To My Younger Self,
When you grow up, you will learn to love your freckles.
When you grow up, having red hair will be nothing,
big ears won’t even be noticed anymore.
When you grow up, you’ll have made it through braces.
But before you love your freckles,
before red hair is nothing,
before you stop noticing your big ears,
you will be disappointed in what you see.
My younger self,
You will grow up to be a statistic.
You will starve yourself to be thin.
You will mutilate your own skin in efforts to be happy.
You will deprive yourself of the hobbies you love most.
But, younger self,
You will move past being a statistic.
You will struggle eating in public,
and eventually accept yourself enough to eat ice cream.
You will push through ten days without self-harming