Work Text:
Dear girl,
this is the first letter I am truly writing to you, meaning the word “girl” as it comes; at 35, I have finally found a connection to you for the first time in my life. In this newly gender-sensitive world, I am very consciously calling you that, “girl”, because I feel this is who I am talking to. For the first time in 35 years. We can thank a correlation of various—often tragic, exceedingly sad—life events and Florence & the Machine’s particular music of finally, finally reaching this point.
I am so intensely feeling your yearnings this second that bile sits in my throat, at the same time that I feel I could run screaming through a wheat field while the sun is burning my skin and the rain is coming down in a tempest: so very euphoric in a catastrophic grief.
I have never talked to you in all my life. I have been ashamed for having this body, for growing breasts—what I viewed as annoying fatty lumps that garnered me unwanted attention, and while I never wanted that attention I was ashamed these fatty lumps did not correlate to what was societally condoned as “attractive”—for bleeding (oh, god, that humid feeling of it trapped on cotton, the wetness, the musty smell of pads, the reaching inside with a tampon, that squelchy, wet, soft, hard atrocity, the cramps, the pain, the mood swings, the PMDD, the whole world coming down in a single minute for no reason, the terror—), for the softness and curves I never wanted, but at the same time for the odd angularity of other parts that I did not want either, and who am I kidding, I never DID know what I wanted, did I? Did I? No, I did not. Because I have never in all my life connected to this body as something that just is, I viewed all these things—the physicality, the parts, the functions—through this humanly constructed lens of horror, all the societal, cultural, deeply ancient historically rooted misogynist constructs so that it was everything all at once, all the beauty and the ugly, all the good and the pain, and everyone’s, but it was never mine.
This body, it was never mine. The identity attached to this body, it was never mine.
This is the first time I have, I am feeling, it could be mine, and the first time I am deeply conscious of what I have very honestly, very genuinely, been robbed of. I could write a thousand pages long speaking of my grief and the sentiment, the abyssal nature of this, could not be comprehended.
It is nothing but a body. It is a skeleton covered by organs, flesh, blood, muscles, fat, skin … it’s a shape, with specific colours, forms, textures: it is nothing but a body, devoid of any objective truth or meaning. It does not mean anything to anybody, naturally, because it just exists. It breathes, it pumps blood, it keeps whatever is me—the brain, the soul, the energy, whatever I believe to be me—alive, it enables me to feel, to sense, to see, to taste, to hear, to smell, to… be here, present, participate in this world with all the horrors and magnificence that exist in it.
It has no inherent meaning. It is not meaning anything. It is nobody’s, nothing, just mine, just mine to inhabit, to breathe, to be in, to have, to hold, to care for, to be cared for. It is a physical thing, an entity, that does things or that doesn’t do things.
It has no meaning. It is just a body.
Dear girl, this body is yours. This particular body as you experience it is yours. I am sorry it has taken me thirty-five years, a whole thirty-five years, to know. Or maybe to re-recognise: maybe I knew once, but I forgot that I did.
Dear girl, be not ashamed of having cellulite; be not ashamed of dimples on your thighs or your face; of wrinkles; of hair; of hollows; of bulges; of stretch marks, scars, bruises, veins, sweat, dirt, short nails, long nails, bitten nails, blood, tears, of your belly folding over when you sit and your thighs spreading like so much softness on a surface widely, so, so widely, of your knobbly ankles, of your knobby but also chubby knees, of your twisted, crooked weird smallest toe, of your big nose, yes your big nose!, your big crooked nose with the dot on it like a target to aim at, of the jowls beginning to form slowly, of the wrinkles on your forehead, of the laughter lines, of everything that is beginning to age and sag and give in and ache and of your square but round fatty sagging butt, of your hips that are sort of too narrow but also too wide, of your arms when they wobble when you wave them, of the BIGNESS OF YOUR BODY: you are a body, you HAVE a body, it exists, it takes space, it takes up so much space you think but it does not, it does not take up the space it needs to in this world, it needs to be bigger yet: do not be ashamed of the size of you, of the magnificence you are, be not ashamed of your body: it is just a body: it is yours: all it does is exist.
It exists. It does not have a meaning.
You will go grey. Maybe you already are, maybe you will, maybe you have, you will be grey. There is sag, there is folding, there is wrinkling, because your body is a thing that responds to nature and time and gravity, to this world, because it is a part of this world like the tree you pass when you walk outside, the tree that bears fruit and grows and dies and sheds leaves and is reborn, it is a thing that exists and that is natural and it has no inherent meaning.
Despite all the things you so deeply believe, they tried to tell you, tried to inject into your very blood and bone marrow, it is just a thing that exists and it has no meaning.
It has no meaning.
You are allowed to enjoy the feeling of a shaved head. You can be, with your crooked, big nose, with your eye bags, your tear trough hollows, that very thing that makes you think you are genuinely disfigured, monstrous, the thing that lets you walk through a dark flat with only the torch from your mobile phone because you cannot stand to be in light because of this terrible, dreadful, unspeakable, inarticulable feeling of monstrosity you believe yourself to be—that it cannot be seen, that it needs to hide—you can allow this bare, unadorned, rosacea-blotchy pale face to be outside under the open sky without the glasses that you don’t need. You can take this body outside and walk with your face bare because it does not mean anything it does not do anything it just exists and it has no obligation to be anything, do anything, mean anything. It is just a face and it is yours. It is just a face like any other, except it is yours.
You are allowed to want to have long hair, to want to try to braid it, put it up, put things in it or not. You are allowed to wear anything, ANYTHING AT ALL THAT YOU WANT BECAUSE NONE OF IT HAS ANY MEANING. NONE OF IT HAS MEANING.
NONE OF IT HAS MEANING.
NONE OF IT HAS MEANING.
This body of yours HAS NO MEANING EXCEPT THAT IT KEEPS YOU ALIVE.
Feel your bloated belly. Feel the hair on your legs and your back as you brush the back of your hand over it. Go outside, live, do the things you want. go and live. go, and live. go. and live.
GO AND LIVE.
Do not hide yourself for more years than you already have. You are alive, now, this moment, all the future moments that you live. When they tell you you are too fat, too skinny, beautiful, ugly, loud, quiet, stupid, smart, whatever it is they tell you they do not know you and it has no meaning. It actually really just does not have any fucking godforsaken meaning in this artificial human-made world. It is just a thing.
Feel your bloated belly. Wear the colour you want. Meet your friends—god, please, go outside, go outside and TALK TO PEOPLE, do not hide yourself for another decade, more years, so many, many years, so many days, under the blanket, ashamed, terrified, traumatised, self-hating, self-hurting, cutting, suiciding, do not hide yourself any longer, please, god, go outside, feel the cement and the grass and the stones cut into your bare feet, go and grab a bike and ride to a lake or a swimming pool AND JUMP IN IT AND FEEL THE WATER ON ALL OF YOU AND ENJOY YOUR WET HAIR HANGING IN YOUR FACE LIKE ALGAE LYING OVER THE MOUNTAIN OF YOUR CROOKED NOSE AND THE HOLLOWS OF YOUR EYES.
let yourself be. LET YOURSELF BE. YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING, YOU ARE A GIRL, AND YOU EXIST, AND YOU NEED TO RUN DOWN THE STREET WITH YOUR BLOOD PUMPING JOY THROUGH YOUR VEINS AT THE RECOGNITION, THE REALISATION OF THIS.
Go into the bathroom, stare at yourself in the mirror with the shitty bare light on and look at your naked, so naked body that hides nothing and feel liberation of nothingness: just a sack of flesh, just skin folding over muscles and bones and fat. That is all the externality of your body that this is.
It has no meaning.
Neither men nor women nor other humans, nobody, nobody on this planet, nothing on this earth, has ever had the power to make this anything but yours.
It is just a body. It has no meaning.
I know all the terror, I know all the shame, I know all the self hate that has made you cut yourself all these years, ashamed for all these things that you were and were not, all these myriads of things. The power that you thought possessed you is not actually a thing. It does not exist.
Your body, that is what exists.
It is yours, it owes neither you nor anybody else anything. No meaning, no value, no look, no nothing.
Go find your friends, go outside and run and bike and walk and spend time in the forests with this bare face on yours, enjoy the rain, enjoy the thunder, smell flowers, throw yourself in mud and jump around in it. Be dirty. Be loud. Say what you mean. Open your mouth and say what you mean: you have thoughts, you have opinions, you are someone, BECOME BIG AND LOUD AND BOLD BECAUSE YOU EXIST AND BY EXISTING YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO THIS. Fucking BURP, GIRL! GO BURP! GO FART! GO SHIT! GO BLEED! GO SCREAM! BE HYSTERICAL! BE INSANE! HAVE EMOTIONS! There is a whole WORLD at your feet, go and have emotions about all the things you can do any can not do in it!
I wish so, so very much I could go back in time and allow you to wear a dress. I wish I could allow you, with nine years, to wear a sweater and shorts and sandals and socks. I wish I could allow you at thirteen to excitedly, full of embarrassment, try out your first pink lipstick with thirteen and pick out your first handbag. I wish I could go back and understand that that one girl three years older than you with the beautiful face and the tangled hair was beautiful to you in a way that you wanted to touch and kiss and cherish, and that that is absolutely okay, it’s absolutely beautiful and exhilarating. I wish I could tell you that the boy’s mouth at seventeen you found so beautiful and his full belly and broad shoulders were equally as beautiful, and that it was okay and beautiful and exhilarating to want to touch and kiss that too. I wish I could go back and give you the experience of what it is to have a mother who touches your cheek with love, who pets your hair, who puts bows in your hair, and that means nothing at all except that she loves you. I wish I could go back in time and give you a father that would have taught you how to drill and repair a bike and how to hang lamps and repair sinks, that would have embraced you without alcohol in his breath and eyes and told you that you are worth so much, that the pain will not last forever, and that he once was as you were full of such pain but that you were not alone with this. I wish I could give you back your mom and your dad and you could’ve sat in one of their laps and played boardgames with them and talked all day and night long, that you would have been read stories, that you would have had a family. I cannot tell you how very much I wish you would have had a family.
I wish you existed. Dear girl, I wish you existed. I wish you weren’t just this amalgamation of longing, pain, anger, grief, abuse, and trauma like an abyss, a whirlwind, inside of me. I wish someone would have seen you—I wish they would have braided your hair! I wish they would have let you cry. I wish they would have let you exist. I wish this world would have let you breathe in whatever way you would have wanted to. I wish, if it happened, that nobody ever touched you or hurt you or put anything inside you that you did not want. Do you know I still do not know if that happened? I think it did. I hope to God it did not. It would explain very much and it would be the saddest, most terrible thing.
I wish you could have shaved your head the way you always wanted to. I wish you could have worn shorts, and skirts, and all kinds of jeans and I wish that you could’ve had friends to laugh with; I wish you could’ve gone with them on picnics in wide fields full of flowers and bugs, and that you could’ve laughed and been red-faced and joked and talked to them all day long. I wish you could have gone to concerts with someone, or alone, and cried and screamed and laughed in unutterable joy at the melodies and the singing. I wish you could have, once, just once, worn a simple white dress with braided hair, holding flowers, and somebody would have told you you were beautiful exactly with the face that you have and the skinniness or fattiness or nothingness of your body as it would have been. I wish you could have gone to coffee houses and bars in the evenings dressed in whatever you wanted, with friends, your brother, or your mom, sitting, talking, drinking, playing cards, chilling out. I wish you could have run outside to feel the snow on your bare face, I wish once in your life you could have looked at a hat or a beanie and thought it looked so nice and you would have worn it without any ounce of judgement, unfearing of being ugly because of your face. I wish you could have walked through full or empty streets of new, stranger cities with a cap or a brimmed hat in summer, shielding your head of the sun because you would always get migraines.
I cannot tell you how very much I wish you would have go to experience thousands, myriads of tiny and big and nothing moments.
Dear girl, I wish you had existed: actually, out here, living; not just trapped inside my body, inside this traumatised mess of nerves and cells and blood and negative energy.
Dear girl, I know you are here, now. I know you have not had any of these things, your entire life long. I know I will not be able to stand up tomorrow morning with this newfound realisation and change our entire life from one second to the next.
But dear girl, it was you who has never given up: you have never given up on us. You have pushed, you have persevered, you have got us here: we are now here, woman or not, whatever it is, we are here now and we will live.
I will braid the hair. I will walk bare-faced.
Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, or next year, but I will.
Dear girl, you are multitudes, as they say; you are nothing, because you are just a girl, you are just a human, and it means nothing at all.
Dear girl, I see you now. I feel you now. In the goosebumps, the scars, the everything. You are in everything I see because you are everything I am.
Dear girl, I will cherish you.
I will cherish you.