"I am sorry for filling you with beer and bad thoughts and then asking you why you shook. I am sorry for pinching you, for hitting you, for bruising the thin-skinned parts of you. I am sorry for the names I called you when we were fighting. You are not ugly. You are not useless. You would not be better off gone. I’m sorry for almost throwing you out into the street because my sadness was too much for me. I’m sorry for carving my fingernails into your thigh and then resenting the way people asked, “How’d that happen?” I’m sorry for plucking you and nicking your calves with drugstore razors. I’m sorry I let some people see you in the moonlight. They didn’t deserve to know the color of your hips like I do. I’m sorry for leaving you convulsing over a toilet bowl over some boy. I’m sorry I did not thank you for simply trying to take me where I wanted to go. I’m sorry I screamed at you to shrink, shrink, shrink when all you could do was grow. I’m sorry that this apology is ten years too late. I’m sorry that it will probably come again. I’m sorry that I do not treat anybody else as poorly as I have treated you. I’m sorry that I am constantly learning how to love you, when you have never once doubted how you feel about me. I’m sorry in ways I have not yet learned to communicate." - An Apology to My Body | Lora Mathi