Definitions
Written by Kelly on November 6th, 2009I am not whole. I am not fractured.
I’ve been losing weight. It is not intentional. I just forget to eat. My husband fills my book bag with cheese sandwiches and cups of chocolate pudding that I misplace somewhere between leaving the house and stumbling into the faculty room. It is like my teeth are too lazy to chew, my hands too busy to forage. I have been subsisting on bottles of diet Pepsi and random snatches of trail mix. I’m getting thin. Every couple of days I have to reintroduce myself to myself in bathroom mirrors fogged with steam. What was once curved and fleshy is now pronounced, hard and definite.
Why hello there hipbones. Haven’t seen you in awhile.
When we were 13, my friends and I invented a game. We would swish, swish, swish our hips parallel to the pavement. The goal was to count how many times the tipping of our adolescent gravity could evoke the honking of car horns racing by on the two-lane road. We were innocent girls let loose across the gravel summoning grown-up danger from the safe concrete of sidewalks and the cut of freshly mowed lawns. We never really wanted or expected the pickup trucks to stop.
Is there even a point to me telling you this story? Probably.
***
I told myself that I would stop blogging. On Halloween, I took my children trick or treating and then quietly crept up into my parent’s bathroom and sobbed. My son is struggling. I sit here worrying constantly about words like evaluation and denial. I finished two pieces of writing for publication this week. All I can think is what good is pride when your three-year old son trembles in the backseat of his grandmother’s car before pre-school, and once there becomes anger personified?
I do not have any answers.
I was going to stop blogging. Many of you wrote that I should not leave. You said you would hate to see me go. For a long time, I was convinced that didn’t matter. I constantly surprise myself.
I have only just found you, a few of you wrote in comments and private e-mails. You make me feel a little less alone.
There is such kindness in your words. I like to picture you, a woman in a nightgown that replaces her three-piece business suit. You nurse a bottle of beer or a tepid cup of tea in front of a computer screen that holds my words. Are you a man with a casual sweater who is tired of constantly straightening his own tie? Here. Let me loosen it for you.
When I sat down to blog this post, I thought I would ask you stupid questions.
When you look at me, what is it that you see?
Please do not answer.
I worry that you will read this and imagine me quite sad. I am sometimes. Mostly. I am not. Really.
My life is full of mortgage and marriage, defeating scary monsters hiding in the closets of my children, and the mirror on my bathroom wall.
Sure. I am losing weight. But, it is not intentional. I simply forget to eat. Every couple of days I have to reintroduce myself to brand new kneecaps and the wings of newly drawn shoulder blades, the former curve of me now pronounced and sharp. The terrain of my body is a constant discovery.
This blog is another body. One of words.
I think it would be nice for it to remain soft and fleshy, undefined.
At least for awhile. If that would be okay with all of you.
6
AM
Some of my favorite things are undefined. Am glad you decided to stick around…at least for a little while longer.
6
AM
For the record, I enjoy your writing, regardless of topic. I hope you continue to write, here, publicly. I like the body of words I see here. Hope you stay.
6
AM
I’m here is you need me, and really, it may seem difficult now, but it IS all fixable.
He is so so young. There are loads of things that can be done to help. Please take heart.
I’m just an email away.
6
AM
That would be more than okay with me – that would be preferable. That said – whatever decision you make is one I must respect. And I DO respect you. You are an incredible writer – I wish I could write half as well as do you – and I am happy that your current decision has you posting here. I like that.
6
AM
i have the opposite problem. i try to fix the feeling with butter and sugar and fat. i wish i could misplace the chocolate pudding. instead i feel it calling me and no diet soda can be heard for miles. i, selfishly, hope you continue to write. i’m in love with your words and feel a whole lot better about letting mine loose with yours out there too.
6
AM
“I worry that you will read this and imagine me quite sad. I am sometimes. Mostly. I am not. Really.
My life is full of mortgage and marriage, defeating scary monsters hiding in the closet of my children, and the mirror on my bathroom wall.”
Me too. I read back over some of my posts this past summer and thought, my life sucks. But it doesn’t for the most part. For the most part, I enjoy my life, find joy everyday, am constantly amazed by the sky, trees, babies, dogs. Life is full of wonder, even if it doesn’t hurt sometimes. So no you’re not alone and when I come here, I find I’m not either.
6
AM
I should also proof read:)
even if it does hurt sometimes
6
AM
This reader doesn’t know who she is. But when she reads your words, she feels them resonate within herself.
6
PM
Thank you for staying. You write things I only wish I could express. Reading your words is like a silent affirmation that I am okay.
6
PM
I hope you don’t leave.
I’ve found that hard times are usually transitional. Even if the things that make them hard don’t go away, we adapt. We grow. We get stronger.
I’d like to address the weight loss, because I’ve had that experience. 2001 was a year that stress took over with a break up, a job collapse, a grandfather dead and 9/11.
I just kept my fridge stocked with ice cream and bacon, because I knew I could eat it and it would give me calories. I’d drink coffee soy milk by the quart full. I even started drinking those meal replacement nightmares, just because it was easier to drink calories than eat them. Try milk shakes. Hey, McDonald’s shakes are even vegan.
Only problem with this is that when the tension goes away and I can eat again, I am in the habit of eating lots of icecream and bacon and the weight starts to go the other way.
6
PM
I like your writing so much, because it shows the imperfectness of us all. I can find myself in nearly every piece of you. Sometimes they are shocking, but you shouldn’t stop that. I like it about you. And your writing. Stepping up and having the guts to say what me might think, what some of us would like to say.
It also gives me a bit to think sometimes in a good way. Think about people and life in general.
Thanks for staying another while
6
PM
Does this mean I have time to work up to composing some hate-mail? (just kidding). I suppose in many ways I lack imagination because i don’t really imagine you, I just listen to your voice. I liken it I suppose to being blind in a way. The way you write is so full that i don’t need more … ah but I have this sneaky feeling that I’m not really making sense. I don’t mean that I can’t be bothered, I mean that your writing tells me more about you than my poor imagination ever could.
6
PM
It is amazing therapy to put language to our feelings. Keep it up.
My 3 kids are now adults. It was a long haul, but we made it! Life is good. I learned so much from them. I have learned so much from life.
Keep up the blogging.
6
PM
Flannel PJ’s actually…and the beer is in a can. But otherwise, spot on. About that and everything else…
7
AM
Fine with me. In fact, the less defined, the more I relate. I have been losing weight, too, but my is intentional. I have been remembering old hurts with new wounds and losing my appetite for much of anything. Including connecting back with the world out here I feel some sort of connection with.
I am usually in a t-shirt, not nightgown unless sneaking a peak on my blackberry at work – coffee drinker or diet coke – I try to sob in the bathroom but no tears are coming out. They are stuck.
Congratulations on the publication work – you’ll understand, I’m sure, when I say I admire and envy you all in the same breath.
If you ever do stop this blog, keep the words up – I’ll just go back to day one and pretend it’s all new…xoxo
7
PM
I am glad too that you decided to stay. Your words are often both heartbreaking and breathtaking, and I am left speechless and wanting more.
7
PM
I had an online diary a long time ago, and my tagline was something along the lines of “I am small and I am big.” Kind of like what your first line says.
When you look at me, what is it that you see?
Me.
7
PM
it’s true, i have only just found you. the twenty-year-old in the corner of her parent’s dining room, awake for the third time today.
8
AM
I am glad you are still here.
I think undefined is the only way I myself know how to go.
10
PM
All I wanted to hear you say was “Yes, I said yes, I will yes.”
I had only just found you and felt you so far gone that I pushed my face into my pillow so that the tears wouldn’t even have a chance to bloom into their full flowers.
Thank you thank you thank you.
10
PM
I’m glad that you are staying and will share your writing. I enjoy reading your posts. I may not understand them all but I like how the words fit together. They sound beautiful.
11
PM
I’m huddled in a cramped corner of the space in my apartment that acts as bedroom, living room, and office. My boyfriend is sleeping on the futon behind me and I can’t help but to wonder if he’s just tired from a long day at work of if he was smoking pot with his buddies all evening. I’m wearing his old shirt inside-out because the tag has been digging into me throughout my workday where I frolicked around with a gang of preschool kids and snotty noses. My jeans are just a bit too small, rolled up because my legs are so freakishly long that it’s hard to find pants that don’t hover above my ankles. I’m not wearing underwear because I haven’t done laundry in two weeks. Seriously. It’s been a rough two weeks. I’m eating a slice of pumpkin pie that my three-year-old daughter helped me prepare before she went off to bed. I had a hard time tolerating her whining and persistent demands for constant attention today.
You may remember that I recently found you, also. I think I linked over from BHJ because I liked a comment you left. You not only make me feel less alone, but you inspire me in ways that no other blog has. I’m glad you’re sticking around. I look forward to more “soft and fleshy, undefined” material.
12
PM
Dear Kelly – please take care of BOTH your bodies – the words one and the flesh one. We your readers value both, and the one cannot exist without the health of the other.
12
PM
(I left this in a journal of mine for my future grand kids to one day find)
Dear Granddaughter,
So much good in my life has come from putting out. Don’t be disillusioned–the adults you will meet will tell you otherwise, but they know not what they say. Sex is a beautiful thing, even in a dangerous world.
The one mistake I made was losing sight of my self-worth in the other areas of my life. Sex will make you feel powerful and validated, just as it should. However, take care that these feelings don’t consume you. You are worthwhile in so many ways. You are more than your splayed thighs, stretching like the petals of lilies, tender and white in the morning sunshine spilling through the blinds, however lovely they may be.
Be gentle with your body. Learn to love it even when the vague messages broadcast over the television say anything but.
Reagrdless, if you can find it, have as much mind-blowing sex as possible. And don’t apologize. The hours I spent in the back seat of Erika’s Sunfire were some of the most beautiful of my life. It was there that I first saw the face of God.
Your grandmother is a blasphemous woman, but she’s had the most lush and exquisite existence.
Love,
Kiera
12
PM
(That comment actually belonged to “Build Your Body like a Poem.” Apparently your writing is hypnotic enough to make me misplace my own)