I recently wrote a comment on a mouth-watering blog about how taking care of both our inside space and the others’ is something I value. In this sense I was only putting emphasis on Kate’s choice to pick Japan for her post, a topic that has not – at least recently – been related to women and their body image.

It turned out that inside and outside are linked more than I had thought, though. Sometimes my well-worn escape routes are blocked and full of fumes. Japan is no more passable. If in need of a geographic cure, please turn to your own basement and duck.

That’s where I found purposes I knew for this new, frightening guilt – of not being there to help by catching some rays – and this new, guilty fear – that the ones I love over there are going to suffer.

How I made this guilt and fear useful, are you going to ask? By using them on me, on what I’ve always felt guilty/afraid of: Eating. Japan is uncontrollable? I’ll manage myself, then. And shiver and shake like a quake myself.

Am I going to shed pieces too? No. I want to be as strong as a wave. And I don’t want to play self care when my whole body is in fact self hate in disguise.

My words and meanings are shaky. Maybe because I feel responsible for Japan. Could my waves of hate towards it have created such a monster?

First, it would be really egoistical of myself to believe that I, by myself, could have had such an impact on a country in another hemisphere. Second, I don’t hate Japan: I hated myself when I was in Japan. And that I couldn’t bear anymore, so my body sent me out of it.

I guess that want it or not, there’s a whole force inside me thriving for self love. And I can’t help but thank it for having brought me back in time close to the place where I – first – belong.

Now all I’ve got to do is keep sending waves of different loves in all directions.

(This post has also been inspired by the #StopSelfHate movement VoiceinRecovery has just started.)