Herion

I’ve picked up running lately. Not out of panic, not with a stopwatch heart or the urge to undo something. For once, I move without needing to burn. It isn’t a punishment anymore. I don’t run to disappear—I run because I like it.

There was a time when all I wanted was to be smaller. And somehow, I didn’t even realize how small I already was.

Why did I crave smallness if the feeling of it makes me ache? I hate being diminished. I hate being interrupted, spoken over, made invisible. Still, the Internet crept in, whispering that smaller was better. That I should live on protein bars and Diet Coke and shrink until I was barely here.

It took years to shake that voice off. Years to run for joy instead of out of fear.

That voice isn’t just mine. It echoes in every woman I know. It hums under my mother’s breath and lingers in my friends’ search histories. The “likes” tab on Instagram is littered with the same diet traps. When parents say, “It must be that phone of yours,” maybe they aren’t wrong.

No kid should know what a macro is. No teenager should feel guilty reading the back of a cereal box.

Sometimes, I think scrolling does more damage than heroin. I wish I never got a phone at all. I never knew what insecurity felt like before it. I never stood in front of mirrors, measuring myself like a problem to solve. I never compared the size of my thighs to someone else’s until I saw it on a screen.