body image and new york

been doing a lot of thinking about my body and how closely i scrutinize it, and i realized something.

i spend a lot of time in the mirror criticizing myself, mostly my upper body. ive always felt my choice of clothing was severely limited due to how im "built", and i think it connects to how i view femininity and masculinity. like i cannot grapple with the fact that i can have both masc and femme features at the same time. like, i can't wear a muscle tank because my boobs are too big and it "ruins" it, but i can't wear long skirts because they draw attention to how wide my shoulders are. i think learning to accept myself involves unlearning that behavior, wearing cute outfits because theyre cute and not worrying about how my body might look in them. i dont know if this makes sense but whateva!

i was thinking about ny on the way back home today, and how much i miss it. me and my brother went to buy a rat for the maurice and i don't know, hearing it squeak and feeling it shift the box around made me kinda nauseous, and i was tired and sad and just wanted to think about something good. 

i was thinking about my last day there, how it rained. it had just started raining right before i left, but i still wanted to go out. no one was home to tell me no. i walked all the way to my favorite pizza place, along Park Place, looked at all the brownstones i'd walked past for years, all the tree-lined streets. i spent all my pocket money on things i had wanted but kept putting off. I got fro-yo. I walked by the library one last time. 

I didn't have service in my apartment by then, so i stayed outside as the sun set and sent little send-off messages to my friends. i cried a little bit. and then i went back inside.

thinking about it now, some of the details are a little bit hazy. which i guess is understandable, it was a couple months ago. but on the car ride home, i thought of all the pieces i did remember, how  calm i felt, the calmest id felt it a long time, and it grounded me? 

i have a lot of trouble expressing my thoughts, putting them down on paper (computer? idk) and it feels the same way now. i wish i could paint the picture i have in my head better.