#i am aware the eyes are asymetrical its on purpose | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nacsygen · 5 years

Text

speaking of fashion, i feel like rambling about my boobs, and this is my tumblr, so i will. also bc this is tumblr, i will frame my rambling about my boobs in the context of my mental health journey.

over the past coming up on four years, my mental health has had a drastic (thought not constantly) upwards trajectory, from ‘’trembling waif unable to hold a conversation without wanting to literally run and hide and/or cry’’ to ‘’wow, i just realized it’s been like two years since i felt like absolute shit for no real reason for more than, like, a day at a time. is this like...is this what being happy is like? wow!*” *”oh shit, now i have to actually live past 25...” part of it was maturing yes, bc no matter what bullshit they tell you, you’re still growing and maturing in your 20s too - and after that, too, for your whole life, really. the idea that you should have all your shit figured out by the time you’re 22 is some kind of implied propaganda we all internalized around when they were showing us the charts in middle school that showed the average incomes of people with different levels of degrees. and if you’re not the kind of person to have your shit together by 22 - say, you’re not neurotypical, or you’ve got un-dealt-with-traumas, or you’re just not the kind of person or at the stage in your life where post-secondary is the right fit for you, or any combination of the above, or anything else - when you DON’T have your shit together by the time you’re “supposed” to, it just feels like salt in the wound, when you’re different. it feels - no, it IS damaging, especially if you’ve never been able to really internalize the idea that it’s O K to be on a different life path than what you’re “supposed” to be. that is, in fact, the very thing that culminated in the worst and last (and i sincerely hope it’s the LAST) depressive episode of my life, around my 25th birthday. i feel sorry for the girl who was me from 20 to 25. poor thing hurt a lot, and too often. but the main part of my getting better was just getting help. or rather, my mom reaching out to do the research for me, finally recognizing that i wasn’t going to magically get better on my own and that guilt tripping and anger were not helping my crippling depressive withdrawal (and while i know that the physically disabled tend to not care for the psychologically disabled using the term “crippling”, in my case it definitely extended to the physically disabling in several very literal ways that i won’t get into here). my mom did the research and made me make the calls. i was very lucky that there was a low-income mental health center 15 minutes down the road. i was exceedingly lucky in that i got an incredible counselor who’d been through it herself, herself now (then) in her late 20s, early 30s, maybe one or two levels up from where i am now. my sessions with her literally changed and quite probably saved my life. i went from crying in every session and her gently and considerately seeing me out the back door of the office to minimize the strangers who’d see my raw vulnerability, to the sessions being the highlights of my week, with me eager to share with her my progress - to delight in finally becoming my true self again, to be vibrant, to find joy in things, to have things i could be happy to share with a professional friend. because of her guidance i learned how to change the way my mind had wired itself in a negative way, and to love myself again. because of her i was able to move on, move out, become self-sufficient - eventuallym because of how she taught me, to take care of myself and to keep growing, to love myself the way i love the world. to be happy, most of the time, when at the time we first met, i wasn’t sure i ever would be again. to take care of myself again but i was talking about boobs and fashion, right? the thing is, i’ve had essentially the same body type, my “adult” body, since i was 13. this body has, no matter its weight fluctuations, had proportionately significant breasts. (a blog post about afab body image and mental health would not be complete without at least one teenaged semi-traumatic anecdote - i once when i was in eighth grade got accosted by a group of older girls in the courtyard at school before class, demanding to know what i stuffed my bra with, and getting increasingly hostile and physically investigating said bra with harsh gropes when i said i didn’t stuff it at all. this was, needless to say, humiliating and traumatic, and i didn’t wear that tight turtleneck again for years.) the thing is this body that contains me is also exceedingly small in all other directions (except my head, i’ve got an adult human-sized head) compared to normal humanity. very short in height, narrow ribcage, ectothermic body structure, narrow limbs, narrow hips, child-sized hands and feet, etc. even when i was at my lowest weights, which i will always associate more with my worst depressive episodes than any kind of diet-culture positive, even when they were to my eye as flattened pancakes, i still had pretty alright boobs that i liked. but then, once i got healthy again, i naturally gained healthy weight. it came with eating more healthily, and eating with purpose, and not just because i would die if i didn’t, and even for a depressive starvation’s not a good way to go. it came from caring for the human animal, from realizing that i could never live with myself if i neglected a pet the way i was treating my human animal, because if i didn’t care for it, who would? eating with structure, at set times every day, and maintaining at least a mininum amount of calories needed, necessarily entailed that i would gain weight. and i welcomed that! most of my body issues when i was younger stemmed from my skinniness - i hated my fragility. i longed for and desired (in the gay way too, and probably though i didn’t realize it yet the non-cis way) and wished to be like girls with weight and heft to them, girls with thick thighs and arms, girls with muscle, girls with softness and roundness, girls with strength and solidity of frame. in comparison i felt like a ghost close to being torn to pieces in the wind, a collection of fragile bone in the shape of a person. but that’s not who i am anymore, and that’s no longer what i fear. but at least i always had my boobs, and with them, with being healthier mentally and physically going hand in hand, i was and have been able to measure my own healthiness by their size. by cupping them in my hands and counting how many fingers it takes to go from ribcage to the edge of areola, i can measure my own growth and well-being. they’re most of where i gain weight, and i’ve gone from two fingers and change at the worst to all four fingers plus a spare inch, besides, now, at what is currently the best. despite my current stressful situation, i am ultimately at my healthiest physically and mentally i’ve been since i was like 11. more, even, because i’m no longer anemic. and accordingly, my breasts are the largest they’ve ever been (not counting that time i was on birth control for a couple months, and my least tactful roommate asked if i was pregnant, and i stopped taking it because i decided crying myself to sleep every night for no reason probably wasn’t worth it). which brings me to fashion. and boobs. i’ve alluded to here and outright stated before that i identify as somewhere between nonbinary and bigender. all i know, really, in our limited current vocabulary, is i’m not cis female. but you know? i like my boobs. i’m pan, i reserve the right to like boobs, even love them, even if they’re on my body, even if i’m not “female”. i live in and love and feel at home in a climate, and otherwise a culture, where female-coded dress (tank tops and short-shorts, sundresses) are far, far more comfortable than male-coded dress (heavy thick shorts or jeans, a t-shirt with an undershirt for god knows what reason - they can’t know we have nipples!!). i reserve the right as a non-binary/bigender person (yes i’m aware that’s a contradiction in terms, so am i) to reject the idea that my physical interpretation of my presentation as leaning femme means i’m female. fuck you. you ever wore a sundress in the florida summer? you ever wore heavy khaki knee-length cargo shorts paired with sneakers and socks and an undershirt and a t-shirt in the florida summer? which would you guess is more comfortable? i rest my case. oh, i almost forgot to get to the point, which is that as my breasts have gotten more prominent, some of my favorite comfy dresses have somehow become Problematic in Public. they are now Too Booby. larger breasts in and of themselves, even in the same dresses but instead of with smaller breasts (that’s Fashion tm), carry with them Implications of Sexiness. Luridness. Provocativeness. as someone who’s had both small boob privilege and big boob sexy, this is completely obnoxious and at the same time culturally unavoidable. in my current favorite dress, which fits me like it was tailored to me despite got from goodwill, it cups and supports my breasts lovingly in its bodice and flows beautifully asymetrically down from the high waist line that is also flattering to my body type. i love it, i absolutely adore it, i love the way it makes me look, i love the way it fits me perfectly, i love the way it makes me feel. but it is definitely a Boobs On Display dress. it’s so low cut in the front of the neckline, and boosts my already large breasts enough, that you can see a significant curve of underboob. and they are objectively gorgeous breasts! but this dress, having them On Display, apparently, instead of my love of its supportive and flowing embrace of my body, indicates i’m On Display when i wear it. that’s...a little dysphobic and dysmorphic. it means i can’t wear it in any situation where i want to appear Professional, bc boobs Aren’t Professional. it means i have to think about what situations i can wear it in and how people will judge me for it, this my new favorite dress. it means people will think i’m Lurid and Sexual by virtue of having and showing so much cleavage, while in my mind i’m just delighting in how comfortable it is and how good i feel in it.. yeah, i’m not cis, yeah, i love looking pretty, fuck me, i guess. my last girl told me once “holy shit, you’re like jessica rabbit” after i sent her some of my favorite chest-centric selfies. i’m not bad, i’m just drawn that way. i’m not a comic book heroine, i was just born that way. except also with a gut and no ass. life is full of compromise.

#t #i'd rather you not reblog unless you can identify also in this extremely specific way and if so leave tags

0 notes