I was bowlegged as a child, and when they straightened out as I grew older, there was one particular auntie who made it her duty to remind me at every chance she got, that my bow legs would eventually return. She claimed it was just what happened when one grew old. It always confused me how authoritatively she said it, almost as if she were deeply offended that my legs had dared to straighten out. I used to joke to myself that if they didn’t come back, she should personally drag me to the office of the commissioner for Bow Legs to lodge a formal complaint, demanding they do something about my body’s defiance of her prophecy.
As a grown woman with now straight legs, I can admit that having that constant declaration at the back of my mind did a number on my confidence at different points in my younger years. But looking at it objectively now, it just makes me laugh. It doesn’t bother me the way I spent a huge chunk of my life worrying it would. In a way, dealing with that mentality early on solidified how I view myself as an adult who has had to live with imperfections I couldn’t immediately fix.
Recently, I had a dental procedure to fix my teeth. Before now, I only ever laughed widely in the comfort of my room or in spaces where I knew people weren’t looking to judge me. Life was good, but it wasn’t always easy. I was comfortable on my own, yet I still carried the invisible weight of other people’s expectations inside myself. It was heavy on some days, and on others, I simply had to tell myself to put the burden down.
Body imperfections, especially the obvious ones, aren’t things people ask for or intentionally set themselves up to have. Sometimes, it just is. But I have realized that the world will always find a “commissioner” to audit your flaws, whether it’s the curve of your legs or the alignment of your teeth. The heavy weight I carried wasn’t actually the imperfections themselves; it was the exhausting debt of trying to look correct in other people’s eyes. Fixing my teeth was a gift to myself, but the bigger healing was realizing that my worth was never up for inspection in the first place. Some things we choose to change, and some things we leave exactly as they are. Either way, I am no longer letting external expectations dictate the space I take up in the world, and that is my win for today.
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