Dear Body

Dear Body,
I write this from a place of despair. I hate you but I am trying so hard to accept you, trying even harder to love you and to accept your flaws as being something that you have to deal with just to be human.
For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with pulling you this way and that, hitting you with various forms of abuse and never accepting that there's nothing I can do to change you to the extent that I crave. Somehow, I need to accept that this is the hand I have been dealt and that I am lucky to have you.

Dear Feet, thank you for holding me up when I have stumbled. I don't thank you for your lack of co-ordination because that dents my pride when I fall and smack my knees on the floor. It'd be nice if you sorted that out but I can handle that being the only issue I have with you.

Dear Ankles, thank you again for supporting me and for holding up the weight I place on you. I thank you for keeping me up at the times when I have done so much damage to my body that you would quite happily buckle and leave me face down on the floor.

Dear Legs, you amazing creatures you! Thank you for your discombobulated ways. Thank you for helping me on the various journeys I have taken you on. Thank you for allowing me to walk Bambi, albeit with pain and discomfort...you still hold me up and you still allow me to travel. Take that as a metaphorical reference or a literal one. I have grown and shrunk you in size more times than I care to remember and you have always been there.

Dear Stomach, its hard for me to look at you and think positively but for the sake of this exercise, I am going to thank you. For years I have abused you. I have starved you to crisis point and filled you until you could have, quite easily, popped and yet you have put up with my abuse. Thank you for your magical insides; your intestines that have been truly put through the mill with hundreds of thousands of laxatives and diet pills; the liver that has been pickled in vodka and other alcohol over the years. Thanks Kidney, you have had more electrolyte imbalances in the past 10 years than you deserve in a whole life time but you have never fully packed in. You have been close and have been in danger many a time but always somehow managed to cope. So, Stomach, I don't know whether I can thank you right now because I have days where I would gladly give you away, but I applaud you, you hard motherfucker. You are hardcore, so well done on that.

Dear Boobs, recently you have shown me that I am not actually as flat chested as I once thought. Ive always seen you as something to try and ignore but you're really quite spectacular. Thank you for not being down to my knees and thanks...erm...I feel weird writing to you because you annoy me sometimes. I can't run as a general rule but you don't make it much easier with your banging about. Ta, though.

Dear Head, you're a bugger with your serotonin levels and your various mental disorders. Its been difficult for me to accept your recent diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder and your long-standing Anorexia Nervosa. You cause me so much discomfort on an hourly basis but I don't stop to think about the positives you hold. You have a brain (shh to the haters. I do have one believe it or not!) and it controls all of the numerous bodily functions. You control my nervous system and I can't even begin to imagine how hard that job must be. Thank you for my imagination and for being the source of my sense of humour and various personality traits. You're one of those things that deserves so many 'thank you' messages but I don't even know where to start. You are the one that sends the signals to my limbs. You help me to walk, talk, even sit in my not-so-straight positions.

Dear Heart, you're the best of all. You are so passionate and you have been the one that I have so often put in danger. You've had to work your hardest to keep me going on so many occasions. You are bloody brilliant, really. Thank you for allowing me to love and for showing me loss. Thank you for allowing me to break you and then being open to being put back together. You're a beautiful organ that doesn't receive enough recognition.

So, Dear Body, I applaud you. I will still probably still despise you at times but I also thank you from the bottom of my heart. I so often treat you like an enemy when you really are a friend that should be valued in its own right.