The Weight of Backstory

I've never been thin. At age 12, I looked basically as I do now, but with a  young face--heavy thighs, womanly hips, big butt, much smaller on top. For about three months in college, I went below 140 pounds, for one week of that below 130, due to infatuation. Pushing away food, living on air, on the chance of seeing him between classes. One week. Then it was over. Never happened again. Due to my sincere love of food, I averaged 155 for much of my 20s and 30s. But I was up to 165 when I got pregnant at 37. Then I gained only 20 pounds in the nine-month period, lost more after the birth due to breastfeeding, but started to gain again in the lengthy sleep deprivation that followed. About four years of broken, inadequate sleep and I hit my personal high of 207 pounds. So tired I needed a double breakfast to get going in the morning, so tired at 4 pm I had a piece of cake or a cookie. I ate dinner full, but knowing I'd be up two or three times. I couldn't sleep, so I ate. Being too full probably added to the poor quality of my sleep. Finally, I could barely bend in the middle. I couldn't get down on the floor to play with my son.
I said to myself, That's enough.

Writing Rules!

Sit down, apply pencil to loose leaf. Wait.
That's all I usually have to do these days and it comes. I don't know what will come--aphorisms, titles, journal entries, story ideas, dialogue for stories in progress, philosophical musings--but something. See? Even this, watching myself watch myself writing. This week, not so much, though. Maybe because I'm over-impressed by my four-year anniversary, maybe that I'm cycling through another knowledge acquisition phase, wherein I read voluminously and watch movies obsessively. These times are fun, too, not quite as good as writing a lot, but useful.

Teflon Bubble

I go on and on about how I look good for my age, and I know that many people may take it as bragging about the genetic luck I was born with. But ten years ago, I was sixty pounds heavier and hoping every day to see someone on the street who was heavier even than I was, so I could say to myself, " At least I haven't let myself get that bad!" Cold comfort. I discovered in that period that I was grumpy and defensive before anyone said a word to me. That I traveled in a teflon bubble assuming people were judging me and finding me wanting. Others had no right to do that to me, though; that was my job. How did it come to that? And why is it no longer true?
Stay tuned: Body Blog by Barb can answer all your questions.

Odalisque 2010

Swimming has been surprisingly body-positive for me. I hadn't thought it would be. Yoga in a mirrored studio became increasingly dismaying two years ago. But I discover now that I think I look better in the buff than clothed. Strangely I'm beginning to understand why a nice modest woman might let her boyfriend or husband talk her into having her picture taken nude. Especially if she believes she is not pretty and he begs to differ. She might secretly want proof that she is or was beautiful in one way at one time. She may not think at the time about her children getting a hold of it in years to come.
I don't have any such photos myself, but even a bra and panties dig just slightly into me and start the illusion of rolls of flesh. Jeans=muffin-top for someone with my shape. If only I could get Ingres to paint me as Odalisque!

The Fourth Anniversary

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of my daily writing habit. What do I have to show for it? Hundreds of pages of drecky journal, thirty short story attempts, ten semi-serious poems, dozens of kooky titles with no story attached (A.I. for Dummies, Living with LCD, Titles Are My Weakness, etc.), improved typing skills, fifteen new friends, a new or renewed purpose, a heightened sense of the ridiculous, and a gratitude for mortality. I won't have to do this forever, just until I die.
Either writing is driving me crazy or keeping me sane. But which? I also have twenty rejections--it should be more, I know, but I hate the business end. I'm doing a DIY MFA, to spare myself the ritualized hazing of writing workshops. Now that I'm "in touch with my creativity," it's time to ask if the sensation is an enjoyable one.
Yes! It is! I find that my longstanding skills of cafe lounging are really starting to pay off. Ditto procrastination in house cleaning. One of these days, an example of my deathless prose will sprout off the tender tendril of a state university literary review and get an even chance of curling and drying on the vine. One of these days.
Until then, I'll rant from here.

The Dark Night of the Soul

Couldn't sleep Sunday night. Thoracic blah-blah-blah acting up, couldn't find a comfortable position where my hand wouldn't go numb. I lay awake about two hours. If I'd had any wine for dinner, I probably would have attributed my sleeplessness to that. Or if I'd overeaten. But sometimes I think it's just the brain demanding thinking time.
Too many inputs. TV, movies, internet, radio, conversations, work details, life logistics. And so many of us are bored if we don't distract ourselves constantly while we're awake. We don't give ourselves enough time to process all these inputs--then we wonder why we can't sleep. Distraction is perhaps a species of denial. So thinking in the middle of the night is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you don't indulge in self-recrimination about how tired you'll be the next day. This may not be something you have to fix about yourself. Just stare into the dark and breathe.

Wrinkles

Not so many yet. I do have tiny etched lines near the eyes, deepening creases on my neck, and two saggy little points about a third of the way from my chin to the corner of my jaw bone. This latter detail is an inheritance from my mother that she cannot see on herself or its repetition among her sisters. The first time I mentioned it, "Look, I'm getting the matrilineal chin points!" she said in some shock, "I don't have those, do I?" Um, yup, you do, Mom.
Recently she gave me copies of some pictures taken at Christmas, she and Dad with each of their children and our families, four in all, in front of her Christmas tree. Her face in each of the pictures is so nearly identical to the rest that it almost looks as if her face has frozen into a special "for photographs only" grimace. I wonder if this is on purpose. Does she know it's happening? Can she see it in the photos herself? I don't mean these comments as some sort of criticism of her, surface vs. interior or whatever. But it is curious and I wish I could ask her. But I'm afraid to; she seems so touchy on the subject of her looks, now in her 75th year. All she said about the photos was that the beautiful new jacket she bought for the holiday parties made her look fat in the photos, and that it was too bad, because she didn't think it made her look fat in person.
What is expected of me is the usual: "No, it didn't make you look fat in person. Oh, too bad, the high sheen of the fabric creates a glare that reads in the photos as a rounded belly." So I said that. But what's sad to me is that the photo will become more important than the event, has such impact on her view of herself.
My worst wrinkles, by the way, are on my earlobes. Go figure.