 This spot
Is an angry red A sting and a tang When touched to my tongue And I can't stop Poking at it Wanting to hasten healing Impotent in the face of the second hand Laughing at me With each staccato tick I'm not better Something fresh always replaces it Somewhere and something else To worry There is no salve for this No unguent to soothe Only acclimation to new pain As it fades to background noise Becoming a new instrument In the symphony of scars Can you hear it Playing louder As you approach? I tried to warn you
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Two years ago, I was very fat. Two years ago, I was in a marriage that didn't deserve me with a person who didn't deserve me. I was abused as a child - emotionally, verbally, and physically. It was the abuse that made me fat to start. I was long and lithe as a small child. At six, the abuse began, and so I ate. I ate for the dopamine comfort because it was the only kind available. At nine, they sent me to fat camp. At twelve, they sent me to Weight Watchers. At thirteen, I was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder that causes the equivalent of a spinal cord injury. I was briefly paralyzed from the waist down, and my mobility, balance, and sensation were never the same again. The entire time, they called me fat either explicitly or subtly, hiding it under mock concern for my health.
At nineteen, I lost a lot of weight. I lost it fast, often 4 pounds or more a week. I lost it by overexercising in secret and fearing most food. I let people think I was just a vegetarian, but I was actively shunning anything I thought might contain fat. In those months, I was the sickest I've almost ever been. I had severe abdominal pain, I was paranoid about everything that went into my mouth, and my immune system weakened to a point where I became so ill with strep they had to give me IV fluids, Vicodin, and baby penicillin. It leveled me for weeks. And then I was basically married. I was 1200 miles away from all of my friends and family. I felt isolated and lonely. I stopped exercising, and I started eating. We were so poor that dinner was cobbled together from whatever was laying around and cheap. Minute rice, pasta, cheese. It wasn't just the poverty, though. My partner's friends and family hated me at first because I was the bitch who took him away. He wasn't kind, either. He made me feel stupid. He made me feel insufficient. He made me feel small. So I got big -again - without meaning to. At some point in my mid-twenties, I cried myself to sleep over my size. I told him I was thinking about surgery, but it's one of my greatest fears, and we were so poor (not to mention often uninsured) that it would ever happen. He said he loved me as I was. I believed him and I did nothing. And I got bigger. Between 19 and 34, I gained 135 pounds. In that time, I learned to love my body for what it did for me. I wasn't impeded by it, and it allowed me all I wanted to do. I'm sure I was excluded from job opportunities because of it. I know people talked about me because they'd say it to my face and I'd tell them a variant of "fuck you" depending on my association to them. I was still proud of my fat and I hailed the body positivity movement. I argued with people about how thinness is not part of the social contract, and I never signed one to start, so they can shove that contract. I still feel this way, and I still haven't signed. Your body is your province to do with as you please. It is yours to move or be still. Yours to show or hide. Yours to share with someone else or to hoard. Your body is exclusively your business. Two years ago, I was very fat. Two years ago I decided to become less fat. I still knew surgery wasn't an option, and I'd added a new autoimmune disorder that has a severe impact on metabolism. I knew it might be hard. My opinion on weight loss surgery had changed. It went from a possible solution to something with terrifying complications. It's not just one surgery, but several. You lose weight so quickly that your skin doesn't shrink with you, and it needs to be removed. They remove flaps from your middle, create seams in your arms and legs, tailors of flesh. Weight loss surgery also causes digestive problems. Vomiting and sudden diarrhea, vitamin deficiencies, bowel obstruction, hernia, hypoglycemia, and ulcers are all common. A patient's gallbladder will also usually call it quits shortly thereafter, adding yet another surgery. My only option was to change. I settled on a goal of a size 18 knowing I could still be fat and shop in normal stores. I refused to use weight as a goal because those numbers drive me insane. And oh, a change was born. I realized my marriage wasn't worth me and I'd gotten so low, I mightn't get up again. I created boundaries. I started eating less and better - not least because my newfound boundaries made me nauseated for their boldness and unknown consequences. I found movement I didn't hate. I started taking the dog for long walks on my own to get away from my husband. To mix it up, I ordered kettlebells, 10 and 15 pounds to start. The next day, walking the dog, I broke my ankle. I was angry. I used anger as a tool. Three days after the fracture, I started swinging. It was cathartic to hold a cannonball in my hands. I began low impact aerobics in a chair - my Old Lady Chair Workouts - to build endurance and increase endorphins. Within three months, I met my goal. A size 18 was a glory, and I reveled in it as it slipped over me, comfortably fastening around me. The thing was, I didn't stop there, and I couldn't. I introduced High Intensity Interval Training, I introduced more weight, I experimented with running. My life was still changing too fast for me to process, and the routine of exercise had become a comfort. I continued to drop a size every month or two for a year, shedding too big clothes like snakeskin. There were times when a pair of jeans would fit only long enough for me to wear them three times before they'd slide off me. Things have mostly leveled now. I'm less than half my goal size today, and it bothers me. I resent XS clothing that fits me more than I ever resented an XXL, but I like wearing things that meet my quirky aesthetic and that they fit. Comfort in my fat has been replaced by a gnawing anxiety with me every time I feel like I've eaten too much because I'm afraid I'll wake up the next morning fat again. Street harassment has changed from the occasional jeer to encounters that are explicitly threatening because they think I can be had. I have become visible in ways I never expected or wanted. People are nicer to me. Strangers compliment me in public. My options for partners expanded as my body contracted. I am no longer a fetish or a niche desire. I am a thing of mass appeal, but that's a problem. I'm not a thing and it's harder for people to dig for the person I am, preferring to simply leave the box unopened so they can look at the shiny packaging. I hate these things and I often hate my body. I hate the things I'm trying to change that won't - the crepey skin gathered at my belly, the stubborn arm flab. I hate that (at last weigh in 9 months ago) even 125 pounds down, it doesn't feel like enough, and there will always be a whisper that says, "smaller." I take comfort in certain dynamics that are new like having a partner who loves and appreciates me entirely, knowing they felt the same when I was fat as they do now because while the packaging may be nice, and was always nice, the gift inside was always what really mattered, so I let them truly know me in ways I never could with someone else, and I look forward to the future instead of trying to brace for it. I appreciate being more approachable even if I don't want to be approached. I like finding clothes cheap and cute that fit like they were made for only me, no longer limited to my fat uniform of tank top, cardigan, and jeans. I've become harder in many ways, and less sympathetic. My body has harsh angles that dig into soft places and hurt. So does my personality. I'm more judgmental these days. I think bariatric surgery is an expensive cheat destined to fail because they didn't have to do the work or change the habits needed for long term success. I think people who stay fat but complain about it are lazy. It's not fair to anyone and I'm not superior no matter what my ego says. I still love seeing fat bodies proudly displayed in crop tops, sheer bodycons, thighs rubbing in short shorts, and tiny bikinis. I love their stretch marks and rolls because I still have them (and hate mine) and lack these women's flamboyance. I love bigger men, too, with their dissonant firmness and softness, the ease of their strength, the depth of their laughter resonating in their chests. I was fat, and I'm not anymore. It's not remarkable despite what so many people say when they see old photos. I accomplished nothing that ultimately matters in the end. I'm just smaller and harder now. I didn't work that hard to get here and I'm ashamed of how little I struggled in comparison to how much petty praise I've received. It's taught me that people are worse than I thought. It's taught me that I will always struggle and the nature of the struggle simply shifts or becomes slipperier. It's taught me I'm still me and I'm still not good enough.  A promise
Is an oath Is a vow Is a solemn swearing That you will do what it takes To the end of it all A promise Is something I take seriously That I make rarely That I fulfill always A promise is a gift Without wrapping or bows It is an opening of yourself To the cost and debt of failure Exposing your potential for weakness To someone who shouldn't have to bear it And you will not make them A promise is a weight Taken from me By you And I can't let it go It's been dropped on soft tissue too many times I will show you the scars if you ask A promise should be kept Locked inside your lungs Dammed from slipping over your tongue Through your teeth I don't need another Trojan horse  When each tear is a word I can't speak
If I let them drop on a blank sheet Could they be read? Or would they smudge together Like ink on the heel of my left hand? Still getting in my own way No tool made for my use That I can't break Or make garbled Instead, I let them run down my cheeks Some finding their way Salty to my lips Silence tasting like sadness The rest drip onto my pillow Frustration wasted I turn it over So I don't feel the cold and damp Left in its wake When I change my sheets Wash them clean I erase entries in a journal I could never write For fear of being found  In the dark
I confess to you All the things I was afraid to say for so long Knowing you knew You wondered why I kept them Balled as tightly as a poppy before the bloom But I wasn't ready Petals spilling wide and bright vermillion My center a soft, velvet black I miss my sluggish February blood Coursing patience through me Cold and meandering Forcing stillness in my body Now waiting is a death sentence The question of when a gnawing ache In my depths Patience may be a virtue But I'm not one for piety My virtue a wasted word Stale on the tongue before it leaves Yet I still pray Please let this time And my tears Be worth it Don't let my threadbare heart Wear fresh holes in itself Or me be left to linger Sun-bleaching and frayed on the line For I know We are Falling asleep with a shared book Curry and ice cream and Words so kind They spill over the edges of us Staining everything a perfect blue And I want it more than anything that came before  I have a confession to make
But not because I've sinned And not because I violated a vow These are things I haven't done What I did When I did it Are not important Except that it led me away from you For better Not for worse You placed upon my head Your jeweled crown of failures And named me (Blamed me) Your queen Your shoulders too weak to wear it yourself I accepted the tainted gift When you said it was for love I stooped to bear it And stayed He didn't see my diminished posture The shine dulled from my eyes He saw through it Holding up a mirror Fashioned from truth Lacking the distortion of unfulfilled promises The warps and bows You perpetually placed in front of me Forcing me to look at what wasn't me Saying it was You lost me then But not to him Not really You lost me to opened eyes To truth To my own broad, strong shoulders To a head raised A level gaze And I won't look down again Because you're smaller than me While he is my equal It's my turn to hold a mirror Clean, smooth, and sharp edged I wonder what you see Underneath your crown  Spoonfed weakness grain by grain
Accumulating in my belly As stones in a bird's craw Weighing me down And I can't fly Or flee Fingers stuck down my throat Trying to vomit them up Knowing they won't come And the idea Of slitting myself open To reach in and pull them out Is too much to bear I know it's been done to us all Told it was others just like us who did it I maintain that they didn't know They were seeding boulders of suspicion Instead of pearls of grace From the same spoons For which they'd opened their own mouths wide As baby girls As young women As mothers Suffused with the poison Of contempt and competition Content to waste To wish We looked like we did a year ago Before we had children Before we had lives of our own Before puberty gave us bodies With lines that aren't straight Always beautiful in a time that isn't now Because to admit your beauty is here In this moment Is a strength And to be strong will render us Unwantable Unneedable Undesirable Unlovable Unworthy Alone in a world that's already cruel enough For girls But that boy over there He says he's strong Smart Handsome Rewarded with attaboy and pats on the back By everyone he meets Why are we different? Why is he applauded and I am scorned? Our squirming origin the same  I'm leaving by accident
Just as I arrived Borne aloft by the hope of love Blown west like a dandelion's clock Waiting for your voice Saying "go!" on the wind But this time It's not the going that's happenstance It's the reason The knowledge of home In a place I've never seen A permanence determined And I'm not afraid of forever Like I always have been To quell my impatient fidget I prepare Writing lists Making plans Learning new languages Revisiting old ones And I know we won't use them Much or at all But it stills the clamor Quiets my "when?" Redirecting the instinct to bolt Without looking back  And there is a weight in my chest
Too heavy to lift Compressing my lungs So I'm sipping careful breaths Of air so thin it stings This is what it is to miss you Living half a life Just enough to sustain me Not enough to fulfill I want the small things Keys dropped next to each other on the table A shared ice cream spoon in the sink Streaky with residue no amount of licking can remove My ribs expanding to their fullest And you next to me This feeling is new A tie that binds without binding The weight of waiting A goal without definition  It's the twinge of healed bone in a cold snap
A distant echo of pain you've long since forgotten And you're suddenly, inexplicably angry At your traitorous self For the reminder That you haven't (maybe can't ever) Set it entirely right So you apologize to everyone Except yourself For your failings Which nobody else sees Until you shine light on them As penance for your lack of resilience This is what I've broken This is what won't mend This is what pulses and bleeds What makes me stumble And why I won't take a hand Offered to help me up Because I deserve this Look at all I've done and shouldn't All I haven't but could have Maybe someday I will no longer flinch Untold winters since Under my belt But not today So please don't leave Have the patience I don't To love me just as I am |
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