is the answer to every horrible thing that happened to you. Love is the path you must walk on.

Love is the door you must walk through. This is not who you are, and this will never be the whole story.

Let the pain out, wrestle with the emotions, face the wounds, and find the light. It’s there, and I believe that your story was always created to be full of brightness. Don’t let them rip apart your life. Don’t let the past steal your future. Fight for more, fight for your happiness. You deserve joy, so my love please choose it.

With love,
Self