You lose half a pound from sweating so much, and think that you’re probably glowing, just like pregnant women do. You wonder if maybe you’re pregnant, but realize you need to have sex to be that. So you take up Pilates. You spend all your money on face wash and cheese.
It wasn’t that I didn’t join the flow of life. I worked hard to pull myself off that couch, my daughter and husband thrived. Financially we found our footing again. So what is she complaining about, one might ask?
Although they know some of my secrets and vice versa, we don’t talk about things that are serious and I don’t ever allow myself to talk about the serious things. It’s much easier to talk about the cute and funny things and pretend that nothing is wrong and I’m perfectly happy.
Now I know that it wasn’t masochism but mourning. When I faced losing him, it also meant accepting what had happened in that first abusive relationship, which I had been avoiding all that time.
I am beautiful, and I am fat. I have heart disease, and I am a diabetic. I am both complicated and simple. I am love, and I am pain. I am loud and shy.
I took my first pole dance class the same day that I started law school. The instructor, Stacey taught us a move called the Vagina Monster, where you lay back, toes pointed to the ceiling, and then shuffle sideways, butt cheek to butt cheek waving your legs.
There was some voice in my brain telling me that I should not feel so alone. That pregnancy connected me, not only to my own mother, but to women everywhere, and for generations before and to come, who have carried and borne children.
Our little American family seemed very small and vulnerable indeed, outmatched by the aggression around us. “Can’t we just turn around? I’d rather eat at home,” our kids worried from the backseat. But Dad was not giving up.
There is an unexpected sense of loneliness in watching the dead body of someone you love being taken away from your home. Alone in the back of a car. Zipped up inside a body bag. Driving away into resounding blackness.
Supposedly, this wall is meant to just keep out men who Trump refers to as “bad hombres,” but, in reality, it seems to be targeted at all foreigners, those people with brown skin, the people one might think could be Spanish interpreters.
I’d once been one of those pierced, hula-hooping ladies. Had it only been seven years? I marveled at how much had changed between ages 38—when I’d attended my last music festival—and 45. I had become a mother a third time and the term “hot flash” had entered my lexicon. I could no longer handle hours in the unmerciful sun.
