Dear Body

I've spent more of our time together being disappointed in you than grateful for you. I picked apart what you looked like in every mirror in every locker room. I never once thanked you for the parts of you that just worked — the ones that let me run, and land, and get back up, for years, without my ever having to think about how.

The year you finally couldn't do it anymore, the year of the surgery and the crutches and the ceiling I stared at, I understood for the first time everything you'd been doing quietly, this whole time, without a single thank you.

I'm trying to talk to you differently now. Not because you look different. Because I finally understand what you were carrying the whole time I wasn't paying attention.

I am sorry for the years I only spoke to you in the language of numbers — pounds, inches, times, reps. You are not a spreadsheet. You never were. I just didn't have another language for a long time.

I'm learning a new one. Slower. Kinder. Less about what you can prove and more about how it actually feels to live in you on an ordinary Tuesday. You deserve a better conversation than the one I've been having with you. I'm working on it.