Delayed Answers

Other people's pregnancies couldn't possibly be like this. 

I recognize the irrational nature of that thought. I know it's almost definately not true, and that I'm the zillionth woman to create life. That statistically speaking at least some other pregnancies are like mine, are like me at this moment in time.

However that refrain will not leave my head.

I began having serious abdominal pain a week ago. It took me 5 days to finally break down and seek help, at which point the forceful advice given by the nurse on the other end of a phone line was: "Go to the ER. Now. Get someone else to drive you."

The reason it took me almost a week to seek help is that my brain lies to me. Living with anxiety is like having to constantly be the referee to your own psyche. How much panic is too much? Is this actually a problem or am I blowing it out of porportion? If I swing to the far cautious side of panic, will the ER docs roll their eyes and laugh at me for wasting their time? If I don't act cautious and give in to my panic, will I die from some undiagnosed internal bleeding?

These are all actual thoughts that went through my head. On constant loop. It's incredibly difficult to balance reality and perception, to gauge how much of what I'm feeling at any given time is legitimate or crazy. The most pessimistically implausible scenarios not only seems completely plausible to me, they feel probable. There may only be a 1% chance that the stabbing pain in my head is a tumour, but for an instant my mind fully accepts the probability that it's a tumour which will kill me. All it takes is that instant, and the idea is planted. Rooting it out takes a large shovel, an incredible amount of effort, and maybe some weed-eater.

If someone doesn't pick up their phone, it's completely plausible that they've been in a car accident and are surrounded by paramedics trying to push their organs back in, unaware of their name or medical history because their wallet was burned up in the fire from the car crash. No one will be able to identify them, and they'll be in the morgue labled as "John Doe".

Rationally I know this is improbable. But my brain doesn't, so it takes constant policing to bring my mind back in line with reality.

So when the medical system sluggishly leaves me in limbo for days on end, with no explanation other than "Here's a list of 4 possibilities. One will kill your body, one will kill your soul. Fingers crossed it's not those two!". And then send you home to wait and wait and wait... My brain wins and the implausible scenarios become probable.

Grief interrupted. Arrested development. Incredibly painful.

Fat and Sassy

I'm a wee bit body conscious.

I don't think this is a shocking thing to say, since I'm fairly certain most people - most women - are more than a little conscious of their body and body image. It's nigh impossible not to be in this crazy world of fashion obsession... diet and health obsession... model and super model and superstar obsession. And let's be honest, it doesn't matter what we look like, there's always something we don't like about ourselves. For me, that's always been my weight.

I was a fat baby, who turned into a fat little girl, who turned into a fat crazy woman. That's not derogatory, that's fact. I've got big ol' thighs, and big ol' birthing hips and I will never, ever fit into a size 10. It would be unhealthy for me to even try. I come from a long line of women who struggle with their weight, and not to put all the blame on genetics, but there are some body types that simply will never be on the "skinny" side of the clothing store.

I'm okay with all of this. Not jumping for joy, but pleasantly resigned. So long as I'm healthy, my body will be what it will be. And what it will be is large. In the past decade, the smallest I have been is a size 12 (sometimes 14, depending on brand of jeans). I was in a horrifically unhealthy relationship, a sporadic insomniac, drinking way too much, stoned most days, and eating garbage - if at all. My size 12 was so unhealthy, my body was destroying itself from the inside out. It was one of the few times in my life I had people regularly tell me how good I was looking. They didn't pay attention to my horrible habits, they didn't see the pallid skin or the bruised bags under my eyes. They saw the weight. I'm a million times healthier now and also a million times heavier. But I'd take my health over my size 12 body any day.


Everytime I go shopping for clothes (which isn't that often, due to frustration) I can't help but notice that most stores cap out at size 14 or 16. Normal stores cap out dangerously close to my unhealthiest skinniest. I'm resigned to plus sized shopping, but adamant that I will not spend the rest of my life in a moo-moo. The designers of plus sized clothing (on the whole, not all of them) are idiots who have no idea how to dress a large body. Taking something that looks good on a size 2 and adding more fabric does not work. Marilyn Monroe was a size 12. Plus sized models today are a size 14. Plus size stores start at size 16.


Are we seeing the problem here?


If all the images we, as large healthy women, see are not only of a skinny ideal we do not fit, but of a plus sized ideal we do not fit, how can we ever get to a place where we can feel good about ourselves and our bodies?


This body is not perfect. It's flawed and it's a pain to clothe and I'm often not very happy with it. But it's mine. People pay for bodies like this one*. We should feel proud of our lumpy, un-symmetrical, never-the-ideal-but-fine-the-way-it-is selves.


So when will our culture catch up with our reality?

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* Just so you know, that link is safe-ish. It won't bring you to a porn site, but to an article which I loved and you should go read!