When I Inhabit Too Much Space
Sharing a Special Essay from the Past
I’ve been thinking a lot about this newsletter—what I want it to be and what I don’t want it to be. I’ve decided to drop the “Dear Diary” gimmick. I thought it was cute, but now I find it annoying. You probably do, too.
I want this space to be where I can share my thoughts, feelings, and words. But I also want to know what you want. Please feel free to share that with me today… and always.
Right now, I want it to be a home for an essay that earned me a 2015 BlogHer “Voice of the Year” award. Not only because I love the words that are in it, but because it brings back so many special—and bittersweet—memories.
When I won my VOTY award, I chose to bring my big sister, Carrie, to NYC as my plus one. Kevin bought us tickets to see "Beautiful" on Broadway, and Mom gave us money for a fancy Manhattan dinner. I still have the note she wrote, tucked away in a special box of memories.
Carrie and I were just beginning to mend our strained adult relationship.
My one and only sister is now gone—Mom is, too—and my author bio looks very different today. My then-husband is now my ex-husband, and the friend who said I "felt like home" is no longer in my life. (Her choice, not mine.)
But the love/hate relationship with my body is one that will be with me forever.
So many things change, and so few remain the same.
But this body. This body. I will always and forever worry about how I look from behind. I will always and forever fear bathing suits and love donuts.
And I will always and forever miss my mom and my sister.
Here’s my essay, originally published by Mamalode in 2015. Thanks for reading it. XO
WHEN I INHABIT TOO MUCH SPACE
I lie in bed on my back, suspended between sleep and waking, and feel the pressure of my own stomach weighing down on my insides. My breasts fall haphazardly, one toward my neck, one to the side.
I want to crack open like a cicada, to levitate from my fragile sleep in a new and lighter form, to leave this shell behind. My kind and faithful husband, I think, can dispose of what remains, can carry it to the trash and roll it to the curb.
I will be too busy being fabulous and winged and made of air.
Don't you worry about your health? My well-meaning friends inquire. About the example you set for your kids?
Yes, I say. Of course.
Here is a partial list of the things I worry about:
My bathroom scale
Buttons giving way and causing bodily harm to another
Stretch marks
The number of trips I make to the buffet
Cellulite
The view of those who walk behind me
Heart disease
The way my stomach undulates when I run
High school reunions
Bathing suits
Running out of Ben & Jerry's Karamel Sutra Core
Diets
Underarm sag
The Sirens' Song of the Oreos
Skinny neighbors
Bingeing and purging
Bingeing without purging
A thin, beautiful friend laments the nearly indiscernible layer of skin that peeks cautiously, shyly over her waistband. “I'm afraid when people hug me, this is all they feel,” she explains. I look at my own stomach (reluctantly), constrained by my shorts, resting gently on my thighs. The conversation, of course—because all weight-related discussions eventually morph into self-centered microscopes—becomes about me.
“What do you feel when you hug me?” I ask, awkwardly attempting to smooth my stomach with my fingers, to erase last night's glasses of wine with the mere touch of my hands.
“Hugging you,” she says, her radiant smile lighting the room, “always feels like home.”
I lightly trace the freckled skin that contains my guts, my bones, my heart. Thumb and pointer feel the lumpiness that resides just below the surface. What is hidden beneath flesh—but visible to the inquiring eye as rolls and hills and bumps—has a name.
It is shame.
I want to love me as I am, as precious beloved others do. I want to run on the beach without a care and without Glide to ease the chafing, to accept a pool party invitation without counting the number of days between now and then that are available for fasting, to throw away my Spanx and strut into a cocktail party with my head held high and my kick ass shoes drawing every passing glance.
But I prefer the skinny girls. The ones I am not and never have been.
Skinny = Good
Fat = Bad
Liberal = Kind
Conservative = Greedy
Smart = Successful
Dumb = Lazy
These are the lies upon which a life is built, the bricks and mortar that fashion the houses of our own beliefs. My house is solid and strong. I want to tear down the door. I want to run away. I'm ready for a new place to call home.
There is an intersection of scars at the point where each of my babies first breathed earthly air. They are portals to life and love and fulfillment. I cannot touch them, half-numb and thick as they are. But my belly folds over them, creating a dark, moist cavern. Once life-giving, now avoided at all costs.
A forbidden kingdom.
A paradoxical landscape.
This body has been battered and bruised and loved and honored. It has been taken by those who had no claim to ownership, and it has been held gently by those committed to its care and keeping.
Those people include others… strangers, lovers.
Those people include me.
I want to run free and light and full of nothing, to escape what holds me close to the ground.
But the gravitational pull is fierce.
And there are donuts, sweet and warm.
Thank you Katrina, for laboring to so exquisitely language this experience of embodied womanhood. May our liberation be corporeal and unmeasured!!!
Katrina, what an honest reflection about your relationship with your body. So much of what you shared in this essay are thoughts and feelings I've held secret. But also not secret.
When I was in high school, all four of my best friends were skinny. I hated going shopping with them for clothes. I'd sit outside the dressing rooms and they'd emerge with some tight jeans and ask, "Do these make my butt look fat?" Then, without waiting for an answer, they'd check the tag and say, "Oh, I can't believe these are a size 8! I've always been either a 4 or a 6!"
I'd just sit there and wonder, then what do they think of MY size 12 ass?!
I never asked. But I always graciously told them how beautiful they looked, and I meant every word.
But I couldn't help but compare myself to them. They got the boyfriends. I didn't. Guys would flock to them at social gatherings, and at school, they'd approach me only to ask, "Where's your blond friend?"
So yeah. What you wrote is what I internalized to mean that my body shape was undesirable, which then meant I was undesirable.
There's so much our bodies go through and so much we put our bodies through. And now, at age 43, I want to learn how to be kind to my body. I haven't gotten to the point of loving it yet, but I usually accept it. It's a day to day thing.