Eat the Damn Cake

We go around the room, introducing ourselves and sharing how long we have “practiced.”

“Nine years.”

“Five years.”

“Twenty.”

“Four days.”

That’s me.

And that is one of the reasons I am not good at yoga. Also, I am not flexible (does this make me less sexy? I’m pretty sure it does). Also, I have scoliosis. Not in a serious way. Just in a “Your spine is a little too curved” way. It makes my lower back look especially cute, the doctor said I looked like a dancer (a dancer! I must be pretty!). It makes my upper back and shoulders look not cute at all– more like a turtle (a dancing turtle!). It’s hard for me to put my shoulders back. Which means it’s hard for me to look like a queen. Which is a major disappointment.

So the hardest pose for me is the one where you sit with your legs straight in front of you and then bend over them, from the waist. My back won’t let me bend. I’m sitting straight up, and everyone is touching their toes. Even the pregnant woman in the back. How is that even possible? Even the seventy-year-old dude in the very tight pants.

I am also bad at downward facing dog, which feels shameful. Downward facing dog is clearly the most important pose. They keep coming back to it. Everything ends in it. No matter what you do, you end up in downward facing dog, contemplating the fickle, meandering course of your life.

(have you noticed that the mats are always in soothing colors? source)

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Recently, I realized that my marriage is not perfect.

Isn’t that shocking? I’m shocked. I thought it was perfect. I didn’t say this aloud, but I was sure that we were the only perfect couple in the world. And not sure in the “Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty great!” way. Sure in the like “I have found God and there is only one Truth” way.

I’m not sure which is more embarrassing– that I thought our marriage was going to remain unblemished and preternaturally self-possessed, like a child model. Or that it isn’t.

When people fall in love, they’re supposed to go crazy. Their brains release all of these ridiculous chemicals and they start running around, jumping in fountains and throwing things in the air and laughing with their mouths wide open and their heads thrown back. That stage lasts for two years. Which is a lot of fountains.

(I’d go for this one. source)

It’s science. People need to get like that so that they’ll commit to each other and then they can raise babies and stuff. Unless they’re gay, and then science gets all awkward and nods a lot and says, “We’re working on that one.”

I was sure my love for Bear wasn’t science. It was something much better. Something much, much more unpredictable. This was pure, wild luck, and Bear and I were its masterpiece.

I’ve known Bear for close to three years now, we’ve been married for a little over one, and I’m starting to recognize our particular struggles as a couple. The things that get stuck just below the surface for too long, until suddenly they erupt. The ways in which we go gradually in circles. The things that we are each really bad at. I have sorted issues into piles. The pile of stuff that bothers me a little but is really fine. The pile of stuff that bothers me more than a little, and I am not sure I’m fine with. The pile of stuff that bothers him, and I should really do something about.

(the stuff under the surface can be scary when it suddenly breaks through)

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This is a guest post from someone I like a lot. She described herself this way when I asked for a bio: “Jess is a teacher and occasional writer who lives in Brooklyn. She occasionally writes here: therealmsmanners.tumblr.com.” She is also ridiculously smart and has unfair hair. Unfair because when I cut mine off, I was imagining it looking just like hers, and then it didn’t. 

I am not a naked person.

I am not the kind of person who gets out of the shower and wanders around, air-drying at my leisure. I grab a towel. I am not the kind of person who casually carries on locker room conversations in the nude. I get in and out of there as quickly as possible.

Which is why, when a couple of weeks ago, my husband and I got an email from our friend inviting us to a place called “Spa Castle,” I immediately responded with:

“Um…maybe? Exactly how disrobed would I have to be?”

Despite my hesitation, and despite the fact that we aren’t the kind of people who typically go to spas (or castles, for that matter), my husband and I figured that the beginning of a new year is probably a good time to branch out and try different things, and besides—how bad could it possibly be to spend a few hours imagining you’re in a tropical paradise resort instead of Queens in the middle of January?

Which is why we found ourselves riding the 7 train to the end of the line that Saturday. While we were watching the stops roll by, our friend nudged my husband.

“So, uh, we’re going to have to make a decision pretty soon.”

“About being naked or not, you mean?” my husband asked.

“Yup!”

“Yeah, I dunno. We’ll see…”

I exchanged looks with my friend’s beautiful blonde girlfriend, as if to say, “men! So childish! So weird about being with each other!” but underneath my knowing smile, panic was beginning to set in.

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There are some things I stopped wearing when my belly stopped being flat. Tight dresses, for one. I used to have a skintight gray knit dress that I thought was the hottest thing in the world. I gave it away when I gained weight.

I hit my heaviest weight ever (again) back in November and I’m still there. Which kinda surprised me the last time I weighed myself (at my parents’ house, of course, since I don’t own a scale). I thought I’d slip back. I thought I’d return to normal. Y’know, to my real body.

I think this might be normal, guys.

And the good news is, there’s a chance I’m curvy now! At least a little. I think I might be. Even my boobs are contributing, in the gradual, half-hearted manner in which I used to do my laundry after my mom reminded me ten times.

I didn’t know until I put on this incredibly tight dress covered in rabbits. And then it turned out that I am a (potential?) bombshell. It was like BAM BAM BAM!

BOOBS BELLY BUTT!

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Note: Argh! I’m trying to get the weight-loss ad removed from the blog. It popped up before I had time to banish it. Don’t read that book! Eat some cake! You’re gorgeous!

We act like we have a couple different bodies. There’s the one you’re in now, and then there’s the one that’s your real body.

It might be from the past or the future. It’s mysterious, but thoroughly detailed. The real body gets obscured by the obnoxious, floppy, hungry, unflattering  current one. The real body is like a place you really, really want to go. Where life makes more sense. Where it’s sunnier and you can wear a bathing suit without even thinking about it.

I caught myself thinking like that when I gained 20 pounds in college. My new body wasn’t really me. It was a costume I was trying on for a while. A slightly scary costume. A slightly daring costume. With an unfamiliar soft little belly and squishy thighs. Sometimes I caught myself staring at my new thighs. They took up so much space! They felt nice. They weren’t my real thighs. But they were OK.

(source)

My body never regressed gracefully into its precollege state. My weight went up and down, and my shape shifted, so that I tucked fat into new, creative spots. My face changed. My hair changed. And eventually I cut my hair off completely.

But sometimes I feel like I am looking through someone else’s eyes at myself. This isn’t me. There is a different, better, streamlined me in there, somewhere, but I can’t quite get to her.

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I did it! I did it! I asked for more money!

Remember when I wrote this post about how women almost never ask for more money? Apparently we don’t. Apparently we often keep quiet instead. And I understand why. I mentioned that the thought of asking for a raise is really scary for me. That usually when someone pays me for work I’ve done, I am thinking, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you so much!” as opposed to “Seriously? I am worth more than that!” Even if I’m worth more than that. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, how much I’m worth in money. I mean, maybe I think I’m worth a million dollars, but I’m a writer. No one is going to give me a million dollars. No one is going to give me very much at all. So it’s more a “every little bit counts” type thing than a “I can’t believe they don’t value me more” type thing.

That is no excuse not to ask for more money.

But even after I wrote that post, I didn’t notice that I had an opportunity to ask for a raise, in my own life, right then. I was thinking more abstractly– like, women, out there in the world– other people– you guys should think about this…I should probably think about it too, later…

And then something funny happened. I found out that someone I know who does work for one of the same companies I do was being paid more than me. She mentioned it casually, and suddenly I was furious. And embarrassed. Here I was, writing about raises instead of asking for them. I felt like I was falling behind. I felt like I’d been sleeping and oblivious and possibly still wearing suspenders that had gone out of style five years ago (what? Are people not wearing suspenders these days? No one?).

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