as honey: desire is poured upon your lovely face

(CW: mentions of ED behaviors)

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to take up space.

This summer, I’ve been venturing out a bit more in nature, observing trees that sway unapologetically in the wind and peonies swelling into voluptuous hues of pinks and whites. I think about how my body sways and swells, how my belly extends out beyond my vulva, how my thighs rub against each other as I walk. How I brim with tears in contempt at my body taking up this much space, how it feels like it’s attacking me when really I’m the villain in the story. I’m the one attaching my arms, breasts, thighs… my heart. My soul.

♥︎

I remember being little, in my small room on Sunny Place. I was laying in my bed, hand on the same belly I have today, and daydreaming that I would get a romantically terrible illness that would eat my body from the inside, so I can look like the small girls in the TV shows. I fantasized about my mouth being forced closed so that I had no choice but to starve. Each little, tiny scenario I imagined was met with a sickening smile, an assurance that I would finally be welcomed into the world of waifish smiles. How parasitic is it that I was not the only child who has dreamt of getting sick as a ploy to exist in a tiny hubris?

♥︎

My sister is in town and I haven’t seen her in over a year. I miss her even more now. Still, I can’t help but be disappointed in what she sees, and ashamed of how envious I am of her body, of how she is able to fit into sizes 4 & 6 while I’m in the double digits. I’ve always been the big twin. The twin who had to be told to slow down while trying cake for the first time at their 1st birthday party. The twin who had to have food hidden from them because it would be gone the next morning. The twin who locked themselves in the bathroom, sobbing over the way their skin stretched against their fat. The less photogenic twin. The more sensitive twin.

♥︎

Amber Lights. Double Dates. Pulsating Music.

These are the moments where I fundamentally feel like I’m missing something. I’m buzzed. The music vibrates in my bones and organs, an accumulation of muscle memory that I had before.

♥︎

It was a humid night, and I decided to take a walk in the gardens. Manito Park is a place I often go to when I need to forget about the world around me. It’s so volatile living in my body sometimes; how my mental and physical experiences so often seem to differ. But still, I went out, with falsies glued to my eyelids and my hair curled. If I was going to go out as the fat freak, I was at least going to be the cute fat freak.

I happened to go to the park at the same time they were hosting a concert from the Spokane Symphony. It was a closed event, but they couldn’t prevent people from listening to the concerto from the sidelines. I decided to sneak into my favorite spot behind the Duncan Gardens (a depiction of the European Renaissance, frozen in time). Settling behind two pine trees, I got a sneak preview of a man playing the piano, as the whole park reverberated with sounds of tangerine sunsets and earthly treble notes.

How unapologetic that noise was, taking up the space it did. Even those who were not invited to the concert wanted to be part of its presence. What do you think would happen to our world if we treated fat bodies like we do the sound of a bold orchestra?

♥︎

For those of you who know me and don’t live under a rock, I’m a Leo. So when I say that I have perfected the art of having a delicate ego, that’s not an overstatement. But that delicacy is something that I recently have come to honor: that softness. It can be an incredible thing, laying in your duvet covers and simply hearing your heart beat. All seasons, all hours of the day. My heart still beats.