Yesterday I touched myself as though I was touching a lover. Not only did I feel [shockingly] aroused by myself, I felt a deep sense of love and respect for my body. As I touched my long arms, prominent collar bone, fleshy thighs, I did not scrutinize myself. I caressed my softness both by skin and by flesh. I remembered that my body is my own — a true sacred space that hosts my being: my emotions, my thoughts, my excitements, my frustrations. I felt true autonomy over my body and my life as I stroked the nape of my neck up to the crown of my head where my tight curls clung to my fingers, daring to play.

What an incredible feeling; one worth immortalizing. I decided to hold onto this feeling because the consistent onslaught of sexual shame and hatred I’d perceive daily, weekly, consciously, and subconsciously is not bold enough to sense where it’s unwelcome and cease. What a cowardly mechanism: to identify the softest, most pleasurable, most powerful, most vulnerable parts of a person, of a woman, and distort them into what many of us internalize as the most shameful, most horrific, most embarrassing.

Though I am enraged at the many societies that allow *men* to believe they own a *woman's* body, and that discourage women from setting boundaries around their own bodies, I think I was able to experience such joy and satisfaction in reveling in my own skin because I was able to compare this new sensation to so often feeling like my body wasn't mine — to so often feeling like there were stipulations on my movement, my sensuality and sexuality. When an ex-boyfriend told me, years ago, that he didn't appreciate what I wore or how I wore it, I was disappointed and shrunk into myself. But, I accepted his perspective, the then little voice in me glowering up from the pit of my, I guess, authority-less being. I felt it was expected of me to accept this unspoken requirement of belonging in a relationship: I should service my partner's desires over my own.

Oh, the sweet and unrelenting call of liberation! When that relationship ended, I'd find myself dramatically reluctant to enter another for fear of losing my identity. That small voice inside me was getting louder. She was, however often I would neglect her, reminding me that in my identity is my autonomy, my agency. She would keep me up at night with her tales of fully loving and embracing myself outside of the harmful and traumatizing objectification from men, other women, and the world at large, its trend for body types changing daily.

“This is more than an account of coming to love myself through loving my body. This is the beginning of a story of me seeing life as a blank canvas.”

Beyond not currently being in a physical relationship where I'd have to deal with these questions head-on, I find I don’t have to deal with these questions in my mind, as much, now either. It seems the fog has lifted and I can see much more clearly the marionette strings controlling the dynamics between people, between socially constructed genders — and I am severely unimpressed. It feels as though I've unlocked a new level in a video game, finally able to shift from the dangerously outdated one that convinced me I was but a shell of who I am today, of who I am ultimately.

Because, for 20-something years, I've considered the state of my external being the most important factor in my interactions with others, and even myself at times. I have daily, even momentary, unlearning to do. The difference now is that I truly know, at a core level, that I exist beyond what the world could ever try to measure, to analyze, to legitimize. My earth-toned complexion reminds me that I belong to nature; my soft stomach and thighs remind me that I am my own place of comfort; my long arms, legs, and fingers encourage me to seek beyond what's commonly known or what has been previously traversed; my densely curly hair invites me to dance, laugh, and play, because it certainly doesn't take anything seriously; my muscles remind me that this one, God-given, body is more capable and supportive than I've ever given it credit for.

This is more than an account of coming to love myself through loving my body. This is the beginning of a story of me seeing life as a blank canvas. I am wielding the pencil, confidently moving and changing course as needed, unperturbed by the unconscious goals of those outside myself. Who knew a little unbounded sensual self-touch could lead to such liberty?