Good Enough: Taking Shit Back

 

"Did you see her? Damn, she looks pretty good. I mean, her thighs are still fat, but she looks good."

 

Freshman year of high school. First freaking day.

I'm wracked with anxiety about locker combinations and class schedules and new teachers, but the thing I'm not worried about (for the first time in my life) is what people are going to say about my body. I'm not worried because I have a secret. 

I'm starving and no one knows it.

You see, in this body - this strong, athletic body - you can starve for three months, and still look pretty good. You can learn how to make it appear that you've been eating dinner, without taking more than three bites. You can spend HOURS running the streets of your neighborhood, and no one really suspects anything.

Because in this body - the one that settles comfortably into a size 10 - a size 6 doesn't look like starving. It looks like a virtuous girl who finally got her shit together and shed the baby fat on her belly.

Or as it turns out, a virtuous girl who wasn't quite virtuous enough because she forgot to get rid of that fat on her thighs, leaving her only with enough virtue to be deemed "pretty good".

And In my world, pretty good has never been

Good enough.

You know, when I remember that version of me, the starving version, it didn't really start as starving for food. In fact, I think the command I exercised over what I put in my mouth was the only way I could figure out how to avoid being consumed by my craving to feel good enough.

Like as long as I could be distracted by the gnawing emptiness in my belly, I wouldn't have to be bothered with the painful aching in my spirit.

And the reverse has proven true, too. In a desperate attempt to quiet the rumbling on the inside of me, I grasp at every possible thing that might fill me... too much food, too much booze, too much work, too much of all the things that numb the vast emptiness in my gut.

Because it still lives there. This endless craving to be good enough. It still lives in my gut and it tugs at the edges of every memory, threatening to cast a shadow on all the good things, making them just "pretty good".

And this craving... it's a liar and a thief.

Have you ever had something stolen from you? Something that you loved? It's a singular experience that is hard to describe. Having someone take something from you leaves you feeling so vulnerable, so naked, so raw. And then, once you move past that, it leaves you angry and ready to take your shit back.

That's where I'm at.

I'd like my shit back.

I'd like the joy and the sorrow and the laughter and the disappointment and I'd even like the periods of nothingness, the in-between places where nothing spectacular happens.

I'd like to experience this insanely full life through this beautiful, brave body that is learning to trust me again.

Because it's all enough. It's already enough. It always has been.

And I want the same for you.

I want the exhale that comes when you push yourself away from the table after you eat a beautiful meal surrounded by your Beautifull people. I want us to stop craving and rest in the fact that we're already full. 

The chasing is over, the craving, fulfilled. You are enough. Exactly as you are, exactly in this moment. Forever and always.

Be full, beautifull.

Up Next Week:

Go Out and Do Your Magnificent Things: A Manifesto

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