My Body Was a Walking Prison

I can’t remember when I forgot to love myself, but I can tell you it happened at a young age. Why? Because I have always been fearful. Of everything. Talking to people, wearing the wrong thing, losing items, being too talkative or being too bossy. It has taken me years of meditation and talking with others to learn that I am very self-conscious, to the point of paralysis, about every aspect of my life.

I think it may be coupled with a few things, mostly my upbringing of the importance of obeying and my unparalleled passion to be useful. But my childhood environment and the values my parents instilled further pushed me into a sort of seclusion and introverted hell wherein even I did not care about my own ideas.

A walking prison.

When I realized I could not find myself in a man, it did not take me long to realize that nursing was the only profession for me. I lived to serve. I lived to be needed. I wanted to help if only to hear the words, "I couldn’t have done this without you". Again, upbringing and supporting my parents by whatever means possible, made the servant-mentality my over-arching goal in life.

But in nursing school, they teach you to be strong. An advocate for patients who do not know how to speak up, when to ask questions, or even what to ask, a nurse is the voice of an other's fear. Strength. Nursing school made me strong.

My nursing tech job made me strong.

My nursing school friends made me strong.

But it was not until I found myself in the gym, with no alcohol, working on my Master’s, to truly find out what I wanted to make out of this life, however numbered the days are.

I want you to love yourself the way that I can now love myself.

When I was fat I did not think I deserved anything - the love of a man, the power to advocate for patients, the expensive clothes.

But when I gained a new perspective in a confident body, I realized that I do not deserve rape, I deserve to control the operating room, and I deserve life experiences more than I desire sugar.

But that took years. I was so unwilling to look past my fear.

Fear? I was so afraid of everything. Afraid that if I said I was a feminist I would never find a man. Afraid that if I spoke up to a doctor I would never be a nurse. Afraid if that if I lost the comfort of food I would never be happy again.

But what I found was so much better.

I deserve real love. I deserve to be appreciated at work. I deserve to feel empowered, not enslaved, by my body.

You deserve it too.

I’m so passionate about this that I’m sharing my stories with the internet in the hopes that it reaches one person. One girl who sees her mother bow to others, one teen who just wants to fit in, one woman who wants to be accepted.

You, and I, are so much more than the petty lives of those who speak negativity.

You are strong. You are beautiful. And you must love yourself before you can prove to others that you deserve their love. And if they love you, they will respect you, and you will not have to explain your actions.

And isn’t that what we all want? To be free?

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