Directionless Meditation on Obesity
TW: Body image & weight issues
I was Three when my mom told me "no more"- She says I agreed amiably. I can't disagree since I don't remember and she's proud of the story tells it often enough How she ended the meal and I agreed No harm done.
I was Thirteen sitting on the couch My dad telling some story of This or that being symptomatic of the lazy American way of life Eating Cheetos in front of the television Becoming obese Playing video games And I sat still Like a rabbit Afraid to be seen Because I wasn't- Not yet But I knew people talked about me How he talked about Them.
I was Twenty-three and nervous about my body In what would become one of the best relationships of my life Keeping all the details secret In case I was the wrong shape for success after all The wrong shape to be loved The wrong shape to be kept The wrong shape to be known And no one was allowed to know the existence Of my future lover, partner, spouse In case...
I am Thirty wrestling doctors making passing comments About donuts and tubs of lard as they mark "obese" on the charts; Pushing down the seething rage when every grain Is whole grain And every sweetener Is justified And every bite Is a forced compromise between the work I throw myself into And the body that refuses to create energy from nothing. Every year a new doctor is frustrated As if they carry the weight As if they carry the implications As if they have been told time and time again That their heart, liver, unborn children Are being damaged irreparably by Living only human...
And I want to be Thirty three. I want to love my mind, my body Have faith in the person I am becoming. I want to be made of love and passion Full of the light in the work that I do Distinct from whispers behind hands (Not of me, who am my own)
But How would I be thirty-three? How would I be fourty-three? How would I be anything but here and now Struggling To be the shape and the weight and the specifications Of those who require me to be "finished" When even the sky and the sea and the trees Are not finished But only themselves?
Only themselves? The audacity. Don't they know? Haven't they heard the rumors and whispers? It isn't enough, not without trying. Are they trying? Are they suffering for this, for this being? Who has entitled them to live like this, whole? Who has entitled existence, unfinished and unperfected in the eyes of peers themselves polished and elevated? How dare existence simmer quiet but steady Beside the frantic buzz of social standards And the elevation of one, or another, to "success"?
