Dear Body

Dear body,

Thank you. Just thank you.

Tomorrow we're going on holidays to a place people call one of the most beautiful in the world. The water is turquoise. The sky is blue. The cliffs ar green and the sand is white. You can swim with turtles in the east. Surf on the Atlantic waves of the west. But we won't be sad will we? We won't hate you, we won't scrutinize you, we won't judge and analyse you and most of all we won't compare you.

On our last beach holiday we didn't really make the most of it. I'm sorry.

Dear body - you've neve ever not even once failed me. You rarely catch the flu maybe once every five years. Your hair glistens. Your skin is clear and soft. The amount of times you've been sun burned and you've healed. The amount of times you've been bruised and you healed up perfectly. Everyday you wake up like clock work and not a bother on you. You don't half start you don't complain and you never stay stuck to the bed.

You've fallen off a mopehead, you've been stung by a jelly fish, you've stood in glass, you've broke your ankle, you've broke your toe, you've lost the top of your index finger, you've had a kidney infection and yet you've healed from every single little ailment. You've let me feel the warmth of a hug from my parents, feel the tingle run through me when my boyfriend took your hand for the first time, you've allowed me to lift and squeeze and hug and twirl my beautiful niece, you let me hold my godson against your abdomen and get that sense of absolute calm. You let me lie next to my granny and feel the warmth of her body, pet and cuddle my brothers baby lab.

You've shown me beauty through your eyes, gave me every scent under the sun through my nose, swished water over my bare skin when I swam on Main Beach in Long Island or in the crystal poop in Thailand. You've given me everything I could have ever asked for. Everything.

'Didn't we almost have it all?' No we have it all.

Not to mention all the places we've explored and walked and climbed. The hockey matches we've played. The waves we sailed and the views we've seen.

And what did I do? I ignored all that yes ignored it all nevermind all the infections you fought off and the viruses you've defended me from. And what did I do? I screamed and shouted and pulled and squeezed. Stared in mirrors, window panes, car reflections to shout at you how ugly you are, how my perception of you represented the essence of me and therefore all my inherent plentiful flaws and failings.

I criticised you incessantly. Over and over. The only thing I thought you good for was as a clothes horse. Chastised you body for not fitting into certain jeans, styles, shorts, dresses and skirts. That was only thing that mattered to me. What fit you and therefore how I looked to the rest of the world. What I looked like to others. That one misfitting pair of jeans ruined everything and renders you hideous and useless to me.

All you did and do for me all you allow me to do all you allowed me to do all the life the glorious lifffffffe you permitted and facilitated me to live all because of you and then I belittled you over a metre of denim cotton....

Dear body I am sorry like a naive self righteous fool and I thank you so much for your patience and wisdom, understanding and above all unconditional love. Thank you. You are everything to me.

You see it's values. Valuing thinness over everything. I value openness. Strength. Humility. People who live life to the fullest. Decency. People who get on with things. Equality. Education. Honesty. Generosity. Kindness. Acceptance. Things I see in others, acts I see done that make my heart sing. That's what I value.

Saying that on holidays I will listen to you with all my heart. Take care of you nutritionally and do what suits you. I'll look to the sky instead down at my legs. I'll admire the beauty my camera might capture and not the angle of my abdomen in a car's reflection. I'll lather you in cream and protect you from the sun. I'll dress you up and bring you out at night.

Most of all we'll laugh. Deep down in your belly we will laugh and laugh and laugh. And that terrible taunting haunting bully will be shrivelled up alone in a corner back in Ireland out in the freezing cold - tasting its own medicine. My body has had more than enough of you and you have ruined and poisoned enough of my days. Tainted so many many days and then some and for what? Why? Because of a metre of denim fabric. Not because I always got the flu or because I was deceitful selfish person or because you let me be ill. No just for a metre of fabric.

Ludicrous. Ridiculous. The hollowness and worthlessness of your argument has been exposed and so no not this time you don't have a seat on the plane to Barbardos. Not now not ever.