Falling out of love with my body

happened slowly,

and then all at once.

It was like,

growing up,

loving my slurred speech

and my broad shoulders

and my wide ribcage,

and these monstrous feet.

And then, slowly,

you wake up one day, and.

Nothing fits.

It's like this:

my hips grew wide,

and my lashes long.

My breasts developed,

i bought my first thong.

I developed acne,

my hands stayed petite,

my height seemed stunted,

I ruined my new sheets.

I started to understand that i didn't love my body

the same way as other girls.

The things I loved most,

were considered my greatest flaws.

I kept growing,

kept living,

kept hating this body,

put on 50 pounds,

Hated it more.

And one day,

I woke up.

Looked out my bedroom window--

knew, somehow, that I'd been wrong.

See, I don't need to imagine

waking up in the wrong body.

The wrong gender,

the wrong shape,

with the wrong voice and the wrong name and everything just being so

wrong, wrong, wrong.

It's like this:

I spent every moment of nineteen years waking up

in the wrong body.

Day and night.

Someday,

i hope to write a poem

about waking up

in the right one.

My sophomore year of high school,

i remember hearing a lot about the symbolism of doors in To Kill a Mockingbird.

″...closed doors meant illness and cold weather only.”

In my house, closed doors were the norm.

We all valued our privacy--

closed doors held hours of homework,

outfit changes, phone calls to friends.

We closed our doors to watch tv,

to brush our teeth, to pack our bags.

Our house had thin walls, and squeaky hinges,

and everyone heard if you peered out,

or stepped into the darkness to view the stars.

My brother made a habit of leaving in the middle of the night.

Every opened door was audible:

His bedroom, ten steps, squeaking hinges and rattling blinds on the back door, ten feet and one wall from the head of my bed.

The crunch of gravel.

His truck door, an engine turning over. Slam.

More gravel.

The same patern in reverse when he returned.

I don’t know why our parents couldn’t hear,

when every noise in that house had always been so deafening to me.

Every argument, every step down the hallway for a glass of water, every heavy breath.

But our closed doors preserved more than just our privacy,

they preserved our reputation.

Everyone always talks about what happens behind closed doors staying that way,

except,

my door didn’t sit right on its hinges,

and has never latched.

And i know that our walls are thin, never mind the crack always left in my shield,

and i can’t imagine how no one heard.

How nothing ever escaped the brick encasing our secrets.

Heavy breaths,

and torn sheets,

and yelling,

the formation of bruises,

and threats by the dozens.

My sobs, muffled into my pillow in the middle of the night.

When i could hear every time someone rolled over in bed.

Separated by ten feet,

and one wall.

And if ever rumors of the shadows behind our doors were whispered,

if ever a whisp of smoke escaped the fires behind our thin walls,

we searched for the crack that caused them,

sealed it up,

and never spoke of it again.

Except,

my door didn’t sit right on its hinges,

and never latched.

And we never stopped the fire from spreading.

And i escaped in a whisp of smoke.

I read a post the other day,

about how all the male characters in LOTR correspond directly to an archetype of horrible exes.

My most notable ex is a Bilbo.

Features include:

-allergic to fun

-thinks you need to “broaden your horizons” so they want you to read Kerouac

- calls themselves a self-made man even though they inherited the house

Chloe’s features include:

-stressing about college

-introducing everyone she knows to new poets

-being very pretentious about having known those poets

-taking her girlfriends to meet all her slam friends!

-abandoning those slam friends for a bigger organization

-giving away her mother’s money by the hundreds

My roommate and I have a Boromir in common.

Features include:

-horrible combination of inferiority complex and fragile ego

-has never heard the word “no”

-really, really thinks getting married will fix your relationship problems?

Their features include:

-horrible combination of inferiority complex and fragile ego

-still texts “u up?” periodically despite being ignored

-actually so stupid he pulled out her NuvaRing one time bc he didn’t know what it was

-proposed on the fifth date when she learned i was moving away for college

-proposed again every day after that

-was mad when we got mad that they ignored us for multiple days in a row???

-tried to break up by ghosting us immeditately following a family emergency

-was pissed that we were concerned maybe they had fucking died

-called us the selfish ones

I love posts like that, you know, relegating a really really complicated facet of our collective lives into just a handful of variations and---

somehow, it’s accurate.

It always makes me want to create something like that.

To build something like that,

something anyone can relate to.

Makes me wanna talk about shaving your head on a whim and burgundy lipstick on the first date, pulling your hand away, all the time, and attending your senior prom alone.

I wanna talk about closets

and corsets

and couple’s costumes with other people

about being told i should ask out another girl i’d met that night, at an event i only went to because she was performing

about your best friend seeing the break up poem she wrote about you posted online,

*before* you’d even broken up

and then being told it wasn’t about you

about not getting an invite to weekend trips with friends, even though everyone thought you were fucking friends.

About love.

About beauty, enhanced by her words.

About learning about stripes, in all sorts of new ways.

Except, I wanna write about it, in metaphors about cacti and shit.

Like, if your girlfriend spent more time with her ex than you in public while claiming she couldn’t see you in public because people would find out she was gay, you’re a cactus, and she’s the sun.

And like, if your ex girlfriend is quasi-famous in certain circles and you’re starting to break out into those circles, then she’s a senator, and you’re a hibiscus.

And like, maybe if you’re a hibiscus, then she shouldn’t be the sun anymore, because without the sun, your flower is gonna fucking.

Die,

so like,

darlin,

stop comparing her to the sun.

It’s not that accurate.

The disabled girl walks into a bar

Sorry,

the dyspraxic girl stumbles into the dojo

Sorry,

The girl magically manifests as a part of your life.

Sorry.

One of these days I’ll get that joke right.

The story is, I manage to make my way somewhere, anywhere

Without falling down.

I don’t walk funny,

My hip doesn’t pop out of place,

I make it a year without a sensei telling me i have weird legs.

I don’t stutter or forget my words or have to say

“What?”

more than three times in a single conversation.

Hilarious, right?

I’m not quite sure where the punchline lies,

but i think it’s somewhere between

getting pulled out of honors classes for speech therapy and

people expecting me to give them my seat on public transport.

Just because I’m not in a wheelchair and you can’t see a prosthesis doesn’t mean my chronic pain doesn’t affect me.

And just because it doesn’t affect you doesn’t mean you get to assume that i’m not reading your lips right now,

that I don’t cry myself to sleep most nights of the week,

Or that your crow’s feet entitle you to seeing me fall down when this train comes to a stop.

My disability is none of your business.

You don’t get to see it,

you don’t to comment on it,

but you also need to stop assuming

It’s. not. there.

I’m not skinny, so you think you get to think i don’t have one of those

“invisible problems” like CF or cancer,

But baby, you’re not educated on all the ways someone might need accomodations for life to suck a little less,

so maybe, just stop assuming i’m some punk raised without manners who wouldn’t give up their seat to an elderly person if i could make myself stand up without faceplanting right now.

My disablility might be invisible,

but I’m. Not.

And I’m tired of pretending that i am.

So if you see me sitting down on the subway,

or parking as close to the store as possible,

or riding an electric cart in walmart,

mind. your. business.

Because I’m just tryna shop.

Actually, if you see, *anyone* doing *anything* that’s maybe designed to make things easier for someone who might need that?

Say it with me this time:

Mind, your, business.

Because we’re. just trying. to live.

I haven't left my house in three weeks.

The air is stale,

my legs are weak,

and i don't know what day it is.

I made myself a cup of coffee today,

and as the caffeine zinged through my veins

i realized that i had forgotten what it felt like,

to be alive.

My grandfather passed three months ago,

and our chickens two days after that.

I'm not sure which loss was greater.

I don't recall the last time i washed my hair.

Our well hasn't yet run dry,

but I'm nearly out of shampoo.

The run on the banks was our last bit of news from outside.

Networks stopped airing a while ago,

but we didn't lose power.

We are lucky.

I heard that in the cities,

looting is the only way to survive,

though it'll get you killed pretty quickly.

My roommate stopped going to work weeks ago,

and i,

months.

She's a nurse.

One of the last.

We are sure this must be the end.

As i drain the last dregs of my coffee,

she decides to open a window,

hoping to capture a breeze.

Sirens.

They stopped blaring ages ago,

so there must be a new bit of news.

Death toll, maybe?

Or, dare i hope,

a vaccination?

A cure?

Salvation?

We do catch a faint breeze, and with it,

voices carry.

Screams of joy,

neighbors sobbing, doors opening and

slamming shut behind emerging bodies.

We look to each other,

and Amber scrambles for the remote,

flipping on our long ignored television set.

Across every channel,

the same message:

A vaccine has been developed.

The disease has run its course.

We're saved.

Our families aren't,

nor our neighbors,

but we,

Amber and i, and all those remaining,

are saved.

We move in droves to our assigned vaccination locations,

we take showers and banks open their doors and grocery stores are staffed once again,

and we roll up our sleeves,

thank God for our lives,

and get to work.

Cleanup takes months,

perhaps years,

it's hard to remember where we started,

hard to differentiate between rebuilding efforts and genuine improvement,

but after a time,

the world runs smoothly again.

Smoother than it has ever run before,

and i think to myself,

that maybe it was the end after all.

And maybe we needed that ending,

if only to forge a new beginning.

I suppose the easy way would be to say that, to find God, you simply walk into a church, get down on your knees, and pray.

Where God is housed, He is present, and where

He is present, it is impossible not to feel Him;

or so I've been told.

See, I grew up in churches, surrounded by downward tilted heads around full dining tables, clasped hands encircling a spread we'd never finish, the breath of God running through each of our mouths in the moments before we said "Amen."

I also grew up in hospital rooms, fighting rings, and chairs separated by plexiglass while I was asked to talk to my momma through a phone attached to the wall.

I have felt more God in me in the seconds before and after I blocked a punch that would've knocked my breath out than in any church building.

Have felt His touch more in the powerful winds blowing my hair into my eyes as I walk to work just before a storm than I have at any baptism.

Have heard His voice more in these words that I write than in any hymn.

Religion, for me, is not church related.

It's personal.

I have always felt God in the same moment that I felt most alive.

Like I was flying.

For Red, religion is found in the clouds of flour that fly through the air and coat her hands as she kneads her dough. It's in the taste of her latest project when it finally comes out just right, that sweetness precisely reminiscent of Grace.

For Kelsey, God is in the beauty of the world around her, it's in little things, and in the way that her favorite old lens is cracked and always sends light careening wildly across every photo she takes, altering her perception and reminding her to look up and see the Light for herself once in a while.

For my grandfather, God is found in skipping church once a month to go down by the river and fish. He is found in nature, in silence, in soaking up the sun's rays, catching your own dinner and praying to thank Him for "providing it, same as always."

We all feel close to God in different ways.

Calm and chaos,

silence and soothing sound,

in solitude and in company,

so maybe this is less a guide to finding God,

and more an itemized list of all the ways the people I love find themselves,

and how divinity follows them.

And maybe that's enough.

Have you ever felt like a used rag?

Like, that kinda gross oddly grey one that you've owned forever

(did it even start off grey? what color is this thing?)

I kind of feel like an old rag sometimes.

The thing about working two jobs in high school is that, dude.

I worked two jobs in high school.

I was so tired all the time.

I did the math, and it turns out I was home, on average, less than the amount of time that most people need to sleep in a night.

That's including time to eat, sleep, do laundry and chores, take care of my personal hygeine, finish up homework, make college plans, and take any time for myself like, ever.

Wiping my way across the (suspiciously sticky) kitchen counter that was my schedule, I *was* your gross old used rag.

I'd always get the job done, that's why you keep me around, but I've certainly seen better days.

It's like:

A string the length of my body trails behind me wherever I go, there's a tear in the seam at my upper right hand corner, my edges are frayed, and I'm practically see-through.

You're not really entirely sure when the last time you washed me was (neither am I),

but that's fine because I've just been sitting on the edge of the sink, anyway,

and I still work.

My daily grind was as follows:

Roll out of bed by 5:30. Get ready for school.

Make a quick stop by my favorite convenience store to grab enough caffeine to get me through the day.

Classes until 1:30.

Leave school, rush home, take care of the dog, finish scholarship application, check admissions status, start on stats homework.

Get two problems done.

Rush to get ready for work, oh no, where's my nametag, forgot to do laundry, need some clean black socks where are they--yes! Found some.

Rush to work, there by 3:30. Take orders, run the kitchen, check inventory when i had the time, read chapters of Frankenstein between rushes because I have a test tomorrow-- it's 8:45.

I get my first break. A Personal Finance book sprawled among the remains of my first meal of the day.

20 minutes passed, back to work. Christian, take a break, I'll run the drive line.

He's back, I swap to front counter, try to get everyone caught up for closing.

Closing comes, we're behind on this and this and this, I put someone on dishes, tell the cashiers to finish up quickly, recede into my office, count the safe and refill the drawers and prep my deposit,

Make it home.

Take out dog, refill water dish, clean the kitchen,

Collapse onto my couch.

Check the time.

1:42.

It has been a good day.

Put my laundry in the wash for tomorrow, pull my stats book out again.

Maybe catch some sleep in the hour of two before I need to get up again--

Alarm beeps.

Roll out of bed by 5:30.

Rinse and repeat.

Wring yourself out, hang yourself to dry.

That's job #1.

Wait until you see my weekend trick--

two shifts, two locations, one day.

I didn't even need the money.

A good martial artist will see a hit coming,

and dodge it by a mile;

A great one?

Will be missed by two inches.

That's something my sensei always used to say to us.

Not in quite the same way each time,

he wasn't a very eloquent man--

Now, I have really bad depth perception.

Anyone feel?

I fall down all the time, trip up the stairs at least once a week,

I can't park straight to save my life.

Basically, I'm a huge klutz.

Except,

I'm a lifetime martial artist.

Coming up on sixteen years' experience in three styles,

And I'm nineteen years old.

Now, granted, I didn't start when i was three,

couldn't even walk (well) at that point,

so I'm giving myself credit for the overlap.

Eleven years of Wado-ryu, four of Niseido,

and a year in Shorinkan.

I never plan to stop.

I've attended seminars with grandmasters,

spent hundreds of hours of my own time training,

and next year, I've been invited to Okinawa to train with the greats.

i moved across the country,

and the first thing i did, before even unloading my car,

was find a dojo.

But, according to the qualificiations of one of the most respected Wado instructors in Tennessee,

I will never be great.

Not because I don't kill myself weekly in training,

not because my form isn't good enough,

and certainly not because I can't hold my own in a fight.

But because my brain

is just a little bit stupid

when it comes to processing visual information.

I'm likely to avoid being hit by four inches,

or half of one.

Or maybe even a mile.

And if my depth perception,

and my absolute lack of hand eye coordination,

and my inability to pay attention in class,

and my depression,

and all my other demons

can't stop me from being great at the thing i am Passionate about--

Why should yours?

See, I've always thought that anyone who pressures you to judge greatness by anyone's standards but your own

Could go fuck themselves.

I am great.

Great because I've gotten farther than anyone (including myself)

(especially myseslf)

ever thought i would.

Great, because I don't fall down when I throw kicks anymore

Great, because I didn't want to die yesterday

Great, because a little girl laughed when i pretended to be hurt by her strikes last week

Great, because I finally figured out how to do one block properly in this new style;

Great.

Because I say so.

A girl, forged by her own power in the fires of Hephaestus

cries at the news of indigenous peoples being denied their rights to fresh water,

Cries,

because she saw an old man crossing the street with his pup,

and wondered how the dog would survive the loss of her master.

Red hair, artificially dyed to match the fires in her soul,

faded to pink,

with no care how her darkening roots are perceived by the world.

Crimson lips,

kiss-me red, punch-you-in-the-mouth red,

Red like the molten words leaving those lips,

Magma in their own right, singeing bigots’ eyebrows and searing their opinions.

Red ink on her fingertips, bleeding out on the page as she strikes through others’ expectations,

Red tongue, whip-quick and barbed.

Red like passion, red like anger, red like pain.

Red blood, flowing through her veins,

a testament to all these things and more, a representation of her humanity,

of her compassion, in spite of the divinity she embodies.

A red soul, from a blue state,

The perfect specimen to live up to her name.

Amber,

for the fires that burned her, that she used to forge herself a new destiny,

for the passion and compassion she exudes on a daily basis,

for the pain, and love, and rage that’s made her grow into herself.

All the warmth of a familiar rage, of a familiar ache, of a familiar love.

The dictionary defines an impediment as something that makes progress or movement difficult or impossible.

An impairment, on the other hand, is the act of spoiling something or making it weaker so that it is less effective.

Disorder has a few definitions, namely, an illness of the mind or body, and a lack of organization.

I used to get angry that there was no specific term for what I had.

My SLP would use all three, sometimes within a single conversation.

Was I ill, or unorganized? Ineffective, or weak?

Would I simply never progress at all?

I spent a lot of time perusing dictionaries, and still, never got an answer.

When I was determined to be “special needs” by my school counselor, it meant i got to skip science class two days a week.

You cannot *imagine* how excited i was to skip science class,

but when,

after weeks of effort, my teacher sent a letter home bemoaning my lack of progress,

my mother was understandably confused when i asked “so it’s impediment then?”

See, no one ever seemed to understand my confusion on the subject,

but maybe that has more to do with the fact that i never expressed it,

and less to do with the way i muddled my words.

My father was always appalled at the idea that, I, his little genius, could ever be classified the same way as my classmates with IQs below what he deemed “acceptable”

There’s nothing wrong with me, he says

She’s not special

Something in his tone made me realize that, maybe special wasn’t always a compliment

I wonder, if he realizes,

that to this day,

I’ve never,

felt,

special,

to him.

So when I moved schools,

I kissed my speech therapy classes goodbye,

Was enrolled in advanced courses to make up for my previous detriments,

And instead overcame this hurdle on my own.

Unlabelled,

Unmonitored,

Unsure of where to begin.

After hours and hours of tongue twisters and knock knock jokes and watching myself talk in the mirror to be sure that my mouth was forming the right shapes, after book after book of self-guidance, after years of practice, I built this.

This voice before you that matches the soul, inside me,

Except,

sometimes it doesn’t, see, sometimes on my s’s, there’s this little whistle and my friends always claim they can’t hear it--- I’m not sure if they’re lying.

and see, sometimes, when I’m tired, or distracted, or forget for just one second that speaking will always require my full attention, I slip up.

My tongue, vies for dominance against the roof of my mouth, and

the sounds come out, all in the right order they’re just--- not connected quite the way they’re supposed to be.

and see, sometimes, i speak at the wrong pitch or the wrong speed for the conversation I’m having, see, i start talking then i just keep goingandgoingandgoingandgoingandgoingand--

I have to stop.

Because I could be having the worst day of my life, but what you’re hearing is excitement.

Sometimes it works the other way,

i can’t seem to get the words out at all;

i don’t always repeat sounds,

sometimes, it’s

pauses.

Strong enough that,

i,

have rewritten this poem

four times

j ust

so that i would be strong enough

to say it.

#poetry #streamofconsciousness #speechimpediment