This Body Is Not for Performance—It’s for Belonging

For most of my life, I learned to treat my body as something to present, not inhabit.

To manage, mold, correct, and control.

To make palatable, desirable, impressive.

To become something worthy of praise—but not always worthy of rest, or safety, or presence.

It wasn’t always spoken, but the message was clear:

You are more valuable when you are pleasing to others.

And so, my body became a project.

A performance.

I learned the angles.

I held in my stomach.

I smiled when I didn’t feel safe.

I walked into rooms hoping to be seen, but not truly known.

Because to be known would mean revealing all the ways I felt not enough.

The Performance of Femininity

Femininity—at least the way the world taught it to me—was never neutral.

It was something I had to earn.

Be soft, but not weak.

Be sexy, but not too much.

Be confident, but not threatening.

Be appealing, but never ask for too much.

This wasn’t embodiment.

It was survival dressed as elegance.

My worth was often measured by how others responded to me.

Approval became a drug.

Admiration a substitute for intimacy.

But admiration is not belonging.

And performance is not presence.

What Was Lost in the Performance

Somewhere along the way, I forgot how to simply be in my body.

To feel it without judgment.

To trust it.

To rest inside it, without evaluating whether it was too big, too small, too loud, too quiet.

I forgot that this body was mine.

Not a stage.

Not a spectacle.

Not an apology.

Just mine.

A home.

A boundary.

A vessel for joy, grief, hunger, fatigue, laughter, desire, and truth.

The Return to Belonging

I no longer want to live for how I appear.

I want to live for how I feel.

I want to stretch without wondering how I look.

I want to wear softness without shame.

I want to take up space—emotionally, physically, energetically—without editing myself to fit into someone else’s comfort zone.

Because this body doesn’t exist to be looked at.

It exists to carry me through this life.

To let me feel wind on my skin, to dance in my living room, to cry when I need to release, to hold someone I love.

To be grounded when the world feels overwhelming.

To belong—to me.

No Longer Performing, Just Being

There is a quiet kind of power in choosing not to perform anymore.

In walking away from perfection.

In saying:

“I’m allowed to exist without entertaining you.”

“I’m allowed to be messy and still be lovable.”

“I’m allowed to be in this body, as it is, without needing to prove anything.”

This is not rebellion.

It’s a homecoming.

This body is not a product.

It’s a process.

A prayer.

A presence.

And more than anything,

this body is not for performance—it’s for belonging.

There is a kind of exile that happens slowly.

You don’t even realize you’ve left yourself—

until you try to come home, and nothing feels familiar.

For years, I existed in performance mode.

My body became a stage,

and I was trained to be the main act—

pleasing, palatable, perfect.

It wasn’t always explicit.

But I learned, in a thousand subtle ways, that my body’s value was tied to how it looked,

how it moved in front of others,

how well it could gain approval.

Even when I was exhausted.

Even when I was hurting.

Even when my body whispered, “Please stop,”

I kept showing up for the performance.

The Making of a Performance Body

From a young age, I was taught to be mindful of appearances.

To sit “like a lady.”

To walk “gracefully.”

To smile—especially when I didn’t feel like it.

I was praised for being “pretty,” “thin,” “well-behaved.”

And I mistook those compliments for connection.

But they were not about me—they were about my image.

Every movement became calculated.

Every outfit, a silent negotiation: How much is too much? How little is not enough?

I wasn’t living in my body. I was curating it.

I trained myself to anticipate how I would be perceived

instead of asking myself how I felt.

The Disconnect

That disconnect didn’t just affect how I looked.

It affected how I loved.

How I trusted.

How I let people near—or kept them out.

I learned to be seen, not to be felt.

To be desired, not necessarily safe.

To be admired, but rarely touched with tenderness.

Touch, affection, even sex, sometimes felt like part of the performance.

Because if you don’t feel at home in your body,

how can anyone else truly meet you there?

And if the world keeps rewarding your performance,

why would you ever slow down long enough to notice the ache beneath it?

But ache it did.

The Moment I Knew I Had to Come Back

There wasn’t a single breaking point—more like a series of small awakenings.

Moments when I realized I wasn’t breathing fully.

When a compliment left me empty.

When being desired didn’t feel like being loved.

I remember one evening standing in front of the mirror.

I looked “good.”

But I didn’t feel anything. Not pride. Not joy. Just numbness.

That’s when I knew: I had become a stranger to myself.

I had lost the language of inner truth, and I wanted to reclaim it.

Learning to Belong to Myself Again

Healing didn’t start with affirmations or mirror work.

It started with grief.

Grieving the years I spent abandoning my body to belong to others.

Grieving the little girl who learned to perform before she could speak her own needs.

Then, slowly, I began listening again.

Not to the voices of culture, beauty standards, or internalized shame—

but to the voice inside my own skin.

I started asking:

What does my body need?

What does comfort feel like—not look like?

What makes me feel in my body, not outside of it?

Some days the answer was rest.

Some days it was dance.

Some days it was rage.

Some days it was stillness.

But every answer became a thread in the weaving of home.

No Longer an Object, but a Presence

This body of mine is not here for entertainment.

It’s not here to please every gaze, fit every expectation, or win every unspoken competition.

It’s here to hold my soul.

To carry my laughter, my fatigue, my orgasms, my fears, my stories.

It’s here to connect. To move. To breathe.

I am not a brand. I am not an aesthetic.

I am a living, breathing human being who deserves to belong to herself.

Belonging Over Performing

Now, when I look in the mirror, I don’t ask, “Will they like this?”

I ask, “Does this feel like me?”

Now, I stretch without worrying about how I appear.

I eat without punishment.

I dress for expression, not approval.

I still catch myself sometimes slipping back into the performance.

But I return faster.

With more tenderness.

With more trust.

Because I know now:

My body was never meant to be a stage.

It was meant to be a sanctuary.

A Final Note to Anyone Who's Felt the Same

If you’ve ever felt like your body was a project,

a prison,

a problem to fix,

know this: you are not alone.

You don’t have to earn your worth through exhaustion.

You don’t have to shrink, silence, or shape-shift to be lovable.

You don’t have to perform to be enough.

Your body is not for performance.

It’s for presence.

It’s for joy.

It’s for belonging—first and foremost, to you.

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