A story about a pair of thighs

CHAPTER 1:

When I was 13, Jason pointed at my legs in band class and said “Look, her thighs touch!” Everyone looked and laughed. I looked too. He had a valid point. They DID touch. But he didn’t say it like it was a simple fact; he said it like it was gross. Something to be ashamed of. Not right.

So I decided that these were thighs only a mother could love and that a girl should hate. I studied them incessantly in the mirror for two more decades. Spitting venom at them. I pulled back my inner thighs to see what a thigh gap would look like. It looked like a ticket to self respect at the time. One I’d never earn.

When I was 23, it was clear my thighs were the absolute worst thing. My boyfriend remarked: “Don’t you think it’s weird that you have such fat thighs when you’re so athletic?” He took a bite of a ham sandwich non-chalantly. And I knew I was doomed to never wear shorts again.

CHAPTER 2:

When I was 30, I ran a marathon. Over 42.2k, my thighs were chafed. Like a bloody kinda chafed. At the finish line, my friend looked on in horror: “oh god, your thighs.” I looked down at those bloody red beasts and I felt something new. Gratitude. They pulled me through.

That night in an ice bath, inner thighs a’burning, I thought about Jason and that day in band class and that maybe just maybe I had made some assumptions about these tanks because of their aesthetics and that maybe just maybe I’d been very very wrong.

CHAPTER 3:

For the next 8 years I tested this theory vigorously. I put my thighs through the ringer. I ran races—further and faster and my thighs kept pace. “They’re dependable,” I thought. I summitted peaks and my thighs burned. “Hmmm,” I thought, “these puppies can endure.” I canonballed into cold alpine lakes and my thighs swam me back to shore. “Interesting,” I thought. “These gams are agile, too.”

In all cases, they still jiggled and chafed and touched, too. But they never ever wavered. Not once. They showed up for me.