My Body And I

My sister and her fiancé lost a friend of theirs to cancer this week, and I wanted to share something Kira wrote in the days before her passing:

Eventually we can’t keep this up anymore- my body and I. We all have limits. I regret calling it names. I regret not doing with it all the things I’ll never do now. I thought I had time. I thought it didn’t matter. I took for granted that everything functioned. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t in pain until the pain became the norm. I worried about what it looked like, and now I just worry that I’m eating enough to keep going with hopefully a little extra cushion for the needles to go in. I hurt when I see my friends berate themselves for their lingering baby weight, or if they can’t lose/gain a few extra pounds. Your bodies are not lemons either. Just let them feel pleasure! When I go, I am sorry that my body will just be a body…dead as any other. But until then, I’m just impressed with what we’ve pulled off. Thanks body!

The trivial nature of everyday life can feel really overwhelming when you start thinking about death. We are at the mercy of these little machines to keep us healthy, and I’m inspired by her words to make a promise to be nicer to mine. It’s not ugly from skipping the shower, it’s not fat from the truck loads of pizza I feed it, it’s not bent or broken from running it in to a semi. It is a good, healthy, solid body with teeny wrists and pointy ears and I will happily live in it as long as it will have me.

Happy Wednesday, a song for you

here and something to make you smile here. xo.