Bikini. Body.

I have friends -- people I love lot -- who have recently become weight loss crusaders. They are not personal trainers, exactly, as much as lifestyle coaches. Their social media feeds are filled with workouts! Diet shakes! Wraps!

Which ... Okay. I want them to be happy. I want them to be successful.

And I don't want to unfollow them, but I've been thinking lately that I might not have a choice.

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I've spoken of this before, but I don't think it can be stressed enough. I was the fat girl growing up, which... Well, it sucked. Children can be mean. I was also the sick, nerdy, fat girl, so getting picked last for everything? Was just the way it was. Being made fun of meant it was a day that ended in "y". That's how it was. Whatever.

I started losing weight in college. For a little while, I looked great. And then I passed into another plane of weight loss, the one where people were afraid for me. The one where people asked me if I was really sick, if I had cancer or some other potentially fatal illness. The one where I was actually afraid I might die.

Then my grandfather did die, and I realized that I needed to -- and wanted to -- live. 

It wasn't an easy decision. 

It wasn't an easy path.

But I'm still here, goddamn it. I'm still here.

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I weigh more than I want to weigh. I weigh more than my ex-doctor wants me to weigh. Despite her knowledge of my history she harps on my weight to the point that I avoid her -- even when I'm really sick -- because I can't bear the lecture, and I can't keep my brain from cycling through a horrible litany of the ways in which I am wrong, my body is wrong, and I am not worthy of being here.

This is a lie, by the way.

But it's hard for me to remember it.

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When The Fella tells me I'm beautiful? It's hard to stifle the voice in my head that says, "no. But you were once. And you could be again. Just stop eating. It's easy."

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For the record? It's not easy.

For the record, it's horrible, painful, and all consuming.

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So. I can't sign up with you, coaches and wrap sellers and purveyors of lifestyles. I can't. Because I'm trying to learn to tie my brain and my body together and live in both of them. I'm trying to make our relationship here mildly less dysfunctional. I'm trying to believe that beauty and worth can't be found in a shake or a size or a reading on a scale.

I'm trying to ... And getting better about ... Wrap my arms around the notion that to have a bikini body? You take a body (yours) and put a bikini on it. I already believe that everyone else on this earth is beautiful and amazing and worthy.

I'm still working on the part where I am.

Maybe I always will.