Dear Pubescent Me,

This is a sensitive topic, I know. I know how much pain and embarrassment it gives you. I know how you avert from peoples’ gazes, maintain distance, never keep your face still. Your hands gesture and distract—all to deter their eyes from lingering. They linger and they see. I won’t even name it, because naming it makes it real and forever, and you can’t fathom living with it forever.

It's been a year since I haven't had breasts, and I think I’m pretty well adjusted. At first, I thought that I was going to have new breasts made from fat taken off somewhere else on my body, but it turns out that I lack “the right kind of fat,” so, at the last moment, I opted to forgo reconstruction.  

Ladies wear makeup, party dresses, and shoes.
Like to paint their nails and wear stylish updos.
A life made by having lots of material things,
along with it, the stuff that style surely brings.

The other day, I pinched the skin around my navel between my fingers and thumb.

“What are you doing?” my husband asked.

“Channeling self-loathing into my belly,” I replied.

Fingers curled around the cold edge of the kitchen sink; I hold on with the hope that I can outlast the temptation radiating from a flimsy grocery store cookie box. Inside are five, ordinary, chocolate chip cookies that look more amazing than the ever-loving galaxy. I imagine my teeth sinking into the dough, dividing it cleanly into morsels of flavor washing over my tongue, sending streaks of pleasure up into my brain.

"Gosh you have such a pretty face."

"You are so tall, like an Amazon woman!"

"I am not sure if they sell clothes in your size, but we should be able to find something super cute."

"If you lost about twenty-five pounds, you would be gorgeous."

I’ve lived in southern California for almost ten years. I guess it was inevitable that I would end up in a plastic surgeon’s office. What’s a nice, southern girl like me doing in this plastic surgeon’s office, you ask?

Being mildly rattled by the official sign declaring that this practice has been licensed by the California Board of Barbers and Cosmetologists.

What are you doing?

My brain is foggy, I think my eyes are closed. Yes, they’re closed. He slides his hand down, under my shirt, under my bra.

He thinks I’m sleeping.

Are you are uncomfortable by what you see?
I would not be surprised.
We're trained to judge a body by what it is,
and what it is not.

It’s hot. I wear an old tye-dye dress and sneakers, my bangs stuck to my sweaty forehead. Photographs will later reveal I have the sort of bowl haircut stylists default to when you’re too young to know what you want, and your parents just want something cheap that won’t get gum stuck in it. I’ve come to a standstill on the sidewalk to watch a mosquito bite my bare calf.

I never felt comfortable saying “my body” or “the body;” it never felt like mine, yet it also seemed more personal than “the.” Growing up, it was commented on: You’re so skinny, so petite, what a tiny peanut, you should really eat more, better hang onto that figure. No one ever said anything about my 4.0 Grade Point Average, the poetry contests I won, or the dreams I had of escaping the life of expected bodily perfection.