An Apology Letter to my Body
This photo is one of my favorites of all time. This photo captures the essence of my cheerleading experience. It makes me laugh out loud in a very dark way. Dark because how I look in this photo is how I felt in this photo.
A while back, I was brave enough to submit a piece of writing to a site called “Inside the Bell Jar”. I know, I know it screams four. But this was a really big deal for me. A lot of people who know me know that I have struggled with body image for as long as I can remember. Being a woman is hard enough as it is, growing up in San Diego culture made it even harder and being a cheerleader made loving myself almost impossible. In competitive cheer, I wanted to weigh as little as possible to make it as easy as possible for my stunt partner because I wanted us to be world champions. As a member of the UNC team, I had to stay a certain size and look a certain way to simply keep doing what I wanted to do. We were the face of Carolina Athletics and Nike. Our photos were everywhere. We were everywhere. And if you didn’t represent in the way our coach and the school wanted you too, you were no longer welcome on the team. As you can imagine, this doesn’t set anyone up for loving their body. In fact, I hated my body because I blamed it for so much stress and insecurity. The lie I believed was, “I am not enough and I cannot accomplish what I want to accomplish because of my body. And I am separate from my body.”
Pretty fucked up, right? And I blamed myself for “letting” my coaches control my thoughts in this way. I am the only one who gets to decide how I feel about my body.
It was the end of my junior year at UNC when I made a connection with my body that I had never experienced before. I had just finished practice and try outs for senior year were the next day. I already had a secured spot on varsity, but I was placed with a stunt partner who did not have a secured spot. I was criticized all practice (most of it unwarranted criticism, but I didn’t believe that at the time) and I knew that the next day I would be asked to take my shirt off and stand in a line next to all of the other girls in a sports bra and spandex while the coaches whispered about us and evaluated us purely based on our physical appearance.
That night after practice, I ran on our track. And I kept running. I didn’t even keep track of how many laps it was. I ran until my body was screaming at me that I can no longer carry on like this. I walked over to Kenan, our football stadium, and sat in the stands sobbing holding my aching body and I apologized to it: http://www.insidethebelljar.com/an-apology-letter-to-my-body-by-tyler-miles/
I’m sorry for hating you.
I’m sorry I believed all of the lies about you.
I never stood up for you.
I refused to see you the way you are.
The truth is, these legs have carried me up mountains so high I couldn’t see the peak. These arms have carried the weight of my world and the weight of others for miles and miles. These hands have carried pieces of my broken heart as the sharp edges cut into my fragile skin. My stomach has felt the pangs of hopeless sobs. This body continued to carry me as I was destroying it and refusing it love. Thank you for loving me more than I ever loved you.