*TW for sexual assault*

This is not something I usually talk about, but I’d like to take advantage of the anonymity of these posts. 

When I was 13, just about to turn 14, in my freshman year of high school, an upperclassman asked me out. He was 15 then. Once again, I was just 13, fresh out of middle school- I didn’t know any better, and I no longer blame myself for it, but it’s still always something I wish I could go back and stop him from doing. 

Trying to make friends while being neurodivergent is honestly extremely hard. Especially while having anxiety, it’s a mix of things that causes the task of making friends difficult to carry out. But when you get past that stage of making friends, what happens after that? What am I supposed to do from here? How am I supposed to act? This is where masking (unfortunately) comes in, playing the main role, and makes this process of making and keeping friends much harder.

As a fat person, everyday I constantly battle with myself. Do I want to look flat when I go out, or show my fat? Do I want to seem slimmer, or let everything exist how it’s supposed to? Would I rather be comfortable or uncomfortable? This constant battle with myself resulted in my toxic relationship with shapewear.

Shapewear, shapers, waist trainers, and girdles: all names for a garment that comes in different sizes and shapes. This garment has multiple functions, but its most common use is to slim the body and make it look thinner, and less curvy. They can be short or long, they can come with mesh bottoms (which form the shapewear into shorts), they can have hooks or straps or zippers to close them, and they can come in different colors. 

I own five of them.

In our society, we are often taught and encouraged to see the mind and body as two different entities, separate from each other. In this mind and body split, the mind is usually the part of us that is more important. We are conditioned to choose things that relate to the mind over things that relate to the body. For example, we are supposed to come to school/work when we are not feeling well, because our minds are prioritized in those settings. With schoolwork, we are supposed to “grind,” and may ultimately be forced to pull all-nighters to complete an assignment, or study for a test. For our bodies, when it comes to “body projects,” we only involve and focus the body (and when the journey of these body projects gets rough or hard, we are supposed to put aside our complaints). Overall, it’s very apparent that in society we are taught that the mind and body are separate things, even though both are simultaneously a part of us, and supposed to work together.

But how far can the idea of this mind and body split be pushed onto us?