My body is not your temple.
I understand it is hard for you to see me this way. I no longer look like your little girl. I dye my hair, shave my head, and get tattoos. I'm no longer pure. But was I ever pure? You have told stories from some of the first years of my life that indicate how I have always been different. I have always been other in your eyes.
My body is my temple.
I can decorate it how I see fit. If that means having blue hair or shaving my head to raise awareness for a cause or just because I think it's beautiful or get art permanently etched onto my skin I have that right. My standards and expression of beauty do not agree with yours.
My self expression is not a rebellion, and it is not a reflection of you.
When you heard that I had blue hair, you asked if it would wash out. When I said, "Yes," you said, "Good." I don't think you understand that that exchange is an example of a microaggression that I have dealt with from you my entire life. No, you have never stopped me from expressing myself and you have always supported me financially, but this is how you've attempted to police my body for a long time.
I understand that you are afraid.
I know what you are afraid of, and I'm afraid of it, too. I'm afraid that people will not take me as seriously in a professional sense based on the way I look, but that is my cross to bare, not yours. On a particularly grungy day, I was followed at a Walgreen's by an employee. I have been treated differently.
But I am not afraid of what your friends will think. I do not care what the woman at Target will think as she checks me out. I have no concern over whether the person in the car next to me stares. I have a confidence in my appearance that I don't know if you will ever fully understand.
I feel no shame over my body.
I know you feel shame over your's. As long as I can remember, I have not heard you say anything positive about your body. You have always called yourself ugly or fat. This taught me to hate my body, too. I hope you know that. Your self hatred taught me that my body is wrong and bad. When you rolled your eyes and reacted with disgust when I can to you with issues of my body, you taught me to hate my body. When you resented doing my hair so much that you cause me pain, you taught me to hate my body. But you also taught me that you hated me because of my body.
It has taken me a long time to love my body as it is, and my decoration of it is an expression of that love not an expression of hatred for it. Anorexia, bulimia, binging, purging, diet pills, restricting, excessive exorcise, vomiting, calorie counting from the age of 12 to 19.
One day, when I was under 100 pounds and particularly hating my body, I had a realization. I realized that I love myself. Stopping restricting was not easy but I did it. I gained weight. And in a celebration of self love, I shaved my head.
Your support of that meant a lot, but would you have supported me if I had not raised money for a cause first? Had I simply said, "I'm shaving my head because it's beautiful and I love myself," would that have been enough for you?
I'm afraid not.
I'm afraid not because I don't think that is something you could have understood because you don't understand not hating you body. There is a lot of positive and even some feminist attributes to Catholicism, and this is something I struggle with myself, but it is taught that women's bodies are evil. Original sin came from a woman and all women are therefore punished through painful childbirth. With this as a message, something that you so deeply and truly believe in, how could you not hate your body? How could you not hate mine and expect me to feel the same?
You see, this is part of the reason I rebelled against the church at a young age. When I came to understand that teachings and that I am meant by God to hate my body, I could not longer support it. When I leaned on you during mass and you pushed me away, I could no longer support it. At a time in my life when I was just learning how to be myself, when my body was changing from a child's into a woman's, I realized the church hated my body.
I knew this partly because so did you.
You have always been an extension of the church in my eyes in in our family. Your actions are part of the reason I struggle with the church so much, both the love I have for it and the hate I have for it.
The church, like you, will always be a part of who I am. I have come a long way in learning to accept that. I am not proud, maybe some day I will be, but I am much more at peace with it than ever before.
Our relationship within the last 6 months has been better than it has ever been. I mourn for all that time and fear and pain and hatred. I mourn for the decades of resentment. I mourn for the missed opportunities. I mourn for the time I spent trying to find a mother figure to love me. I mourn for the time I tried to make you love me.
I hope that our future relationship will not look like the past. I hope that you will learn to love me for who I am. For my soul as well as my body.
And I hope that you learn to love yourself, too.
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