Today

CW: mental health/suicide

I have days, with this disease, when I feel deeply suicidal. When the frustration and pain and loss is all too much, and I feel so low that I begin to wonder if the dysfunction in my body is reaching my brain, turning my synapses against me and making me self-destruct horribly, like a car crash in slow motion. On those days, I often feel awful about myself. The disease, if that is what it is, brings up all the old tapes, the messages long banished about who I am and what I am worth, and they consume me and make it impossible to function normally. 

Today is not one of those days. Today I feel sad. I feel sad about the exhaustion and the pain and the impossibility of feeling in any way safe, but I do not hate myself. I look at myself today, the self that has not moved freely for more than two years, the self that is bigger than she was and can no longer wear the clothes she wore before, and I love her. I love the curves, and the blemishes, and the moles that are scattered across my skin. I love the little red bump that I have had on my thigh most of my life, right next to the whorl of spider veins. I love the softness of my skin, and my belly, and the dark mass of curls between my legs. I love the shape of me, and the space I take up in the world, where in the past I would have been judgemental and harsh, and I believe instead that I deserve good things. I deserve better.