I appeared to be strong and successful, and in many ways I was, but that old me was also fragile. My hair hung long and stringy, as if weighed down by my adolescent sadness. The person I was in old photographs was nothing like the person I had become. Snapshots from my skinnier past didn’t show the way I would faint after working out; they didn’t show my bruised skin or the way my hair fell out in clumps. Soon we were draped across her velvet comforter in our underwear, seeing each other’s bodies for the first time.

Source: New York Times May 24, 2019 04:01 UTC