I was seven years old the last time I really felt comfortable in my body
But after that
Push it out
Push it away
Deny
Deny
Deny
And you convinced yourself everything that happened was in your head
And it all feels wrong
Like your skin is all stretched out too big for you compared to how small he made you feel on the inside
but the marks go away eventually.
Then at ten when my body started Changing
and I was so afraid people would start to Notice Me
But there were bigger things to worry about then, obviously
And then I was twelve or thirteen and that's when it really Started
I don't want to keep writing this but I might as well finish now that I've started
It's like thoughts about the outside mixed with other Thoughts and I felt so Small
It's that feeling like your skin is stretched way too tight and I thought maybe if the outside me matched the way inside me felt then maybe the Thoughts would leave
But the smaller I got on the outside the smaller I felt on the inside and I realized it could continue like this but I'd never be satisfied
So I told my dad and for a while things were better
But then Austin died and Will left and I felt the smallest I've ever felt in my life and so the Thoughts came back and back and I guess I forgot it didn't work, maybe if I was as small on the outside as I felt on the inside then everything would be Okay and I would feel Valid for once. Like here was something that I could control when I couldn't control anything else and it felt good. I hate to admit that but it's true. Then I met Eleanor, who made it better for a while until she started having her own Thoughts that rubbed off on me and it felt so familiar to fall right back into that trap so I just let myself. I hate that I was comparing myself in that way to someone I love so much but...yeah. And it just got worse and worse. And at that point I had years of damage and I couldn't just push them away like I used to. So that's where I am now, trying to fix those years of damage, and somehow it's harder than anything else I've done which is crazy because I've been through wars but then it wasn't up to me. I was just a kid who had no clue what she was doing. And now it's up to me, like it's my own war and I have to decide the outcome, whether or not I'll let the Thoughts win.
