#self-image tw

Running away. That was the only thing Sol was good at. It felt like she had been running her entire life. Some problems Sol confronted with anger, but the real problems? The real problems made her run away because she was too scared, too sad, too hurt, to face them. She had run away from Loxley on the field and now here she was running away from Piper. All she did was run and it was downright exhausting.

 Adrenaline could only take her so long and eventually Sol had to stop so she hid in a small space between a large statue and the cool wall of the castle. She curled up and hugged her knees as she cried. The last thing Sol wanted to be doing was crying but she just couldn’t stop herself. Loxley hated her. He hated her and there was no going back. She had lashed out and now she couldn’t just take it back. She fucked up and ruined everything. Sol felt so small and scared. She felt like she was back to being the scared little 10-year-old hiding in sandy alleyways. She felt the hatred bearing down on her and her heart felt heavy. It was terrible to feel like not a single person in the world loved her. She wasn’t even sure anybody even liked her, not even Tami or Sonder. And if they did she was certain she would blow it all up sooner or later anyways and they would join her and everyone else in their hate. Sol was grateful everyone would be too busy at the after party that they wouldn’t be wandering the halls because as much as she tried she just couldn’t control her sobs.

As a trans woman who is not the slim, fit stereotype that I’m told I should be living up to, one for whom attempting to pass is an act of pure hubris, whose body is considered hideous and disgusting by every dominant narrative about the way a body should look, body positivity is a waste of time for me, because at the end of the day, all it is telling me is the reason I still feel vile and ugly is because I’m just not trying hard enough to not feel that way. 

That’s a cruel fucking joke.

No, for me, I’ve survived this long by engaging instead in a sort of radical body negativity. I hate this body, I wish I had Caitlyn Jenner’s bank account so I could pay highly trained professionals to plunge into me with scalpels and tubes, but I don’t and so all I’m left with is how to turn that hatred into something more productive. So, I preoccupy myself with that hatred, pick it apart, interrogate it, even bask in it, and most importantly I learn from it.