Trisha T.
Photography by Andres Troncoso.
If you’re reading this, your body is a celebration.
Most of my life, I’d seen my body as a vessel containing my soul. It contained my hopes, dreams, fears, and values within a closed container, the container itself a representation of its contents. If I disliked what was inside, I’d shatter the vessel, take some pieces away, and remold it to better suit what I pictured for myself. This picture never usually had anything to do with the vessel itself- if I didn’t think I was good enough at school, down the vessel would fall. If I felt ostracized by my friends, the hammer would swing down. A death in the family? You guessed it, back to the sledgehammer it would go. Big traumas, small traumas, stressors, anything that contributed to a sinking feeling in my chest or a racing heart… What I didn’t realize over 11 years of doing this was that every time I made the vessel smaller, I was losing parts of what made it beautiful.
When I was around eight years old, shortly before all of this started, I was gorgeous. The swirls of paint on my vase were bright with my carefree spirit and energetic glee. The geometric carvings etched into the clay detailed all my hopes and dreams of a career in oceanography, or geology, or whatever was floating my boat at the moment. The gentle curves of the edges were soft like the love I held for my loved ones and the world around me. Even the cracks shone with my bumps and bruises from the adventures I’d take where I’d pretend the woods were Terabithia. But most importantly, I was never contained by a lid.
The first thing I added was the lid. From there, I started chipping away. Every time I skipped a meal with the intention of controlling my life through my body, I threw away a shard of my masterpiece. Every time I’d make myself sick to punish myself, I’d sand down my vase. I didn’t stop when my vessel crumbled with a light touch. I didn’t stop when there was so little left that I had none of what made me, me.
For years, people tried to find the pieces to put me back together. Sometimes, I’d begrudgingly help. I’d finish taking my calculus test in the classroom of the children’s hospital before wandering the halls, where I was told to pick up pieces to put back onto my vase. But they were never quite right. I always suspected that they were other kids’ pieces, but I was too tired to correct them. If I listened to them, I thought, maybe I could just go home and give up again.
Although I have a chronic illness, my eating disorder augmented my symptoms and made me more physically disabled than I ever would’ve gotten. I was stuck in a major I hated, with a life that was constantly unsatisfying. Eventually, the breaking point was too low. As I watched my peers fly by me in the world, I realized that all the years I’d spent being taught to soul search only gave me a list of facts. I could write a book on how to recover, but without that spark to ignite the kiln, that information was practically useless.
About a year and a half ago, I watched a Netflix show called “Everything Now.” It was about a girl a lot like me- queer and a person of color- and she had an eating disorder that relapsed. I saw a lot of myself in her character. The effects her eating disorder had on her loved ones, and the potential it took away from her, were portrayed in such a raw, eye-opening storyline, even to me. That day, I decided to go back to treatment- but this time, I fought to stay in a partial hospitalization program that allowed me to still go to classes, be with my loved ones, and remain connected with my real life. That ended up being the spark.
I’d never tried harder in recovery. After I was healthy enough to leave the program, life didn’t deal me the easiest hand; I immediately dealt with a breakup, my closest friends graduating and moving away, conflict, and the stress of catching up with classes. But this time, I didn’t use that as a reason to reshape my vessel. Instead, I took myself and my body, reclaimed pieces, cracks, and all, and used it as a vessel. Not a vessel of containment, but a vessel of movement.
My poor body that has been through so much is the reason that I’m here today. It was the rope tethering me through the lowest of my lows so that I could climb out of the crevasse. It was the willing student when I did physical therapy for years to go from a full-time wheelchair user to caving, climbing, hiking, and other adventure sports. It was the memory of all that I loved when I was eight years old, and that urge to change my major to Earth Sciences. The jagged edges that still poke me every once in a while serve as a reminder that if I stop eating again, I’ll lose the energy carrying me through my newly reclaimed, beautiful life. My body is the rocket that propels me so that I can reach for the stars.
Every bit of my body is a piece of a mosaic. It’s a celebration of all that I am, all that I’ve been through, all that I do, and all that I want to become. My body doesn’t contain me; it carries me. I am not my body.
Sometimes, I look in the mirror and still don’t like what I see. But then I remember that nobody’s vessel is just like mine; nobody has the exact same colorful, swirly sculpture with cracks and glitter and carvings. If I crack down on myself again, nobody will be able to replicate my colorful, swirly, glittery, cracked trajectory- the one that has the potential to carry even the smallest bit of the world into a better place.
Trisha T., Georgia Tech
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