My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

“It was weird, though,” I say, turning to look briefly at my boyfriend’s face and check my blind spot before turning off the main road into our little potholed neighborhood. “I’m standing there, surrounded by all these beautiful dresses, and half of me is like ‘ooh, yeah, I am so coming here when we get engaged,’ and super excited about the selection, and the other half…the other half is basically like ‘are you really going to do this again? Are you really going to try on dresses and put down deposits and announce to the world that you're happy and in love – and trust that the world isn't going to laugh in your face and bitch-slap you in return?’” I pause for a breath as I turn onto our block, dodging the ancient, rickety trailer that haunts the curb at the corner. He’s quiet, so I try to smooth over the rough stuff I’ve just let fly: “Don’t worry; I’m working on all this. I’ll figure it out.” I’m not at all sure I’ll figure it out, but I’m desperate ...

It’s been over a year since I’ve written here, and a lot has happened.   I’ve moved to Oakland to live alone, spent the past nine months teaching middle school (which, in this internet age, has made me much more squirrelly about my online presence and what I say here), and continued to work on a book that feels ever more like chopped-up pieces of squirming earthworm in my hands – perhaps they can be fitted back together but every time I try to start I just want to throw up.    Perhaps most relevant is this: last time I wrote, I mentioned a new boyfriend.   Well, he’s still around, and not so new anymore.   We celebrated a year this January and we’re planning to move in together at the end of the summer, which is simultaneously surreal and wonderful and terrifying.   The last time I lived with someone I wound up staying with him for seven years, planning the next thirty, getting engaged, and then having my heart rot from the inside out over the cour...

As Jennifer Lawrence cried perfect, beautiful tears of rage onscreen, her home in ash and rubble around her, my gaze settled lower down on something inside the theater: my legs.   Tessa and I were sitting in the prime seats in the front row of the back section at the AMC, our feet propped up on the bar in front of us, and for the first time I could remember I had a moment of positive revelation; my legs are normal-sized , I thought, with so much surprise that the moment was instantly notable. For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt abnormally large.   For much of my life, reality was at least mostly in line with this self-assessment – I was larger than average, or at least larger than any person I knew.   Later, as I got smaller, I still felt massive.   It took me years to force myself to believe that my idea of my body was out of proportion to how ‘freakish’ I actually was.   And even then, reality was often on the side of my ne...