when will my body be my own?
November, 2024
TW: self harm, eating disorders, medical trauma, sexual violence
It’s been almost 10 years since I was institutionalized for an eating disorder. The older I get, the more I realize how much more harm than help that experience caused—and how deeply my experience with my eating disorder has always been connected to my transness.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about top surgery and the hurdles one has to overcome to obtain it—especially today. It’s made me hyperaware of my body and the stark reality that I’ve never truly felt agency over it. My body has never really felt like my own.
I hope that one day it will.
This poem is an exploration of all of that.
i was 12 years old when I learned my body wasn’t mine. my teachers were the lumps of flesh on my chest, snickers from boys when i tried to join the football team, and girls giggling at my ironed khaki shorts. i tried to stop it all. i thought that if i starved the flesh maybe it wouldn’t betray me, if i calculated it’s movements, maybe it wouldn’t change. they said i wanted, needed control. but they never asked why. they called 911, they dressed me in itchy hospital gowns, they put me on a schedule, confined me to a dull room. they pumped me full of calories, antipsychotics, and promises of elsewhere, elsewhen. they called me healed, and left me in pieces. the body may recover but the mind never does. it begins to search for agency, worth, love, belonging – all the things they stole along with my body. to a broken 13 year old, i thought these things existed in femininity: in mascara, push-up bras, cakey foundation. snapchat nudes, sneaking out, movements studied, practiced, and performed. but i found no agency, no worth, no love, no belonging. only a body and mind, scarred, violated, foreign. i wanted to be numb. maybe at 1 am with vodka burning my throat, i’d look in the mirror and see someone i recognize. maybe at mile 10, with knees aching and ankles cracking, they would feel like my own. maybe in california, with the pacific breeze caressing my cheek, i’d know who i am. but finding myself was never a game of hide and seek, an exploration, a voyage. i oozed out of myself during early mornings gulping for air, my dorm room, mirroring a hospital corridor. i trickled down my checks as my first love slipped through my fingers. today, i meet myself each morning. i stare in the mirror – perplexed, terrified, grateful i’m still here. i’m different than i thought. i always was. i wonder, if i could go back, would i tell myself there is nothing wrong, nothing i have to stop? but how do you explain color to someone who lives in a world of black and white? how do you explain nonbinary to someone who lives in a world of boy and girl? it’s been 10 years and i’m still trying to own my body. reclaim it from them: my family my peers the system the institution the men i let touch me the men i didn’t. and i’m still wondering – when will my body be my own?
