On taking up space

Somehow, over time, I've constructed an internal image of myself.  Like some kind of warped party trick, I can conjure it up anywhere.  I can imagine how I look to others from this angle or in that outfit.

Catching askance glances of myself in windows, I covertly scrutinize - seeking to validate whether my omnipresent mind-self is actually substantiated by reality.

This heightened awareness is like a sixth sense, except instead of granting me a useful ability, my only special skill is that I can visualize in sharp and vivid detail what I look like in yoga pants.

Ever-perceiving the space I occupy, I'm left with a nagging feeling of obtrusiveness.  I wonder if I'm taking up too much space.
---

Several months ago, when I began exercising regularly, I disbelieved the changes I saw on the scale.  A difference of a couple pounds, in isolation, was trivial and inconclusive - just a normal daily fluctuation.

I'll know that I'm making progress when I've lost 5 pounds. I told myself, looking down at the slow-blinking black numbers.

Five pounds came and went.  Frowning, I stepped off the scale and looked in the mirror.  Dark eyes stared back - flicked down and back up again.  I looked the same.  Or did I?

I'll know for sure when it's 10 pounds, I decided firmly.  Once I see a completely new number there, then it's a sure thing.

But with each weigh-in, I kept moving the goalposts.  I looked in the mirror, saw the same person.  The same amount of space, occupied by the same body.

That number on the scale crept down daily, sometimes only by a few tenths.  Yet, with these incremental changes taken in aggregate, ten became fifteen, and fifteen became twenty.

Clothes began to fit differently: once-tight skinny jeans were too loose to wear, and jackets were almost comically large.  Yet, like some kind of self-inflicted gaslighting, I disbelieved it, even when faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I looked back at old pictures, thought "Did I really look like that?"  Looked in the mirror, saw the same person, wondered, "Do I still look like that?"

---

Mortal enemy: dressing room.  I faced off with the three-way mirror, clothing mountain askance on the bench behind me, threatening to slither onto the floor.  I corrected it, squared off with the mirror again, and did a double-take.

For the first time, I looked different.

The person in the mirror was not the person in my mind.  The body in the mirror was not the body in my mind.

For how long have I been wrong?  

Pensive for the rest of the day.  Scrutinizing in mirrors, but not the same way as before.

Without my knowing, a slippage between reality and unreality had occurred.

In reality, I'd surpassed my primary goal to become healthier.  I was healthier and stronger.  I took pride in pushing myself to new limits - I did 200 crunches in a 105-degree hot yoga room!  Could hold planks and wall sits for minutes on end!  Several months ago, these were completely impossible.  I was making incredible progress.

But, in my mind, I was the same person as ever, even though I didn't know who that person was, or what she looked like, or why I even cared.

I was completely failing at my other goal - the one where I vowed not to put too much pressure on myself, in which my mantra was that the number on the scale didn't matter.

Against my own will, I'd turned it into a numbers game, just like all the other times before.  A hateful competition - one in which failure is the only possible outcome.  No matter what I did, I could never hope to meet my own impossibly high standards.

It's unsettling to realize how skewed your self-perception is when you value cool logic and objectivity above practically all else.

In that dressing room, it all coalesced.  I realized, with sudden and jarring clarity, that my mind is not a credible source.  Rather, it is a lens through which images are so distorted that the truth is completely inaccessible.

During this time, an inner voice resurfaced - one I'd tried at great lengths to suppress.  It's a voice that cares too much - about how I look, or how others see me.  It cares about stupid things, like numbers on the scale, or getting in the way, or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Carrying echoes of the past, this voice is a bearer of hurled invectives and whispered insults.  It's redolent with disappointment and scorn when I inevitably fall short of my own unattainable goals.

It reminds me of a time when I thought I wasn't good enough for anyone, because that's what I was told, what I believed, and what I knew.

It's the voice of everyone and no one and myself.

---

Somehow it all ties together - the heightened awareness, the disparate body image, and this sense of obtrusiveness.  

A coworker told me to observe others in meetings.  I needed improvement - what I thought was confidence and poise was instead read as vulnerable uncertainty.  I was too cautious about taking up space.  Too stiff and proper.  Too self-contained.  Too concerned about encroaching upon others.

"See how the men sit," she advised.  So, I did. 

They sat with their legs planted wide.  They sat in chairs turned backwards.  They put their feet on the table, hands behind their heads, elbows spread open.  They slouched and draped themselves languorously on the tables and chairs.

They didn't conserve space, nor did they merely occupy it.  They owned it.

It was foreign.  Unthinkable.  Unknowable. 

So where does it begin?

When do we learn not to take up space?  Who teaches us?  I know the rules, but from where?  From whom?

Settle down, lower your voice, quit stomping around, and keep out of the way.  A cacophony of do's and don'ts.

Why am I so eager to not be an obstacle?  Why must I be as inoffensive as possible with my position, and size, and shape in the world? 

Does everyone feel this way?

How and when do we get to see that it's all right to take up space, that in fact we should take up space, that we were wrong the first time around, that we don't have to settle down, keep quiet, move off to the side, and live in fear of obsolescence and silence and wrinkles?  

Like ornamental birds, we are brought out at others' convenience and put away when we become irrelevant.  So we live in fear of invisibility; that our ideas, spoken with conviction, fall half-heard to the wayside. 

Clinging to the last vestiges of our failing worth, we self-loathe and judge and nip and tuck and inject and sweat and starve and waste away in the pursuit of homogeneity, because apparently homogeneity is beauty, and beauty is unobtrusive, and unobtrusive is what we must be.  Getting in the way is impolite, and we mustn't be impolite with our different faces and bodies and minds.

And we live hoping for invisibility, that we may finally be left alone.

We're encroaching and encroached upon until we fade into nothingness, because there's no space left when you're a canvas for everyone's feelings and ideas and desires but your own.

---

I don't know how to begin the process of unlearning, and I don't know how to silence my hateful inner voice, and I don't know how to quit the endless numbers game or unhealthy fixation on reflective surfaces.

I don't know how to simply not care.

But I do know how to slouch, stomp, and talk loudly.  I know the most unladylike ways to sit, and the most unbecoming things to say.  I know how to be conspicuous, and how to get in the way.

I know how to be different, have thoughts, and be stubborn. I know how to write, and I know how to be heard.

And I think I know how to be beautiful: it is in my mind, ideas, wit, opinions, and passions.  It isn't about how little space I occupy, but how much.  It's about being present.

So, perhaps all of this knowing is enough to counteract the unknowing.

Maybe it isn't enough to own my space just yet.  But I think it's enough to begin living in it.