Enough

I remember the first day I looked in the mirror and said,

“Not good enough.”

I saw the red blotches on my face,

The rolls on my stomach when I sat down,

The bumpy ridges on the backs of my thighs.

I poked and prodded at each imperfection

And vowed to correct them.

 

I decided being skinny was the imperative.

Because maybe if I lost a few pounds,

I could pass as pretty.

And maybe if I had that gap between my legs,

I would be considered beautiful.

So I went fourteen months without food.

Only water and vegetables passed my lips.

Amazing what zero calorie diets can do.

 

I became a skeleton,

A 90-pound shell of a human being.

Living weighed more heavily on the scale than my body

And I still couldn’t reconcile my issues in the mirror.

The world became as empty as I was

Because nothing holds much meaning when you’re too focused

On how much space you take up at any given moment.

 

I was never satisfied.

No matter how far the numbers dropped,

I could never quench my insatiable thirst for perfection.

I convinced myself that I would never be sufficient,

Not because perfection was unattainable,

But because I was a glitch in the system of a beautiful world.

 

Seven times I tried to correct the error.

Seven times I tried and seven times I failed.

It took three and a half years,

Hundreds of pills,

Millions of tears,

Seven attempts

To finally understand

That maybe I wasn’t a mistake.

 

I began to nourish my body once more

And life took on new meaning.

Each breath was a gift,

Each smile was a privilege,

Each inch around my waist was miraculous story.

Maybe I’m not quite whole;

Some cracks are too big to be refilled,

But this morning when I looked in the mirror,

I grinned bigger than ever and said,

“Good enough.”

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