A Letter To My Unborn Child.
A Letter To My Unborn Child.
(No, I’m not pregnant.)
(No, I’m not pregnant.)
This letter was written on 19 December 2014, after receiving the results from a pelvic ultrasound scan taken to understand whether there would be any fertility-related implications of (what was at that point) a severe and enduring eating disorder. No edits have been made.
Dear “2 mature”,
I’m talking to you like you can understand me, but you’re too small. That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? You’re too small, I’m too small, everything is too fucking small. And meanwhile this world is obsessed with ‘small’ and the maintenance of ‘shape’ and ‘tone’ and the preference for ‘bone’ over ‘rolls’, as if there was SAFETY in lack of satiety and in SICKNESS. This is what this is — SICKNESS — and do you hear me, world? How dare you tell me i’m beautiful when a body is just a vessel and I am HOLLOW.
I’m sorry for the noise, small one. I’m sorry if it hurt you — sometimes I forget that the more delicate parts of me lie within. On the surface I am brittle and brazen and I will cut your throat with my words, BEWARE, YOU SHOULD BE SCARED.. but that’s just protective. We all have secrets, insecurities, anxieties, and I am no different. Do I have more to hide, or do I just want to separate myself into who I was, who I am, and who I want to be?
This is not unexpected, as an eventuality. In fact, it is ‘pretty standard’. I am a sad statistic, an example of ‘what this can do to you’- and let me be a warning. The true shock is that this matters. I never imagined that I would be loved, in love, in any sort of relationship… I never believed that I could be seen as anything more than ‘broken’. I didn’t know that I could love without burning. I didn’t realise that he would love me regardless.
This is why this matters, small one. You are my future. You are my hope. I want to be the mother I never had. I want to prove that this pain does not have to continue indefinitely. I can imagine your face, small and smiling, and in my mind’s eye you have my dark eyes and his lips and our collective beauty and you represent the fiercest love and the strongest souls and I promise you that YOU WILL NOT BE ALONE… You will have a home; the home I never did. I will give you what I wished for with such fervency- the love you deserve, unswerving. I will make you feel worth it. You are worth it.
You are worth this “sacrifice”, if one can call it that. I am sacrificing the demons I never chose, but held onto because I had nothing else. That is no sacrifice; that is a decision, held with an iron-willed disposition. I choose you. I choose life. I choose to try. I choose to leave this behind.
You will not stay “2 mature”. As I grow and develop, you will too. You and I will radiate, entwined. I will not let you down, small one. I owe you that much.