Letter to my younger self: I’m not mad at you
Katie,
I know how you’re feeling. You’re cold. You’re so cold you wear your green Moonstone jacket around the house, even with the fire going. I remember when you picked that jacket out for crew practice to protect against the wind on Dexter Lake. Now it’s the only insulation your tiny two-dimensional body has. The cold is your constant companion, and as much as you hate it, you need it to reassure you that you’re almost thin enough.
I’m writing to you now because I had to throw that jacket away recently, after thirteen years. I tore a hole in one of the arms and it was leaking a stringy white material. But the moment before I let it go, I pressed it against my face and you were right there. I saw you, sitting in that green coat, watching your sister eat Goldfish.
You are worried that the oil from the chapstick you applied that day is being absorbed by your body. You leave the kitchen when your mom starts cooking—you read somewhere that smells contain fractions of calories. I let the coat go. There isn’t a lot that connects us anymore nowadays, Katie.
I’m not writing to tell you to stop wasting your time and your gifts, to stop hurting your family, to stop destroying yourself. You already know this and it’s not stopped you yet. You’re sick. You’re infected with a cultural virus that you aren’t strong enough to fight yet.
I’m not mad at you. I love you with incredible tenderness.
I know you are thinking that you’ll die from this, that you would rather die thin than live fat. Even you see the horror and the insanity of this—and yet, you can’t escape it. This scares you and makes you sad, but you can’t act sad. Mom knows that you become sad when you don’t eat, so you have to pretend to be happy and energetic to trick her. To trick her into letting you die. To trick your mom who loves you, who raised you, who would do anything for you.
Katie, I’m not writing to guilt-trip you. I know how much you already hate yourself. What I’m really writing to tell you is that you will live! Did you hear that? You will live! You can’t see it now, I know, but I promise that you will even live long enough to see a day when you think about things other than food. In fact, you will be great. You will build a truly unique and beautiful path.
It’s a path that will start with a really poorly motivated decision (ha!). You see, soon you’ll face the question of what to do when you graduate high school. And with your twisted logic, you’ll select the path that promises to burn the most calories: you’ll join a trail maintenance crew!
You’ve never camped and you’re just shy of 90 pounds, but sure! Who’s to tell you you can’t swing a pickaxe with the best of them? Katie, I have to give you credit: you are one tunnel-visioned ballsy mother-fucker.
And guess what? You’re going to fall in love with outdoor work! You’re going to feel the cold and the heat in new ways. You’re going to meet all manner of plants, animals, and people.
You’re going to encounter views that will remind you that there is beauty in things other than thin girls and that you are small in the world and yet somehow still significant and that there are actually reasons to wake up in the morning and it might just be to receive the gift of seeing a mother bird bringing food home for her baby chicks.
It might remind you of how your mother cared for you, her baby bird, sick and crying in the nest and refusing to eat.
And you’ll start to see food in a new way. Not as something that you simultaneously fear and covet, but as something that your body needs to stay alive and to do work. Slowly, slowly, your life will turn to become more about action than restriction. More about dancing than hiding. More about loving than fearing.
You’ll go on to study biology and forestry, you’ll plant over 3,000 trees, and then you’ll climb them and prune them with chainsaws! Did you hear that, Katie? Hang on right now with everything you’ve got because you have a life full of adventure waiting for you.
Keep trying to live. Keep trying to get better. I know you’ve tried a thousand times, but you’re going to need to try a thousand more. You’ll find that there is no one magic moment or strategy that is going to solve this—there is only persistence, grit, patience, and courage.
Trust that one day your efforts will be rewarded. Trust that you could—and you will—become someone who lights the way for someone else who is stuck, struggling, and fearful of change. Trust that you will eventually see the lie and help others to see the lie—the lie that the worth of a woman is directly related to how close her body conforms to the standard of white, young, cis, slender, and smiling.
The truth is that women are worthy of love simply by being. The truth is that every woman’s body is a miracle.