Ramblings from Apalapachia...

Darcy looked at herself in the mirror. The vent fan had kept it from fogging up too badly so she wasn’t obscured despite the damp heat from the shower. Her hair was swept up in a towel and twisted atop her head. A second, larger towel was wrapped over her torso and breasts, tucked into itself right on top of her sternum. She ran a razor under water from the sink faucet, slicking down the 3 blades, then brought it to just under chin where soap suds and hair were waiting to be scraped away. It was easy. She’d been shaving her small beard and side burns since puberty, all the women in her family did.

She’d never been properly diagnosed with PCOS, but between the hereditary hair grow and being on the heavier side of things it was likely. The potential infertility didn’t matter much to her though, she never wanted to try for pregnancy- too many kids needed adoption. All the other symptoms though, that was the kicker. She was already becoming insulin resistant and every annual physical she’d had in the last 4 years showed her with low grade inflammation. Change was hard and it was diet and exercise that was supposed to help mitigate those symptoms.

“Today,” she said to herself as she washed the razor, “today is the first day of my change.” She turned off the faucet and placed the razor back in the pink, plastic soap dish. Untucking the towel from around her, she hung it from the shower curtain rod to dry and stood naked in front of the mirror. Looking into her eyes, she started her mantra, “I like me, all of me.”

“I like my skin,” she said running her fingers along her arms.

“I like how soft my arms are,” she said holding them straight out from her sides and shaking them slightly to see the ‘wings’ hanging from her upper arms wave. “I like how strong they are.” Darcy admired her biceps as she curled her arms up in a classic muscle man pose.

“I like my strong legs,” she said, dropping her arms to caress her thighs. “And my fabulous butt,” she said with a slap. Darcy straighten up and cradled her breasts, pillowing them up like only hands or a push-up bra could do. “I love my breasts, even, no, especially the stretchmarks. I earned those marks by growing fast. They are a part of me and I like them.”

Letting her breasts fall to their natural height, Darcy ran her hands over her belly. She took a shaky breath. This was the hard one. “I, I like my belly. I like its softness. I like its stretchmarks. I like its rolls and the overhang here,” she said grabbing the excess flesh that overshadowed her pubic mound. She looked back into her face. “I like me, all of me, and no one can take that away from me.”

“I want to change my interior, not my exterior. I want to change my health and not the numbers on a scale. I am good enough just the way I am and those numbers can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”

Darcy leaned back against the wall opposite the mirror, her self-affirmation done. “Okay Darcy-girl, time to get a move on.”