The Wastepaper Basket

My body is slipping away from me- I’m not saying I’m getting fat, I’m not saying I’ve turned ugly overnight, but it’s changing. It’s a frightening thing to be so very young and realize how much changing is in store for you. I think it’s good– year by year I lose a little less control. In a few more years maybe I’ll internalize the fact that there never was any control at all. It’s a waterfall, this body, like all the others out there. It’s all falling faster than we can catch it. It’s a wonderful rush if you get the chance to take a step back, but frightening if you’re trying to pull the brakes. 

I’ve got a tummy now– not much, and honestly not even worth the commentary. To the little girl with the convex stomach, it’s extraordinary. You can see where my womb sits. It’s wonderful. I hate it– I love it. It’s there. I’ve got thighs– actual, real-life thighs. At twenty one, the cellulite is beginning to creep all over. My arms aren’t toothpicks anymore. At this point they’re more like breadsticks.

In February of this year I wrote a piece about growing up with body dysmorphia. If you’ve read it, you’ll know it says very little about body dysmorphia, and much more on growing up trying to be funny, and also a LOT about Alan Alda. Because why write about your own problems when you can watch MASH and call it research?

It’s September when I write this. Next February feels like it’s going to sneak up on me. I’m about to turn 22. They say your early twenties are like a second puberty, which is a hard pill to swallow for a girl who only feels like she’s just ending things with Puberty round 1. I’m less interested in dissecting what I feel about myself, at least for today. My little neurosis (which are pretty common ones) are going to pop up in a lot of my writing. Even when I try my darndest to start with a fresh drawing board, I always circle around themes of isolation, depersonalization, loneliness, mistrust, etc, etc. I’ve only got the one brain; we’re going to recycle things. But I don’t feel the need to talk about why I still can’t stand to go out of the house with bare arms, or why I can never wear capri pants ever ever ever again. I’m a melancholy soul, so I can cheerfully depend on there being plenty of time in the future to wail, despair, and whine from my sad little corner. I’m pretty predictable that way.

What I’d like to say, if I can manage to just say it without getting distracted (and interrupting myself with little parenthetical side notes) is that I’m surprised every time I look in the mirror. Pleasantly surprised. This is about all I have to say, because it’s a relatively new thing. My face has literally changed, and I shouldn’t be surprised. For some reason, some not-very-deep-psychological reason, I keep expecting to see a 15 year old staring back at me. It started with changing my hair- cutting it very short, letting it grow very shaggy, layering the pixie cuts choppier and choppier, bleaches, dyes, horribly bangs, more bleaches, dyes, and finally, the big buzz cut. And then another big buzz cut. I am au-natural now; I’ve been wearing loud clothes and quiet makeup. Daily. I take care of my skin. I eat three meals a day, most days, if i can manage to care. And I usually do. That’s where the other part comes in, actually care. I’m waking up early, reading books again. If I threw my phone in a river, the picture might be perfect, but that would make me perfect, wouldn’t it? I can barely manage being pretty, imagine what would happen if I was a good person to boot! Riots would start.

People have always had an answer to what I looked like. Back in February I wrote (in the first draft, at least) how my mother thought I looked like an alien from a movie she had seen as a kid. I still don’t know the movie, but she described it as a “creature with long, long legs and arms, but no torso- just a head and shoulders with legs.” Obviously that’s the thing that sticks with your mental image of self, especially when you’re 9 years old. Two months ago, after shaving my head, my parents tried to talk about anything else. When I told them that it hurt my feelings for them not to be honest how much they hated it (they were doing a very bad job of hiding it, and all of us were uncomfortable with the size of the elephant) my father tried to make a joke. He is not known for being good at making jokes. It took me a moment to realize that he was trying to be funny at all, because what he said was, 

“Would you like us to mail you a hat so you can cover up your head until it grows back?”

For any fathers reading this– if humor isn’t your strong suit, and usually ends in casual bigotry, mild racism, or bullying, it’s safer to be honest with your children. It’s easier to tell your child that you don’t like their hair. No.. it’s preferred. Just tell your kid you don’t like their damn haircut.

The hair did grow back- I revelled in it. Every time I looked in the mirror I was meeting a new person. I dyed it bright pink, and looked like a fairy. The pink faded, and the roots came in– I looked punk rock. I loved it. The sideburns overgrew, the cowlicks took over, and when it all became too much, I shaved it again.

Sitting in my metal chair, I angled the handheld mirror over and over again, staring at the wide doll eyed person. “I look so different-” I said. Andrea, my lovely impromptu volunteer barber, laughed at me. 

“It’s your natural haircolor.” she told me.

When my father had done his best at making a joke, I stated at him with a blank eyed awkward smile. I’m still learning to use my face the way I want it. I can’t imagine what I would have done if this hadn’t been through my cellphone screen. My parents were sitting politely on the couch, and me, hours and hours away, was safely tucked in my bed-of-the-month. 

“That’s what I’m talking about,” I laughed nervously as I said it. “Instead of telling me you don’t like my hair, you’re being mean about it.”

My parents blew up, shocked, flustered, all three of us nervously chuckling, but two of us beginning to get angry.

“What are you talking about?”

“He was just trying to ease the tension by making a joke!”

What tension? What joke?

We only talked for a few more minutes. Two more at most. I knew all three of our faces fell as soon as we hung up.

By the time I was eight years old, at least three adults in my life had told me their own version of the same phrase-

“I used to be a skinny little thing like you,” 

They always said this out of the blue.

“You better enjoy it while you can.”

They would laugh like it was a joke- some of these people were my relatives. All of them were overweight- something an eight year old, and now, a 21 year old, took no issue with. Something we forget is that kids really don’t give a damn. Bodies are bodies– these were the people I loved. They laughed and smiled, but most of them would give a sad smile. Eight year olds don’t care about weight, but they’re smart enough to tell when a person is sad. And frustrated. And worst of all: jealous.

The next day my mother calls, and my heart sinks. She’d been calling regularly, and it hadn’t been going well. I could always hear what her real intentions were by her voice. She could always tell I wasn’t being honest by mine. My mother is worried that because I am, as she says, “empathetic,” that I’m forgetting to listen to stories with a grain of salt. She would hate for my “well meaning heart” to lead me to foolish beliefs. She knows I’ve started paying attention to the news– but remember, they make most of it up, anyway. It’s easy to form a wrong opinion based on what your heart feels. You’ve always had such a big heart…

She calls, and within twenty seconds, she pours it out.

“I wanted to talk about how you’re feeling, “ she says. “Just to check in- last night… you were pretty rude to your father.”

We’re on an audio call, so she can’t see me nervously running my fingers through my practically bald head. I’d recommend a shaved head to anyone, or at least grab a friend with a shaved head. It’s like a newborn puppy– there’s no feeling like it. Your own personal zen garden, complete with dandruff and odd growth patterns.

I could have told her I didn’t think I was rude at all, but this would have been the truth. That’s a tactic that has historically gone pretty shittily. So I keep running my fingers through my hair, and let the dead air breathe. I remember she can’t see my face, we’re on a phone call. I’m lying flat on my back in the squeaky dorm bed.

“I wasn’t trying to be rude,” I said, letting the smile creep into my voice. Once she thinks I’m feeling serious, she stops believing a word I say, true or not. If I say it’s fine, even when it is, she tells me “if you say so,” with great sadness.

“I just felt like it wasn’t very nice.” I said.

“He was JUST making a joke!” She said, as if I hadn’t heard, and also, was suddenly a different person that didn’t understand that sometimes people can try to be funny without succeeding. Though this description would adequately describe my parents that night.

“I know!” I laughed lightly. And then, with sardonic frankness- “It just wasn’t funny.”

This was not an answer she liked.

I’m thinking about getting a tattoo. I’ve “been thinking about getting a tattoo” since my eighteenth birthday. My mother says it would be like “putting a bumper sticker on a bentley.” I know she found this from a meme, because she told me. 

The other day, Mariah was the one to say it– “Look at you!” She said cheerfully. “Look at you, with the buzzcut, with the style, the nose ring. You knew what you were doing.”

It’s the same look I’ve wanted since I was seventeen years old. Once I have that tattoo, it will be complete. Mariah and I laughed, me a little less happily. “I told everyone it would look good!” I growled. It’s the same look my mother said would drive away men. (or at least, “the good ones.”)

Maybe this is part of the strangeness. I have finally, after great effort, revealed the prophecy. I knew what I wanted, it just took a few more years to tell everyone to fuck off and DO IT. Now that she’s finally here, the woman I wanted to become, I have my doubts. 

I’m glad no one tried to tell me that college was “the best years of your life.” If they had, it would have made leaving a hundred times harder. I look back at those photos now and it makes me want to cry, just looking at myself. It sadly isn’t a well known fact that when you don’t want to be alive, you don’t really care about your appearance anymore. My outward reflected exactly what the inward felt: grey, lifeless, skin picked red and raw, some flaking off– baggy clothes in shades of brown, black, and green, hats to hide the face, scarves to hide the neck, jackets to hide the shoulders. There were so many days where I’d look in the mirror and wonder if this is what I’d look like for the rest of my life, only adding years and wrinkles to the ensemble. On brave days I washed my face. On the especially adventurous ones, I applied lipstick.

Three months after dropping out of school, my dream of finishing a book, of finding success, of living anywhere but my parent’s house seemed like an adventure that I had missed out on already. I had somehow, somewhere, taken a wrong step, and because of this would miss out on happiness forever. Or maybe I had been born wrong; either way, my most appropriate response to this seemed to be to make a plan to leave the planet for good.

(a spoiler- we just passed the two year anniversary of this very bad idea. Everything turned out all right)

There are many reasons why I’m glad my story didn’t end in my nineteen year old, skinny jean-wearing, dirty-dishes-in-bed, overgrown-sideburns chapter. One of these reasons if I had died, I would have never had an ass.

Maybe that’s why I still see a fifteen year old in the mirror- until that year, I had sailed through high school, freshman year of college, and the dropout depression year with virtually the same body. If I had that body to this day, I probably would have learned to love it as much as I do this one. As previously said- there is an infinitesimal difference. But to an ant, a sunshower is a tsunami. And to an almost seven year member of the IBTC, (with a membership to pancake as weekly) going up a size or two is something to shout about.

This summer, among lighter pairs of clothes, I brought along two pairs of work jeans. These jeans did not travel with me to New York.

Is there a moral to this? Is there any justifiable reason to bitch about your relationships in a piece about gaining weight? Absolutely not. And there never will be– I implore you to imagine me, on the gorgeous yellow quilt in what is deemed “The Lily Pad Room,” scarfing down ramen noodles. I am terrified that in three years my ass is going to look like the noodles– I am terrified that my current bad posture is going to stick like this forever. I am also going to paint my nails tonight. Tomorrow I begin applying to modeling agencies. Because what else am I supposed to do with this life?

I wish I could have told this to the three women, that we never have control at all– I don’t know what it’s like to live in their bodies, I really don’t. But I wish I had stood up and stopped giving a fuck about what other people think about my haircuts a hell of a lot sooner. I wish I had washed my face in highschool– I know in twenty years I’ll wish I cared less about my posture. 

I’m gonna go finish those noodles– it’s one of the few things I have a choice about. I better make it count.

(Cover art by Batsyhead)