Dear Diet Culture / I'm scared of my body
Two more things I wrote at Renfrew today. “Dear Diet culture” was an assignment during a group therapy session. “I’m scared of my body” is a personal vent.
Dear Diet Culture
Dear Diet Culture,
I would ask what’s wrong with you, but I already know. You have many roots, some more sympathetic than others. You were so afraid of food, once upon a time, and for good reason—too often, food was poison. What a horrible state of affairs. But that time is over, and all you have left is hatred. Hatred for health, for real bodies, for gender-nonconforming people and people of color and women. You crave money over life and trash decency everywhere you go. You are vile. And I know my disgust won’t kill you. But I will sever your strings, one by one, my own and others, and maybe by the time I die you will be weaker than when you first laid your blood-stained hands on me and my family.
I would say I hope you die a slow and painful death, but that would leave you in this world longer than necessary. No, I hope you die a quick and humiliating death. I hope you live only long enough to panic and fear for yourself, only to realize it’s futile, and you give up with your pride shattered.
I hope I live to see that day, but if I don’t, my ghost will enjoy it anyways.
Fuck You,
Junia
I’m scared of my body
I feel my body waking up, and it scares me. “No one has yet determined what a body can do.” There is no control, no safety, in that. My body paints fat and muscle and bone where it pleases, without my consent. It feels in turns hostile and bewildering.
I am told not to hide from my body. Day by day, I shrink from its assaults. I feel them, but cannot rise to meet them. I’m scared of my body. I’ve never met anyone as uncooperative as my metabolism.
Hunger, hunger, hunger. My body asks me to feed it more. I feel like I gave the mouse a cookie. It learned not to ask for things, before, but now it asks for so much. “It is fixing the damage done.” I liked how I had remodeled the place. It’s taking a sledgehammer to what I had built.
It doesn’t know how important this is. How it will impact how others treat us. Opportunities, care, self-esteem. It doesn’t care. Inconsiderate, disrespectful, insubordinate body!