Monday Morning
I enter my classroom to find a sub I haven't seen in a while, eyes wide with adoration.
"Wow, Miss Ashley, have you lost weight?!"
"A Little...."
"A lot! What's your secret?"
The lies feel more at home in my mouth than breakfast did.
"Diet and exercise, portion control."
"Wow! You must be so proud! You're truly an inspiration!"
An inspiration. I'm an inspiration. Held to the same caliber as girls who have been shot for their education and people who pen masterpieces and save lives. I'm inspiring because now there is less of me.
This woman didn't know that my lunchbox held only coke zero and laxatives. She couldn't know I'd spent the night before washing away the sins of dinner in the toilet. She had no idea I had collapsed running from the 50 pounds or tattooed myself with a razor blade: F-A-T; the worst thing one can be. But she knew who was listening.
The three and four-year-olds I teach heard her. Heard her validate my loss, affirm the wonder of shrinking. These babies love their bodies in a way we've both forgotten how; adore thighs, thick and thin for carrying them like wind through the playground, tickle tummies full of food, and have to be told 5 times to come out of the bathroom because they can't stop admiring they're reflections. They don't yet hate the person in the mirror, have no idea that they should.
To them, everything is inspiring: fat teachers who give warm hugs, strong arms to lift them up, stories and songs and smiles.
And themselves.
My sister suffers the same as I, trapped in a body the world tells her to despise. It may not be small but it created a life. I pray every day that little girl grows up to love her body for what it can do instead of hating it for what it's not. I pray she finds inspiration in people who add to the world instead of those who lose parts of themselves.
I pray she grows up knowing that if the most impressive thing I ever do is make myself smaller, I truly have nothing to be proud of.
