Like so many others before me, I am on the journey to loving myself. The wild notion that I don't love myself suddenly came to me last week after I went to bed, dizzy and sore from working out for the fourth night in a row; but not before weighing myself, reading cosmo like the gospel, and looking at thinner girls on the internet. It's so much easier to give advice than take it, right?

“All bodies are beautiful!”

Unless that body is mine.

“Forgive yourself for your mistakes!”

Unless it was me making them.

I get down on my knees. To the sky, or to anyone who will hear, I ask, why am I cursed to spend my days in this shell? The razor blade tongue that lives in my ear seems to always have the answer. It likes to make its appearance in the bedroom, right before the sandman pays a visit. You know that time when you're far from sleeping but not really awake either? I listen to the carpet sizzle and crack as venom drips onto the floor. It shows me a film of all of my past mistakes, like a plane crash showed in slow motion. I am left with an incision that starts at the base of my throat and ends at my pelvis. I reach in and turn my intestines inside out.

It is here that I learned how to carve, stretch myself end to end under fluorescent lights and a microscope. I bore into myself, looking for any parts worth keeping. My hands are sticky and blood cakes under my fingernails. I do not know if I can survive another round through the wringer. I cannot endure this cage of bones I've built around myself any longer.

I have reduced myself to only a body, finding my worth in how soft I can make my footsteps. I am the breath of the universe living inside of a body. That's all a body is right? Transportation. We are all gravitating towards this place we call home. This place where we know the love flows like a river and we never have to worry about its absence. I hope one day we can meet there. So what have I found after all the digging and the prying and the examinations? Love is not a process of removal. You cannot cut away at yourself until you like what you see. Love is being gentle with all of your parts. Taking them in and embracing them with a soft touch.

Love that when someone knocks out on your couch, you never hesitate to throw a blanket over them. Love that you always leave the last slice for someone else. Love that you can't make it three steps into your house without getting on the floor to play with your dog. Love that sometimes, when someone wishes you happy birthday, you say, “you too!” Love that you have hurt people and love that you have learned from it. Love that sometimes you get angry and you curse and punch and spit. Whatever it took to make you the way you are, love that too.

You know, you and I only have one shot at life and it doesn't exactly come with a free trial. So don't be too hard on yourself not if, but when, you fuck up. It is inevitable. We are human. And we all scrape our knees sometimes. Remember when you didn't think that you could make it? When it felt like the world was suffocating you with an iron vise grip? Well here you are, reading this. Living. Continuing to love. Continuing to gravitate towards home. Continuing on the journey.