In which I am still learning a new song

A repost from the 2009 archives: because I am a zombie.


With a new job ahead, I went to my closet to find my work clothes. It's been about two years since I had to wear a pair of dress pants. I have had a year of maternity leave (which means blessed yoga pants and flowy skirts) and before that, a year of pregnancy clothes (oh, wasn't that grand). So I dug out my clothes and you know what?

They didn't fit.

I tried on a pair of pants. Then a blouse. Then another pair of pants. Then another bra.

Nothing fit quite right. Even though the numbers on my scale are pretty close to the old number, my body is obviously not the same. Buttons were straining, zippers weren't closing.

And it was an awful feeling.

Then I tried on my shoes. And I'll be damned if even my shoes didn't fit. Evidently, thanks to the latest pregnancy, I've gone from a 7 1/2 to an 8. Not a pair of shoes in my closet other than my Converse runners fit.

I sat on the floor and cried.

You see, it's always been a sore spot for me. I was a skinny leggy kid that turned into a curvy girl overnight. A curvy girl with a willowy, beautiful mother and a thin, blonde sister. I always felt like I was galumphing along behind the family. Even at my thinnest, I felt like The Big Girl in The Family. And I am not at 'my thinnest."

I battled for years with evil songs set on repeat that sang into my ears "You're fat and ugly...if only you were skinnier....if only you were prettier....if only you weren't so fat...you're disgusting...."

When I gave birth to our daughter, my husband kindly asked me to not say those things in front of her. He didn't want her to grow up hearing her mother say these things about herself, teaching her to be so critical of her own self. He didn't want her hearing words like "I need to go on a diet" and "I'd be pretty if only I'd lose the weight" or "My breasts are just too big" or "I'm so ugly." Which meant that even if I thought it, even if I needed to articulate it later to him or to a friend, could I please just not say it in front of her?

For three years now, I have watched my tongue. I have - even at the heights of pregnancy and high blood pressure induced swelling - managed to keep my songs on a low level of volume. When I sing along, it's quietly and out of earshot.

I do not want her to ever feel that her body, her self, is anything less than just as God intended. She'll have her own battles to wage. And I don't want to send her into battle, already distracted by her mother's songs in her own ears. 

Now that I help out at Mercy, I am even more aware of this, as I walk among those that are overpowered by the refrain of lies. And I've learned from these brave women how to escape these snares.

But I cried on my floor again that day, playlist on full repeat and at a frighteningly loud level of volume. I felt so disgusting. Even hating the fact that I was hating it. After all, wasn't I past this? Am I not a child of the King? Am I not enough of a feminist to not care that my thighs touch at the top? At the end of my life, will I really care that I was 20 lbs overweight? Is that the measure of a life? 

Of course not. I knew better. 

But I didn't. 

But I do. 

But I don't.

Brian, Anne and Joseph came in and sat on the bed. So I pulled it together, wiped my tears and, with the air of one on a supremely distasteful task, finished dressing. I settled for a pair of jeans that gave me the smallest muffin-top then stood there, loathing myself.

I had never felt more disgusting, more frustrated, more old and fat and ugly than at that moment.

"You look so beautiful, Mummy."

There's her voice from the bed. Her eyes are on me. She's spoken up with her hands clasped in front of her, adoring.

"You are so beautiful," she repeats.

Now? Right now? At this moment?

She thinks I'm beautiful. She sees me.

"We are pwetty wadies (her word for "pretty ladies")," she says proudly. "We are wuv-ly (lovely)."

Brian's eyes were fastened on me as well. He looked at me with a bushy eyebrow raised.

"That's what I keep telling you both," he said.

He reached out and touched my waist, hand resting on my silvery stretch marks.

"Beautiful, Sarah. Beautiful."