For as long as I can remember, I have never truly been at peace with myself. My body has never been a home to me, but instead a battleground, one in which a civil war of my body versus my mind has been raging for over a decade. Faded yet still resentful scar tissue stain the flesh of my hips and the soft skin of the inside of my left bicep, slashes from the swords yielded by my mind’s disgrace. Stretch marks network a web of complex emotions across the quiet rolls of my stomach, the seemingly meaningless lines of the expansion of my skin representing more than the physical growth of my body.
The Ocean Sees me for who I am
It’s become a joke within my family that if there’s a puddle of water big enough to fit my body, you can sure as hell bet I’ll be in it. Rivers, where the rush of the current keeps me constantly on my toes, the gurgling of the water as it hits up against the rocks and swirls around my limbs, leaving my ears roaring with the sound of adrenaline. Lakes, where the surface looks like glass. How silent it is once my head slips underneath the surface keeps me submerged till my lungs begin to burn for the taste of oxygen. Sometimes pools, although I don’t like those much. The chlorine makes my eyes sting and my skin itch, and they’re always filled with kids splashing and screaming, which eliminates the sense of peace that comes with the quiet.
The ocean is my favorite though. Its vastness makes me feel so small, so insignificant, I become only a human reduced to a mass of goosebumps and a beating heart. The moment my feet find the frigid water any sort of apathy that’s stuck to my soul washes away, leaving only the feeling of raw and pure tranquility.
Once the waves begin to tickle the skin above my waist that my bikini leaves exposed I always pause. That’s the point where the world blesses me with a break from all that is bad. My breaths are deep and even, although they sometimes come out shaky from the shivers that wrack my body. There’s the always possibility that I will get caught in a riptide and then swept out into deeper waters by the currents, surely leaving me to drown. Even with that risk, I feel safer here than I have ever felt. Death is always lurking, even in places that you deem safe. And yes, the Oregon coast isn’t the calmest of coasts, nor is it the warmest of waters, but that’s what adds to the appeal. It’s what keeps you so incredibly and undeniably present. The waves that crash around you can bring more than death and destruction, these waters bring grins that stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic, giggles that echo louder than earthquakes, joy that has the power to save lives.
My legs are usually numb by that point, the flesh of my calves and thighs colored bright red from the cool bite of the water that rushes around me. The combination of the lack of sensation in my legs and the fact that my thoughts have slowed to a matchable pace, one that doesn’t taunt me with it’s overwhelming speed, leaves me feeling light. I am more present here than I have ever been in any sort of therapy session. My mind is finally connected to my body, my soul no longer is torn between my brain and my heart, but is now nestled in between the waves that are crashing around me.
For as long as I can remember, I have never truly felt at peace with myself. As a 5 year old I hated the way my stomach hurt all the time, I hated the quiet hum of what I now know was anxiety that seemed to always accompany the sounds of the playground. As a 7 year old I hated the crookedness of my grin, how I was too short to reach the Nutella in the cupboard, and how my eyes crinkled when I smiled.
As a 9 year old, everything about my body made me flush with anger, scream with hatred, cry with frustration. I despised the way my thighs rubbed together as I walked. I hated the small rolls that formed on my stomach when I sat criss-cross applesauce on the rug of my classroom for story time. The way my body wanted things that my mind refused to give it.
As an 11 year old I hated the way my body had grown. The way my once stick like legs now rubbed together again, how my sister couldn’t wrap her hands around my bicep anymore, how my stomach felt full and bloated at all times. I hated how trapped I felt in my body.
As a 13 year old I hated the way my chest felt, how the bras I wore made my skin itch and how if I didn’t wear one the way my tits bounced as I walked. I hated how when I first got my period the mood swings caused more damage than the cramps, but that the cramps reminded me that I was no longer a carefree girl, but a “woman” and what even did that mean? I hated that while my friends compared chest sizes at sleepovers I was thinking about how sometimes I wanted to scratch the skin away from my breasts until the flesh was flat and unbothered.
As a 14 year old I tried to force myself to love the way I looked. I told myself that the hatred I felt for my body was just another product of the anorexia that plagued my mind.I learned that the C cups attached to me were more important than the humor that lived inside me. I dressed in low cut shirts and leggings, hoping that maybe if I could convince the outside world that I was “girl enough” I would maybe feel good enough. And yet, I still hated the way that each month, like clockwork, my uterus would shed itself of its lining, reminding me that my body will never feel like home, and would never be mine.
As a 15 year old I began to wear sports bras two sizes too small, hoping that if my chest was flatter then maybe the thoughts of leaving this world that roared in my head would leave me alone. I cut my hair short again and for days my head felt so light, so devoid of self hatred that I thought maybe I would be okay again. But still, my body didn’t feel like my own, more of a hotel than a home. When will it ever feel like mine?
And now I’m 16 and I own two binders and my own Calvin Klein boxers, my name is now Rowan and I say I am proud to be non-binary. I say I am proud to be queer and I am proud to say that I am still here, still breathing, and that my heart still beats a steady rhythm in my chest, reminding me that my body is doing the things it’s supposed to do. I am still working, so very hard, to be me, to be the most authentic, and true, and real, and legitimate me that I could possibly be. And I realize that my body may never feel like my own but it is mine. My body is mine. It is not the internet’s perception of my personality, not the media’s picture of what non-binary looks like, not the fleeting image of an outfit from the view of stranger, I am me, and only I get to decide what that means.