The Wind

The wind is blowing. And I'm antsy as hell. The season is changing. It's making me want to crawl out of my skin or climb up a tall tree and stay there until things feel settled again. I have panic in my chest. I need to move my body. And when I move my body, I realize just how big my body has become and I hate it. So I hide it. And around I go.

I thought today that I'd like to learn to dance. I've never been graceful. I've never been limber. My limbs are not slender and beautiful. I thought I'd like to learn ballet. Do they even let fat girls like me dance ballet? I feel like I shouldn't be allowed to try to move my body in ways that might try to be beautiful. Like it would be an insult to the art of dance. And I notice the wind and feel the panic in my chest and I want to run away instead. Forget dance. Forget ballet. I don't deserve that. What if I could learn to make something beautiful with my body? Then what? I'd have to find a new mindset, a new way of thinking in order to make sense of that. Right now, beauty and my body don't fit on the same page, in the same book, on the same shelf, or even in the same sphere.

The wind is blowing. There is a ponderosa pine tree outside my bedroom window. I think I'd climb it if someone were chasing me. The wind is chasing me. I can hear it. I can feel it. I can see it moving the branches of the tree.

And the panic presses in on me. My baby is awake from his nap and I will not climb the tree to wait in safety. I will swallow the panic and be a mommy. My son will press his face into my flubber fat squishy breasts and belly. He finds comfort there in what I hate. I try so hard not to show him that I hate that part of me. I try not to cringe when he snuggles into my fat rolls. They are warm, soft, safety for my baby.

This goes around and around in my head and I start to think that I might be crazy. No, I'm not crazy. I just don't filter as much as maybe I should.

I'm going to go get my baby up from his nap. I'm going to sit in my comfortable chair and lift my shirt. I'm going to hold him close as he presses himself into me. And I will nurse him as I gaze into the pine tree outside the window. I will breathe.

HBK