There comes a moment when you understand your legs have been narrating a quieter, braver story than any photograph could hold. Not a story about symmetry or smoothness, but about survival. Those knees you criticize have knelt in grief, bent in laughter, and climbed stairs when your lungs felt like fire. Those calves you hide have stood through long shifts, waited in hospital corridors, paced through sleepless nights, and carried you out of places that were breaking you.

When you see them only as shapes, you erase the roads they’ve crossed and the thresholds they’ve carried you over. You forget the miles walked in doubt, the sudden sprints toward joy, the slow, heavy steps taken when you weren’t sure you could take one more. Your legs are not a verdict; they are a record of every time you chose to stay, to leave, to continue. They do not require your approval to keep moving. But imagine how it might feel if, instead of bracing against your reflection, you met your own gaze and whispered: thank you—now, let’s go.