Like holy shit during my entire first play through he was irritating the hell out of me but no more than 3 days later I fear im seriously warming up to him.

AHAHAHAHA

...

I NEED MORE 😭

It's an old habit, body checking, a holdover from back when I avoided food like the plague, a sign of lingering vanity that still grips at my mind in the early morning hours of each day I wake.

Not defined and poking, as they were back then, but visible, unintended, witnessable.

A sign that my work and unintentional lack of meals have been taking their hold and shrinking pieces of me, though not all of my body.

I know I shouldn't feel pride in that, that I should feel concern that my bodies bones are slowly surfacing and becoming more known to the unsearching eye, but as I pulled it further up to my chest and rested a hand against them I couldn't help but want to smile.

I am not built ruggedly, not made strong in the way a man should be considered, but there is strength in my limbs and steadiness in my hands.

Not so cut and hard in their lines as a body builder, but layered and padded out with fats to sustain them.

A dad bod if you're overly generous, a mom bod if you see curvature as exclusively a woman's trait ( a false idea if ever I've heard one.)

That softness is almost exaggerated in its shape now, more of an hourglass, akin to the one my mother always used to weep about wanting; gripping at her stomach and shouting at me to stop lying when I promised her she was still beautiful and worthy of love.

It haunts me sometimes, this shape, but not today.

Today I saw the smallest lingering of muscle, today I saw the cut of rib bones, today I traced my fingers over their infinitesimal lines and felt a moment of unhalting and unhating breath leave me in a little puff of relief.

Definition, though only just, and for all the wrong reasons, meeting my fingerprints.

I know it's wrong, I know it's a sign I need to be more careful, and I won't ever go back to those days of skipped meals and tally taking...

but for just a moment, I felt good in my body, almost desirable.

For just a moment, I felt like other hands might feel satisfied touching this same body and counting the same lines; be they soft and gentle, or firm and calloused.

For just a moment, my body felt right.