Bodies

What would I say to the police if I was to report it? This idiot choked me and mashed his teeth against mine and I know what was on his mind, but we were the only two people around so, uh, you’ll have to take my word for it?

My wrinkles are filled by plump instead of poison. As my svelte friends talk Botox, I can simply smile and not only because my face still allows it. Cosmetic surgery is ubiquitous with my fashion-forward skinny friends.

I’ve been writing about body positivity on the Internet for a couple of years now, but I have to admit that if anything, loving my body has become harder than when I started. Since then, I came to understand that I had an unresolved eating disorder that I battled for six years, I’ve started working out and I’ve discovered a passion for cooking.

Over those five years, I volunteered on hot summer days and rainy mornings. I stood in snow, wearing warm layers and fleece mittens. I volunteered beside women and men, many of them young, like me, but some older and wiser and living out a lifetime of experience on those sidewalks.

The thing about trauma is that it creates inherently unreliable witnesses. Victims tell as much as they can bear to tell, in that moment, and perhaps even as much as they can remember. Memories can be hazy and dim until the second that the curtain is lifted and the body is thrust back into the moment of abuse. There is no such thing as one way of processing trauma, and there is no perfectly linear path to recovery, either.

So why are we still talking about this? Because the fight against Planned Parenthood is really about something much greater. It is, as it always has been, another attempt to police women’s bodies, their experiences, and their sex lives. It confuses voters with emotional rhetoric and then strips women of their rights through shame.

I can't help but wonder, what could be different if I start teaching my little girls at a young age what the muscles are under all those body parts that the magazines will be so quick to label as flawed in a few years when my girls start reading them?

A part of me gets it. If you’ve never had any mental illness, who wants to date a crazy person? Many people think of mental illness in extremes and stereotypes, i.e., depressed people never get out of bed or those with OCD will never leave the bathroom.