My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

“If you think I’m hard on my body now, you should have seen me ten years ago.” My new boyfriend looks at me with his eyebrows raised, uncharacteristically disbelieving. Then he says, with a slight edge to his tone, “but I didn’t know you then. I only know you now.” I pause for a second to try to figure out why this irritates me so much, when he brushes off my explanations of my past as if it has no bearing on the person I am now. It’s always surprising to me when he does this, partly because to me it seems obvious that my past is a huge part of my current self, and partly because he’s usually so thoughtful and understanding, and this kind of invalidating reaction is unusual for him. I take a deep breath and try to articulate my frustration. “You have to understand that where I was then is important…it informs where I am now. And for you to say that the person you know, the particular body image issues of the woman you’re dating here and now, are all that matter…for you to say that...

“If you throw that in a hot wash and then tumble dry it, I bet it’ll tighten up a bit and fit you better.”   I try to contain my glee at the sight of one of my favorite skirts from college, a blue cotton floral number with a wide band that used to be snug on my hips, not-quite-falling-off T’s narrower frame.   Not only is it a pleasure to think that my friends might get some use out of some of the fifty or so items of clothing I’ve brought to the swap – most of them much-loved pieces that I wore over and over again until they were put away in storage by my mother and my style slowly outgrew them – but it is a surprise and an untold joy to see how many of my old clothes actually fit these girls. My whole life, I’ve been significantly larger than all of my friends.   Even when I lost the weight, I remained a good two to four sizes above my largest girlfriend.   The first time I went to a clothing swap, years ago with my friend Courtney, ...

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...

--> A year ago today, I was supposed to get married to the man I’d loved for seven years.  I was never one of those little girls who dreamed of her wedding day – in fact, it wasn’t until we hit a visa dead end and realized marriage was the best way out that I even let myself believe in the idea of ‘I do’. I grew up with a solid feeling that I would probably wind up married with kids because most people do.  I never allowed myself to dream of a Prince Charming, a love of my life, because I was deeply afraid that if I could find someone to love that much, he would never love me back.  In fact, I wasn’t even sure someone I didn’t love that much would ever love me back.  The best I could allow myself to hope for was to meet someone I liked, who liked me as well, and who would overlook my physical appearance (which I considered to be my biggest flaw) and agree to spend his adult life with me.  We would be content, if not googly-eyed in love....

(Warning: this post contains some generalizations about Italian men.   This is not in any way intended to be offensive, nor does it represent and inflexible prejudice on my part – I’m perfectly happy to amend my judgments at any time.   These views are mine alone and are based only on my relatively limited experience of traveling in Italy.) “It’s going to be your ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’!”   “You’ll never come back because you’ll fall in love with a hot Italian guy and have his babies and live there forever!”   “It’s just like ‘Eat, Pray, Love’.”   Well, first of all, if it were the latter book it would be titled simply “Eat.”   Or maybe “Eat, Write, Maybe Make Out.”   But overall comments like those above, which represent the great majority of reactions to my announcement that I’m taking three months off from work and moving to Italy to live off savings and write , have left me with a sardonic half-smile.   I usua...

My head fills with blood, pumping in a rapid thud, thud in my ears.  My shoulders and wrists ache, my hands are slipping toward the front of my mat, and my hamstrings refuse to budge further as I attempt to 'ground my heels'.  The bead of sweat that slipped down between my breasts during an earlier pose is now creeping back up my sternum, sliding past my throat and up behind my ear into my hair.  All I can think is how much longer, how many more breaths, oh right, breathe, in through the nose, out through the mouth, breathe into the pose and try to relax because the next one will probably kill us. "Don't forget to relax your jaw."  The tall, handsome yoga teacher's big paddle feet go past the edge of my visual field.  I try to remain in the moment but I can't help cracking a grin.  He's been telling us to relax our jaws periodically throughout this class and every time I react internally like a 13 year old boy.  Same deal when he has us open our hips...

--> It’s been a rough couple of weeks since I got back from London.   I went to meet my friend Tess’s baby (he’s as delicious as he looks in the photos) and to see my good friends, but I also went to confront my past there and kind of reclaim my territory – I liked to say I was going to ‘piss all over London’ with a wicked grin on my face, but as the trip approached I got progressively more terrified, until my dad had to give me some of his anti-anxiety meds to stop me hyperventilating in the office the day of my flight. As expected, being in London was really hard.   One day I walked the southern boundary of ‘our’ old stomping grounds and I could feel the blood pulsing in my brain and heart and I knew I had to change routes and go out of my way.   I likened it to touring a haunted house: ghosts of my relationship were everywhere, reminders of how happy I’d been and how long he’d lied to me, how much I’d put up with it… I walked past pubs where I’d cr...