Fat Girl, Writing

It’s been a full year since I broke up with my spouse. A very hard year, if you recall. I’ve spent a lot of time try­ing to process things as best as I can, and that often looks like dis­till­ing emo­tions into haikus. Some­thing about the struc­ture and lim­i­ta­tion seems to lend itself well to express­ing myself in suc­cinct and pow­er­ful ways (much like how Twitter’s char­ac­ter lim­it can help focus one’s thoughts).

I don’t real­ly want to offer com­men­tary on this. There is so much I am still pro­cess­ing. But it feels impor­tant to share it, and to share it now. And one of my goals is to lis­ten to my intu­ition far more than I’ve been able to in the past.

One thing I will say is this: it’s a ter­ri­fy­ing time in our coun­try right now. To be a woman, not white, not straight, not healthy in body and mind. Most of my friend group — myself includ­ed — are fight­ing the creep­ing despair as we watch this new admin­is­tra­tion work so hard to make our lives at best uncom­fort­able and at worst nonex­is­tent. It’s easy to not take care of your­self in an effort to remain informed, to know what fresh hell awaits every morn­ing.

But the lit­tle things mat­ter. Lit­tle things like remem­ber­ing to eat. Check­ing in with friends. Ask­ing peo­ple to check in on you. Kiss­ing your loved ones. Snug­gling your pets. Or even dar­ing to sim­ply take up space.