I’m tearing up a little as I’m writing this, because I’m writing this on Sunday, and my Nana is dying, and I fully expect that by the time this posts on Thursday, she will be gone. (And that makes four grandparents in four months. Can 2019 just stop already, please?)
My mum has been going through the old photo albums, pulling out pictures of Nana, who lived with us for a while when I was little, and who often came to stay. She was the grandparent I saw most growing up, and I have a lot of treasured memories.
But that’s not so much the focus of today’s post, as the catalyst. Because one of the photos Mum found, and posted on the group chat between Mum, my two sisters, and me, was this one:
That’s my middle sister there in the front, my Nana in the middle, and me in the blue shirt at the back.
I don’t know how old I was in this photo, but it would have been less than eleven, or maybe just eleven at most since there’s no baby sister in the photo. I mean, she might have been off camera or something, but given me and the shirt I’m wearing and the size of the visible sister and all, I feel pretty confident that I’m less than eleven here.
I don’t remember how old I was, but I do remember that t-shirt. And, more relevantly to today’s post, I remember why I’m wearing it in this photo.
Because, you see, I realised something when I saw this photo on Sunday in the group chat: I’ve been embarrassed by my thighs for literally as long as I can remember.
I’m less than eleven in this photo, and the reason I’m wearing the t-shirt is because I refused to go swimming in swim-wear alone, because I hated my thighs that, to me, always seemed oversized and awful.
I remember being a little chubby as a kid, but I look back on photos such as this one and am challenged, because as an adult, I don’t look at this kid and see ‘chubby’; I look at this kid and see ‘kid’.
I hit puberty pretty early. There were only about 40 kids in my primary school (Kindy to Year 6), and I was literally the only girl with my period. I also had the matching physique: I was a C-cup in Year 6, the only girl in the entire school who really needed to wear a bra. (Oh, so that photo of me? I’m definitely less than eleven! :D) All of which is to say, I get why I thought I was chubby. I was way ahead of the other girls in terms of physical development, and I stuck out like a sore thumb, and I wasn’t super comfortable with my body as a result.
Even though, funny, it’s not like I have body hang-ups or anything. Just the ‘normal’ doubts and rocky relationship with the physical half of my being that most women have. I didn’t think about it overtly a lot as a kid – but I definitely didn’t go swimming without a shirt over my swimmers, or, when they finally became trendy and I thanked every fashion designer ever who’d been involved in the trend, board shorts. Board shorts were the saving grace of my dignity, even though it confused my dad why I wore them (hint: because when you’re a few years ahead of your peers in dealing with bikini lines, BOARD SHORTS ARE AMAZING).
So. I saw this photo. I remembered vividly wearing the shirt because I hated my thighs in a low-key, not-really-affecting-my-confidence-but-definitely-my-swimwear-choices. And with time and perspective, I see literally nothing there to hate.
I’m having a rocky relationship with my body again this year in particular, because I’ve been so sick and have put on quite a bit of weight as a result. And on the one hand, it’s funny, because I do *actually* need to lose some weight for health reasons – it’s impacting my joints, my sleep quality, and my blood sugars, but these days #BodyPositive is so trendy that everyone is really dismissive when you say you need to lose weight? And yet, on the other hand…. I still wouldn’t be caught dead in swimwear without my board shorts.
(Except for that term where I went to aquarobics and dignity finally gave into practicality, because it’s hard to jump up and down at the required pace/height and not lose your shorts :’D)
I’m meandering toward an end point here; thanks for bearing with me 😀
It’s becoming a lot more socially acceptable to just be a human being in a human body these days, and I’m grateful for people like Amy Sheppard who show me daily what this looks like. I’ve been talking the talk for a while now, while simultaneously struggling with my body, this year particularly as I said. And hey, depression is obviously going to make anything like this way worse, so I’ve been cutting myself some slack – but I saw that photo of me as a kid, and it stirred something inside, and you guys? I think it’s time.
I think it’s time to stop just talking the talk, and actually walking the walk. And sometimes that’s going to mean wearing long pants because it’s more comfortable – but sometimes it’s also going to mean ditching the shorts at the beach because it’s more comfortable, even if the thought makes me terrified.
So this I my line in the sand, between who I have been, and who I choose to be in the future. From now, from this line, I choose to be me. And that includes my thighs <3 <3 <3