You began to show signs of growth a few weeks ago when your purple stretch marks appeared on the surface. You’ve been growing for some time but I tried to ignore it because I didn’t want it to be true. Now there’s no escaping the reality of your growth.
While I run around in panic figuring out how to hide signs of your growth, you continue to exist without a care. I slather on oils and creams to hide your marks and wear special clothing to hide your protrusion; you help me achieve the goals and dreams I’ve set my mind on. I pour over perfect Instagram photos of women without stretch marks and the most perfect proportions; you focus on making sure I’m still a functioning human. I mourn the body you once more; you prepare for my future. I am disinvested in you but you are invested in me.
Perhaps my greatest ally in this pandemic has been you. You keep me nourished, rested, and protected against a vicious invisible disease. You don’t ask for credit or flashy recognition. You just wish to be appreciated; you yearn for that unconditional love which is in every way your birthright. I wonder everyday why I can’t do that for you even when we’re in a global pandemic.
You’ve illuminated to the world the greatest fallacies of our time on what your kind is “supposed” to be like. You scoff at the standards the fictitious world has imposed on you and your kind. You look at me squarely in the eyes when I stare at you anxiously in the mirror and you ask me, “Can the Instagram filters and algorithms that make you hate me help you breathe? Eat? Sleep? Take a shit?” When I remain silent in shame, you heartbrokenly say, “I didn’t think so.” You turn away in disappointment, but not abandonment. Because even when I unmercifully have given up on you in the past, you never give up on me.
While I stress about your growth in directions I have long dreaded, you beckon me to a new way of thinking. You show me that when you grow, it is because life’s natural course has willed it. There’s nobody out to get me, these are my cells guiding me towards survival. You gently tell me that it is not a failure of my choosing, but instead my right to take up space. I scream at you, “But why do you have to take up so much space?! Why can’t you just stay the way you were?!” You look at me with sad eyes and gently say, “Because Noor, you have a right to be different things but you forget that you have that right because others made you feel that it was a crime to change in ways they arbitrarily disapprove of.” I bow my head in deep shame as I realize the decades long indoctrination has let me wage an unfair battle against you.
You battle COVID-19 and I battle the shame I feel about you. I’m not sure I will ever be able to equally give you as much as you’ve given me and I am truly sorry for that. What I can promise is that I will try my very best to not give up on you just as you haven’t given up on me in the worst of times, including now.
Thank you for keeping me alive even when I don’t have the will to live.