What Remains

Sometimes I stand in front of the mirror and look at the woman staring back at me.

On some days, I recognize her immediately.

On others, she feels like a stranger whose story I only partly know.

My eyes trace the lines, the shapes, and the changes life has left behind, and I wonder how it is possible to feel so much love and so much resistance toward the very same body.

Because this body is my home.

It has carried me through every single day.

Through joy and loss.

Through lightness and hardship.

Through seasons when the world felt gentle,

and through seasons when it showed its teeth.

Sometimes I am endlessly grateful to it.

Grateful for every breath.

For every step.

For every smile it has been able to carry.

For every embrace it has been able to feel.

And sometimes I feel something more difficult to name.

A quiet sadness for the things that might have been.

A resentment toward fate that never fully disappears.

Not loud.

Not destructive.

More like an old scar that occasionally makes itself known, even though it seems to have healed long ago.

There are moments when I love my body.

Not because it is flawless.

But because it remained.

Because it weathered every storm beside me.

Because its heart never stopped beating.

And then there are moments when I look at it and wish it felt lighter.

More familiar.

More like the version of myself that once lived in my imagination.

Perhaps that is part of the challenge of being a woman.

Learning that beauty does not always mean admiration.

That love does not always mean approval.

And that it is possible to deeply cherish something without loving every part of it.

With time, I have come to understand that gratitude and grief can exist side by side.

That you can love life and still find yourself arguing with it from time to time.

That you can feel the warmth of the sun on your skin in the morning while carrying an old injustice in your heart.

Both are true.

And perhaps that is what it means to be human.

Not the absence of pain,

but the ability to recognize beauty despite it.