school starts soon, which means summer is almost officially over for me. i’ve had a good summer, really. a growing summer in a lot of ways. but it always feels over for me in september because my birthday falls on the 11th and so the addition of a year to my age seems especially significant as the weather starts to change and the school year begins. yesterday, our friend JS came over and tattooed my leg. Side B has started the tattoo about a month ago, but i’m a bleeder and it worried her so she stopped, telling me we would do it again in a few days, though we never did. i have to say, i was a lot more frightened about the process than was necessary. it does hurt, but you get used to the pain after awhile. needles were a huge fear of mine till i got my septum pierced, which lessened it somewhat. spending over an hour watching as someone pierces my skin with one? removed the fear.
the word is significant to me, and the tattoo is in Side B’s handwriting (which is important because now Side A and i both have tattoos in Side B’s handwriting on our bodies- Side A on her ankle and me on my outer-thigh.) i chose the word because it is something which, in my anxiety, i always forget. when you are an anxious person, it seems as though only the worst could ever happen to you, the terrible things you imagine are the only potential outcomes. it helps to remember that you can only imagine a fraction of the things that could occur because there are always varying factors, different aspects that create a situation which you could never, ever predict. so this is what i chose to mark on my body as a reminder that really, anything wonderful could happen.
Filed under: body
these are some of the things my body has been called by other people: fat, curvaceous, chubby, large, big-boned, rubenesque, heavy, gross, abnormal, obese, uhealthy, a cause, an obstacle, a reason.
of these, this is the only one i accept: fat, in a non-negative sense. occasionally, if i am in the company of people i trust to understand that i am not being self-deprecating, i’ll use what i privately call myself, which is chubster.
my identity as a fat person is wrapped up in and hollowed-out by my anxiety. i’m not really sure which came first: anxiety or physical awareness. maybe they strolled in holding hands. when i say physical awareness, though, i’m not talking about how my body really looks. what i am talking about is the ways in which it is “wrong.” i suppose, in this context, that means “not beautiful” according to a strange set of standards created for us by sexism, racism, classism, sizeism, homophobia, ableism, cissexism. the standards that decide who gets to be treated like a deserving human being, and who is othered, sometimes othered to a point of violence. for those of us who identify as women ( and for the record i’m writing this from the point of view of a woman who is somewhere between working-and-middle class, white, cisgendered and mostly ability-privileged.) it really isn’t a secret what things are valued by corporations and mainstream media and by association, society. the “ideal woman” is thin and white,middle-or-upper class, cisgendered, fully-abled (i feel like there is a better word than this), straight.** she knows her place. and even, even if we know mentally that this is crap, that beauty is so incredibly different in each of its appearances that giving it one definition is impossible…sometimes it is hard to bring the intellectual together with the emotional and use this outlook to see ourselves.
the following is a series of excerpts from a much longer piece:
it took me so long to admit to myself that i was queer because even asking people to consider that someone fat is also someone sexual is often a joke. i’ve seen the movies where the fat girl is replaced by prettier friends or becomes thin because she wants it bad enough. i’ve heard men discuss my body and decide my breasts would be better on a skinny woman. and looking at myself in the mirror can sometimes be the same as slicing into my flesh needing to get rid of a feeling not knowing what but being told my clothes are holding something unacceptable. i feel like i have things to say but i’m not sure i’m allowed to say them. when i was ten someone reduced me to an unkind nickname and i took that and ran with it reducing who i was over and over until that person had been replaced by being fat. now i’ve got a big body and a small sense of self. i used to buy my right to existence in the form of small pills that would reduce my appetite make me want to eat less, lose weight, exercise, become a better person who deserved to be a person because i was told you have to work hard to be good enough.
but the problem is i don’t even know what my body looks like anymore, have replaced it with stereotypes like circus fat and ugly fat and don’t-eat-that-extra-piece-of-cake-fat and avoid-carbs-fat and double-chin-fat and no-bright-colours-horizontal-stripes-tight-shirts-skinny-jeans-tank-tops-floral-patterns-dresses-without-empire-waists-fat. i have started to believe the stereotypes in relation to myself… and even saying this, knowing none of those apply to anyone, i want validation of the you’re not *that*-fat kind. so when i say that sometimes my body is unstable i mean it is like a sheet of ice you can’t even whisper close to it without breaking it slightly in two. when i say that i can’t speak i mean i won’t let myself.
the sick thing is, i know all of this shit isn’t true, but i find it hard to escape it when i think about myself. we’re woven into either/or before we can even speak. often, it feels like life is a game of “one of these things is not like the other” because we’re taught to pick apart, to decide what doesn’t belong, to get rid of what stands out because it threatens the structure of how things “should be.” i’ve spent too much time circling myself with red to show that i don’t belong and those hours are ones i’ll never get back. and if i’m clocking hours here the ones i’ve spent truly unreservedly loving my body are equivalent to the time it takes me to write this.
someone (well-meaning) who i love used to tell me that not everything is a battle, that getting angry at the television, newspapers, magazines, words-people-say is a waste of time. and what i wanted to say was: “pretending that none of these things influence you or matter is like swallowing poison with the belief that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. you’ve got to choose to see what is wrong before you can fix it. and i know you want me to stop because you’re worried i’m hurting myself but the only thing that could hurt more is to go back to blindly following these arbitrary rules dictating my value via my ability to absorb hate.”
the thing is, someone could tell me i’m beautiful but it isn’t going to matter unless i find myself beautiful. and i can say these things and not be sure i can really live them. i’m taking steps on ground i have barely started to pave with decisions and ideas in the first stages of their development. and this world can be a mean place built on hate and firmly believed lies on what bodies deserve to exist, to pass, to succeed.
some bodies are (wrongly) considered normal while others are deviant.
i came into this world with only my body. it was the first thing i ever knew, it is the last thing i will ever know. it deserves a lot better than this.
**if i could be using better words here, please let me know.
it is thunder-storming outside and we are in our new place, have been for a week. my room, the smallest, also has a balcony looking out over the street below and i have tacked towels over part of the door to keep the pounding rainwater from soaking my pink and white paisley comforter where i am lying. (yes, pink paisley. i’m really fond of it, purchased at atlantic super store with weasel’s employee discount during our first halifax winter.) down the hall my roommate is hanging out with the guy she hooked up with last night, a dudely punk-rocker who spent the morning in the living room with us, playing youtube videos of social distortion. in the living room, Side B and alj (the poet’s boy-whatever) are lit up by the glow of computer screens. everyone (except me) is hung over. i am simply tired, having stayed awake till 4 am and gotten up at 10:30 am.
it is one of those days where i feel like lying with someone in bed, having my hair played with, blissing out to a stupid movie. but, being the only perpetually single person in the house, i suppose i will be content with spooning the cat and writing this instead.
i love rainstorms very dearly, love the feeling of a quiet rainy day spent with books and tea. what i really want to be reading right now is some ivan e. coyote. on my trip to halifax, i bought “close to spiderman” from venus envy bookstore- partially because i wanted the book, partially because i wanted to have an excuse to talk to the girl behind the counter. (yes, it is a sad excuse.) but i left the book somewhere in my friend yar’s (hi!) apartment and it sort of disappeared and was never seen again. now i am looking thoughtfully over at the books on my desk…is it a time for poetry? for prose? do i want to finish re-reading “where she was standing” by maggie helwig, knowing full well that it will reduce me to tears? or maybe i’ll act out “spoon river anthology” quietly to myself, though i prefer to wait till the place is empty for those kinds of dramatics (my margaret fuller slack gets kind of loud.)
how odd that last night, my room was full of people. four of us on the bed, several on the floor, the balcony, the chairs. originally, i was hiding from the house-warming party in here with one other person, but eventually more and more people gravitated to us until we had a good half of the party in my small space (not, sadly, a very interesting person i had seen arrive and introduce themselves to my sister’s girlfriend, k.) i’m not used to having people congregate in a place i have chosen to hide, but i liked the disturbance of my social anxiety…it felt good to have people in my safe space, mostly because the majority of them were politically correct queers (the first is really the only one of the two that is a requirement for being in my safe space…we don’t do slurs here- including “retard” which, sadly, seems to be a favorite even among progressive people these days. when we have parties, Side B and i tape a sign to the front door that states exactly what we do not tolerate, in case there is any confusion.) now it is quiet and empty, though several empty cans of pabst blue ribbon and labatt as well as a mostly-finished bottle of wine are still hanging around.
it is now that i stop and reflect and realize i’ve changed a lot since i arrive here last august, feeling quiet and shy and confused and closeted but to three people. i haven’t become a bar star or anything (and don’t want to) but i know people, i’m out to everyone (except my parents and…that will come. it will be easy when i do- they are really pro-queer- but i have to find the courage to tell them anyway.) i talk to people now instead of hiding in my room. and i am working, working on the body issues. that is a longer process, methinks, but not a futile one.
i think i’ve decided on a half-nap, and maybe some episodes of daria, and an apple.
waiting, waiting. the weather forecast has promised me a thunderstorm for the second day in a row. i woke up yesterday with a headache beating heavy undertones, which lasted through the day broken only briefly for a few hours by cinnamon paste and mint tea. but almost nothing relieves a pressure headache (except for relief of pressure.) today it is less insistent, just a slight pressure in my temples and the bridge of my nose. my mum used to get these when i was a kid- as the weather changed she would retire to their soothingly darkened bedroom forecasting thunder and, like magic, the thunder came. i used to think she was a sort of witch, my mother and her head that knew when the weather was changing.
bodies are strange and beautiful. my legs begin to get sore before it snows heavily, tightening at the cold. the iron in my bloodstream stops watches. i used to think it was one kind of magic, now i know it’s another. i’m bleeding today, it’s a full moon tomorrow and my body feels exactly as full and expectant, even wickedly out of sync as it is with what is natural. sometimes i look at the miracle of freckles on someone’s arm and fall in love with them faster than it takes breath to leave my body. i spend time looking at the scars on my hands and remembering cats and blackberry bushes and teeth and trees and concrete. on my thumb, a fishhook-shaped scar with no remembered origin creases the knuckle. on my wrist, a scar in the shape of an exclamation mark comes from a fight with weasel that involved me sitting in a plastic laundry basket, breaking its sides as i attempted to lever myself out of it in anger. my eyelids are heavy and double over themselves, betraying a facet of my ancestry. i have a light brown birth-mark in the centre of my neck and another in the shape of a blurry heart on the underside of my right breast. bodies are amazing, the variety in them, the secrets and quirks of them, the differences in them. when i remember to appreciate my own, it is like a story i had forgotten and am suddenly reliving.
i could go on, of course, but i think the computer is losing my interest. it’s almost two and i’m hungry. i’m going to go make tea and heat some carrot-ginger soup, sit out on the back porch and wait for the storm.
