"...followed by a brisk mauling."

I hate my body.

I make myself nauseous when I see myself. My body sickens me. My body disgusts me. I disgust me. 

I have internalized so much anger and shame and guilt and hatred that it’s become a part of me.

I am disgusting. 

I want to take pictures of my body and post them here. I want to scream as loud as I can that I am beautiful, that this fucked-up society that helped create me hasn’t broken me, that being beaten and raped hasn’t broken me, that being called a hippo, elephant, and cow hasn’t broken me, that you abusive misogynistic ex-boyfriends and lovers who have placed all of my worth solely on my body are wrong—I am and always will be more than how I look; my body is the least important part of me and I refuse to let you redefine me as simply an object. I want to shout until my voice is gone that you’re hurting me, Goddamnit, and by pointing out how fat and gross I am—well, maybe you’re trying to help, but it just hurts.

But I am disgusting. I have a double chin, a roll of fat on my neck. My torso is all fat: breasts, stomach, ass. I used to look pregnant. I don’t anymore; now it’s quite clear that I’m just fat. I’m cartoon-character, Harry-Potter’s-aunt, balloon fat.

While I was walking on the sidewalk today the wind was blowing blossoms off the trees. I want to be like that: lithe and graceful, thin and pretty. 

I’m not. I don’t think that I ever will be, but I certainly am not now.

And for fuck’s sake, I want to be one of those beautiful girls who really believes that her beauty comes from something other than the pure fetishization and objectification of her body. I want to be one of those wonderful women who truly understands how fucked our system of beauty is, that there is nothing wrong with looking the way she does, that she is gorgeous and has the right to be so.

But I’m not. I’m not. I base my worth on my body and my body is hideous.

I don’t want to feel like this. I want to have worth. I want to love myself. I want to practice what I preach, damnit. But I don’t and maybe I can’t. 

I think the worst part is feeling shame for feeling shame. My entire political and philosophical mind recognizes that the way I feel about my body and self is unhealthy. Feminism teaches me to love myself the way I am, because everyone is beautiful. Islam teaches me to love myself the way I am, because Allah created me thus and anything created by Allah is holy, sacred, and worthy of love. 

So many counter-culture images tell me to love myself regardless of how I fit into the average female ideal. So I’m 255 lbs. So I’m a size 22. So I’m heavier than anyone in my entire family. I need to love myself.

One of the men who means the most to me, one of the men who is honest about me, took me aside the other day when it was quite clear that I was really loathing myself. He tried to insist there was nothing wrong with me. There was nothing wrong with the way I looked. Our ideal woman is based on some really fucked-up principles, and 100, 200, 300 years ago, I would basically be the ideal. That I’m beautiful, and it’s our society that’s fucked. 

But I’m still constantly turned down based on how I look. I’m still constantly judged based on my weight. The people who try and make me like myself are the same people who think sleeping with me—as I now look—would mean they’d be ridiculed by our friends (who are my friends too, supposedly).

So society tells me to hate the way I look And then society tells me that I should love myself no matter how I look. So then I feel guilt and shame and hatred based on how fat I am, and then I feel guilt and shame and hatred for feeling badly about how I look. It’s this spiral of self-loathing and I’m stuck in it and completely unsure of how to get out.

I hate myself, and I hate myself for hating myself. It’s pretty messed up

(And if someone drops the word “Rubenesque,” I will slap you. That word’s become a cop-out, at least in my life, to make me feel momentarily better for being ugly).