Dec

29

Blocked

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Writing has been really difficult lately. My current environment isn’t particularly conducive to the process, with the family home on break, but I also find that even when I do have time to myself, the words won’t come. I want to write because when I don’t write I feel more and more disconnected, but I can’t seem to tap into any sort of flow and that is a deeply scary feeling. Like maybe the one thing in life I’m halfway decent at is … gone?

I don’t actually believe that. I guess. (Except sometimes, I sort of do.)

Dec

22

Diversion

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Weight gain, pros:

• Boobs no longer look like half-empty icing bags

• Rounder face = fewer places for pools of shadowy haggardness

• “Dimpled butt” sounds cute, even if it’s not particularly when one is 42 as opposed to 8 months old

• …. Extra padding in the event of falling from a great height?

The truth is I hate the weight I’ve gained. I hate it, and I am so tired of hating it, of being so painfully self-conscious and convinced everyone is assessing me through the same lens I use on myself.

I once read that Meryl Streep was asked what advice she would give her younger self, and she answered,

Don’t waste so much time thinking about how much you weigh. There is no more mind-numbing, boring, idiotic, self-destructive diversion from the fun of living.

It’s that word diversion that really jumps out at me. In what ways might I be a happier, healthier person if I weren’t caught up in this punishing cycle of criticizing my body and strategizing how I can change my body? How much easier would sobriety be if I weren’t forever tempted by a substance that strips away the pounds (along, of course, with everything good in my life)?

What could I offer the world if I wasn’t pouring so much energy into the way I look instead of the way I live?

What would it be like to accept my no-longer-skinny body?

What would it be like to love that body?

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