In this reflection we refuse to apologize for having a body that lived.
Your body changed. Of course it did. Bodies change. That is what they do. They age, they scar, they stretch and settle and rearrange themselves over time. This is not failure. This is life.
But somewhere you picked up the idea that your body was supposed to stay frozen at its peak. That the form you had at twenty or thirty was the real one, and everything since is decline. That intimacy requires a certain silhouette, and you no longer qualify.
This is a lie. A profitable one. Industries exist to sell you the correction of your aging. To make you ashamed of the body that carried you through years of living so you will pay to undo the evidence.
Your body is not evidence of failure. It is evidence of survival. The marks and changes are the story of your life written on your skin. They say: I have been here. I have lived. I did not stay the same because staying the same is not what living looks like.
Intimacy does not require a perfect body. It requires presence. Willingness. The vulnerability of letting someone see you as you actually are instead of the curated version you think they want.
The people worth being intimate with are not cataloguing your imperfections. They are not comparing you to a younger version. They are with you. Present with who you are right now. The body in front of them is the one they chose to be with.
Self-consciousness about your body pulls you out of the moment. It puts you in your head while your body is trying to feel something. It steals the experience and replaces it with worry.
You can be self-conscious and still choose to stay present. You can feel the doubt and not let it make all the decisions. You can remind yourself that your body changed. So what. All bodies do.
This body is the one you have. It works. It feels. It is allowed to be here.