Dearest Scale,
We have been together for as long as I can remember. You have always been in the corner of my bathroom, taunting me. I visit you every morning so you can tell me how worthy I am of existence that day. The numbers you show control me. When I was younger, I visited you 3, 4, 5 times a day just hoping that number would budge. You were there for me. When I was bleeding and crying, I could always count on the cool metal of your surface to hold me. When I was starving and vomiting, I would step on you for the reassurance that this would all be worth it. When I began to recover, I watched you scold me as you forced your numbers up. As my relationship with food became toxic once again, when I began eating everything, I still turned to you, hoping your numbers would talk some sense into me. They didn’t. Instead, the same numbers that once gave me comfort that destroying myself would all be worth it when I was thin, warned me that I was ballooning again. That as I gained weight, my worth declines. “Nobody will love you as much as I do,” you whispered as my tears splashed back at me. It was true, when I was crying, you were the only one to comfort me. But not because you were the only one there for me. It was because when I lock myself in a room with you, scale, I lock everyone else in my life out. I could hear them crying at the door, but your numbers spoke louder to me. I grew up with you. I love you.
But today, I am learning to love myself more. Today, I unlocked the bathroom door and let those clawing at it for years in. I let them hold me, comfort me, love me. And when I opened that door, I found myself standing outside as well. In the years I have spent with you, I have locked the person I could become outside of our little meetings. And I decided enough is enough. Today I learned that our relationship is not sacred, it is not love, it is not safe. My relationship with you is toxic. It has poisoned me for far too long. So as much as it pains me, I have to let you go. You were my first love, my rock for years. For all of my middle school and high school years, my friends would leave and new ones would come, but you always stayed. What I couldn’t see, is you had a chain around my ankle. I wasn’t allowed to leave. But today, as I unlocked the door, I freed myself of your chain.
My new freedom from you allows me to smile and love and laugh. I know you’re rolling your eyes but it’s true. Our love affair lasted far too long. You have laughed at me, mocked me, destroyed me. This is good-bye scale. You never loved me like I deserved.
But I love me.
Sincerely,
Melanie
