For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a complicated relationship with my body. Most days, I looked at myself and felt like my body was just an object, something that needed to be changed. Despite the body positivity agendas on social media, I never felt safe with my body, I felt stuck with it. My body sometimes felt like something separate from the real me, something I just had to deal with instead of appreciate.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve always connected so much with Marianne from Sally Rooney’s Normal People. She struggles with her own sense of belonging and how she fits in her body, and reading her story gave me the perspective to understand that my relationship with my body was deeper than insecurity but rather a lack of understanding and connection to it. Before we took off for Dublin, I knew I wanted to get the Irish edition of the book Normal People to add to my library. So when I saw that we were supposed to explore somewhere on our own, I knew I wanted to use that time alone to get a copy of Normal People.

I am no stranger to walking through a city alone. I grew up in a city, it feels comfortable for me. What stumped me was how out of body I felt being in a different country with little awareness of how incredibly lucky I was to have a body strong enough to get me there. This feeling of uneasiness stayed with me, but when I got to the bookstore the smell of paper and coffee made me feel at home. I found the book and bought it, the feeling of the paper in my hands felt heavier than I expected. The uneasiness returned when my mind reminded me that my body was strong enough to hold this book and sensitive enough to feel its pages. I think a lot of this discomfort stemmed from a place of shame for not realizing how grateful I should be for my body. However, being gracious for having a healthy body feels irrelevant when we are not praised for what we can do with our bodies but rather what we look like in our bodies.

After buying the book, I wandered down to the River Liffey and found a quiet spot by the water, sat down, and started to read. It was a simple moment, but it felt special. I realized how different I felt from when I first arrived in Dublin. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t thinking about what I looked like or all the things I wanted to change. Instead, I felt grateful for my body that can carry me through long days in uncomfortable shoes, take me across oceans, and, most importantly, experience the world with deep feeling.

I only got a little way into the book because I was flooded by the overwhelming joy of being proud of my body. This newfound appreciation filled my lungs with warm air. As I released that heavy breath, I fully embraced that my body is not something to be ashamed of but instead it is the very reason I am able to do any of this. From now on, I will treat her with every ounce of kindness I can summon, because that is exactly what my body deserves.

While I wasn’t expecting to have a heart-to-heart with my body on this trip, I cannot be more thankful that it happened because as I am sitting here writing this, I now know that feeling at home in myself has nothing to do with what I look like. It’s about being grateful for the life I get to live, and all the small moments I get to have because of the body I’m in.

This is an image from the bookstore that I went into. The whole experience I was overwhelmed but I did manage to snap this image of a book that interested me!