Letter to the Body That Held You Through It

Dear body, I've said terrible things about you. I've called you broken, traitor, wrong — a defective machine that was supposed to work like everyone else's and didn't. I've apologized for you in public: 'Sorry I'm slow today,' 'Sorry I can't stay long,' 'Sorry my body doesn't work right.' I've treated you like an enemy I was stuck with, a roommate I never chose. I never once thanked you. So here it is, after thirty-eight years: thank you.

Thank you for the nights you held me through panic attacks I was certain would kill me. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my teeth — and you didn't stop. You kept beating. You pumped blood through a system that was convinced it was dying, and you were right: it wasn't dying. It was just terrified. You knew the difference. I didn't.

Thank you for the sensory system that told me when things were too much — even when I didn't listen. The fluorescent lights that made my skin crawl weren't you being dramatic. They were you saying: this environment is hostile, get out. The texture of that shirt that made me want to scream wasn't you being difficult. It was you having a lower tolerance for discomfort than other bodies — which isn't a flaw, it's a setting. I spent decades overriding those signals. You kept sending them anyway. You never gave up on me.

Thank you for the chronic pain that forced me to learn rest. I'm still angry about the pain — I don't think that anger is going anywhere, and I'm not sure it should. But the pain also taught me something the gifted kid who burned out at thirty-four had never learned: that stopping is not failure. That I have limits, and ignoring them doesn't make them go away, it just makes the crash bigger. You tried to teach me this for years. I finally started listening. It took a while. (It took too long. I'm sorry about that part.)

Thank you for the scars. The ones from medical procedures I barely remember. The ones from the years when the only way I knew to cope with feelings I couldn't name was to hurt you. I'm not proud of those years. But you healed anyway. You knit yourself back together while I was busy hating you for not being the body I thought I was supposed to have — the body that could work full-time without crashing, the body that didn't need accommodations, the body that fit the neurotypical default. That body was never going to be mine. You were. You are. And you've done your job — kept me breathing, kept me upright, kept me here — through decades of me treating you like the problem.

I'm done being at war with you. Not because I've suddenly achieved Instagram-level body positivity or because I've 'accepted' my limitations in some peaceful, resolved way. Because I've realized: you're not the enemy. The world that told me you were wrong — too disabled, too sick, too much, not enough, the wrong shape, the wrong speed, the wrong operating system — that world was the enemy. You were just trying to get me through it. And you did. I'm here. Thirty-eight years old. Alive. You did that. Whatever years we have left together, I'm going to try to be kinder. I'm not promising love. I'm promising ceasefire. I'm promising to stop apologizing for you when you can't keep up with a world that was never designed for you. You kept me alive. That's not something to apologize for. That's something to kneel in front of.

— Marin

About the Author

Marin is a late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD adult who spent decades at war with a body that was doing its best. They live in Oregon with a rescue cat named Bug. They are learning, slowly and imperfectly, to treat their body like an ally rather than an obstacle — and to rest when it asks, which is often.