“I wish this story had a happy end. Of self-love. Of body-acceptance. Of forgiveness. Of kindness. But when can anyone be sure when ‘The end’ actually is?

I do not know why I am writing this story to strangers on the internet. Do I expect empathy or sympathy? I don’t know. Or catharsis? The thing is I want to put it out there, push it out there. So that hopefully it no longer feels like the narrative is clawing and tearing apart my heart, my mind, me. With that, here goes.  

We are our body parts, sometimes more, but mostly that. Beyond everything else, our identity, our worth, particularly for a young woman, is miserably tied to how we look -the sculpt, angles, tones, textures and curvatures of our body parts.

No matter how much I try to rationalize that I am something, someone beyond how my body parts define me, my fragile self-worth often hangs on my one body part, my 36D breasts.

I was the juicy melon,  the ripe mangoes they would love to squeeze, the pillow they would love to bury their face in, the idealized 36-28-36. 36D I proudly proclaimed to the store assistants at the lingerie stores. Every first glance of a stranger fell on my breasts. Judge me but I felt the cheap thrill, of feeling wanted and/or envied by both men and women for my breasts.  For an average looking person like me, my boobs were the only part of my body that felt validated and coveted.

But only I knew the shame I harboured underneath my near perfect boobs. First started the never ending grazes, pinches and squeezes in public. Then the ones from the teacher who called me his daughter. Then came eczema, the skin condition that began to eat at my skin, then my self-esteem. My areoles bore the brunt, leaving ugly scar marks around my nipples that never quite healed. On the outside they still got me validation but more often I started feeling like a fraud. But
even a damaged 36D deserves love right?

Nudes with the ex never got beyond the cleavage shot or one in the one good bra, tactfully shot at angles avoiding the areoles. The first time I actually exposed them to the man after months of playing now you see them, now you don’t tease games, I could sense disappointment. “But aren’t your areoles a little too black and big?
What’s with the scars?” he said. I could hear my breasts utter an apology on my behalf – We are sorry we couldn’t live up to the hyper sexualised  PornHub standards. What may have been just a casual remark, it started to grow like a wild monster inside my head whispering haha 36D yet no good, no good until the very act of undressing in front of him started to fill me with dread.

Constantly battling the fear of abandonment that he will leave me for someone with better tits and constantly battling the feeling of over possessiveness and clinginess, I managed to hold on for 7 whole years while insisting the lights be always OFF. He never asked why. Sounds either like an extremely toxic relationship or an extremely insecure self but like all hopefuls I clung on to the happy bits, the very many happy
bits of the relationship hoping it was a ‘phase’.

The 7 year itch struck one fine day and fighting against my self criticism of being over-possessive and snoopy, I had a crazy urge to check his phone. What do I see?
 
Two photos of breasts. Boobies. Tits. Aeroles only no longer ugly. In his Inbox. 32C maybe. Not mine. He’s been sexting a co-worker in the office for a long long time.
 
My life has come a full circle with my 36D.

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