MEMORY

The body remembers everything.

The looks in the school locker room.
The phrase, “You’d look better if you lost weight.”
A hand instinctively covering stretch marks.
The habit of posing only from your “good side.”

And shoes a size too small because “small feet look more feminine.”
Broken toenails.
Feet reshaped by shoes that hurt to walk in but look beautiful standing still.

We were taught to see ourselves as projects that always needed fixing.

And the worst part isn’t even that.

It’s how quietly shame becomes the background of your life.

As if you have to earn the right to exist by having a beautiful body.

But the body was never the enemy.

It carried us through fevers and sleepless nights.
Healed wounds.
Kept us standing when everything inside was falling apart.
Held the people we loved.
Remembered touches that still send shivers down the spine.

The body never asked to be perfect.
It only asked us to stop seeing it through someone else’s shame.

I think honesty begins exactly there.
The moment you stop fighting yourself.

When you stop sucking in your stomach in front of the mirror.
Stop calling yourself ugly because of one random photo.
Stop hiding scars, folds, the marks of time and life.

Because a living body will always be louder, more complicated, and more beautiful than any false story built on stereotypes.