Tweeting through it.
I become a new woman every time someone hurts me, and I get more dangerous — more risky — every time I look at the clock, reach for the refrigerator handle, take in my skin again. Each time I do something for myself, I love my newness deeper and deeper. An incredible feeling.
I've also never been a fan of comparing myself to other women because that's wack, but I have always been obsessed with comparing myself to the woman that I thought I would be at 28. I look nothing like her. I don't sound like her. I don't feel like her.
I don't do the things that I thought she would do. And sometimes that's disappointing and frustrating to me, and at other times it's scary and exhilarating. The best part, however, is that I love this discovery notwithstanding.
Even though I don't recognize myself at times, I love me. And the unawareness forces me to find new ways to see myself and to love myself. I adore this metamorphosis so much.
In my best daydreams, I have new hair and new skin you haven’t touched. I have a healthier body that you’ve never been impressed by. I have new shoulders you’ve never set your desires on.
And although this is incredibly appealing, it’s not the antidote to healing. I can still be the me that I am on this Friday, that I was on Thursday, and still be a person you’ve never seen.
With shoulders you’ve never set your desires on. Legs you’ve never looked up from. Eyes you’ve never tried to find in a sea of others. It’s a hopeful feeling.
I talk about it until it doesn’t hurt anymore, and then I write about it until I don’t feel anything. Once I don’t feel anything, I remember all of the things that I loved about myself, and that’s when I reconcile that he was never the one in the first place. That’s the recipe.
my writing prompt for this week was based from small perceptions of sweat that I felt while outside in the afternoon time, and since I’m rarely outside at that hour, I wanted to parallel that physical feeling with one that may elicit the same feelings emotionally.
and what I came up with was that the feelings of sweat felt like something that I didn’t ask for. they felt like intrusions, and the ones on my stomach were excusable but the ones on my back were like a prickling inconvenience that grew to be absolutely intolerable.
and then this felt like last summer when I didn’t ask to meet the subject of the last journal that I kept, either, and how much of his presence was also an intrusion: intolerable when I couldn’t figure him out; excusable when I could.
so he ended up feeling like sweat in small places: the tender of my back, the birthmark on my stomach, the cup of my collarbone.
and I knew that, like most difficult things and like the sweat, he was discomfort with a purpose: trying to cool my body down, reminding me that I was moving too fast, catalyzing a memory of a water bottle in a backseat.
so sweat in small places reminds me of the ways that I thought I had control over my body’s memories, but I don’t. and I appreciate my body’s ability to regulate the things that I can’t: an internal cooling system, a recollection, an intrusion.
I worked with a realtor today who advised me to choose 8 of several properties that he sent over. I chose 3 because there were only 3 that appealed to me and three that I would want to live in eventually. I sent the three over. He called me.
“I see you chose three. I think you should at least choose 8 since some of the properties may not be available when we go tour them tomorrow.”
I told him that I was aware that I only chose three. That I only chose three because there were only three that appealed to me. I knew that I chose three, and I intentionally sent three to him. Instead of eight.
“Would you like me to send you more listings from a different area?”
I told him that I appreciated his help and that I would not need his listings from other areas. We agreed to meet tomorrow at 4:30pm.
I hung up the phone and thought, “This is how it starts in every capacity for each boundary you set.” You define a line that they cannot cross, and every further question metamorphoses into an increasingly more violent version of a breach of your comfort, your margin.
They begin politely, underneath a guise of care and concern. That’s the egg.
Larvae comes in the form of repetition. “I think you should at least choose three.”
In pupa, they begin to victimize - to make it, your bounds, about themselves. “I can send you listings of different areas if you’d like.” “The way you’ve chosen to prioritize taking care of yourself is making me uncomfortable.”
If you’re lucky, they concede as an adult. They notice your constance, and their retreat is less a depiction of their respect for your boundaries than it is a last-place movement as they recognize their loss in the game of predator vs. prey.
My space is my own. My decisions are my own. My inconsistencies are my own, and so are my satisfactions. Never had much room in my mind for another. I prefer it that way.