She's too fat, she's too thin.

A trend has developed in recent years to oppose the onslaught of size zero supermodels, celebrity diets and tummy-tucked c-section patients: the trend of “She’s too thin.” I understand it, I do. Most women – not all women, but most – are made to have extra padding. Hips, bums, breasts and stomachs are normal, and why shouldn’t we encourage women with womanly proportions to embrace their curves, to hold up two fingers to the unhealthy perceptions of the female physique and accept that they are the way they are meant to be? I support that. What I do not support is slamming “thin” women.

I’m a size 8 on bottom and a size 6 on top. When I was a teenager, when I had what I ironically refer to now as “puppy fat”, I had an exceptionally large bum which had to be squeezed into a size 10. And I know what you’re thinking: “Size 10 is small!” And yes, size 10 is small to someone who is supposed to be a size 14 or 16, but I am not built to be a 14 or 16. I am narrow-shouldered, with thin wrists and tiny hands – hence why I am often mistaken for being just out of school. I know what I am and I know how I am meant to be; I have lived in this body for 23 years, I have grown up with it and I know it far better than any random stranger who chooses to pass off their “concerns” to me as I peruse the shops for my lunch.

“Is that all you’re eating?”

“Why don’t you eat?”

“Eat!”

I wonder if it would be so appropriate to ask a curvy woman why she eats so much, or to order her to stop eating. I wonder if it would be so appropriate to part some comment like, “You’re too fat. There must be something wrong with you”, as apparently it is appropriate for people who barely – if at all – know me to tell me, “You’re too thin. You must have an eating disorder.”

Ironically, being on the receiving end of comments such as these does eventually begin to instil in people like me an unhealthy perception of our bodies. I often pass by the mirror and glare at the way my top falls off my shoulders, too loose around the bust, or look at my legs poking out from under my skirt and wish they didn’t look so frail. I am aware of people watching me as I eat, and it makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable, as if every bite, every chew and every crumb on my plate is being analysed. I remember being 18 and in college; I had a chest infection, and I was in a toilet cubicle coughing up my lungs, dribbling phlegm everywhere. (It was sexy, trust me.) As I emerged from the cubicle a couple of minutes later, two glassy female stares met mine – judging, critical, assuming. I washed my hands and left.

I find myself facing increasing interrogation the older I get. I cannot have a bad day and be off my food without “concerned” individuals slamming my physical appearance. I understand that people’s intentions are good, but whatever the intention, it is demeaning to tell someone that the way they are supposed to be is “not right”. And if I wasn’t so used to it, it would probably be pretty hurtful, too...

Breathing

Breathing

Living with an incurable illness is like breathing with a wire in your throat.
What should come easily must instead be pushed,
But push too hard and risk hearing that tearing of flesh,
The warm metallic blood rising to your mouth,
Sticky on your tongue, dribbling venom down your chin
Like the vampire that sucked away your life and left you with this
Nonentity.

There is no coffin that seals this illness shut,
Or shovel that pats it on the top of its head
And renders it tragic.
They don’t talk about how young you were or
The life stolen by waste.
You persist in the world, wasting away an existence you feel you stole,
Constantly waiting for the heavy hand on your shoulder
To come and take you away,
To make you stand trial for your sufferance.
Explain why.
Why?
Stand before judgement in the box they have classed as ‘wrong’
And tell them you don’t know why,
Or how,
Or how to stop.
You are a menace to yourself and to those who have no say in whether to love you,
Who somehow hear a heart beating in that hollow chest,
Who look into your eyes each day and see the child who promised
They would grow up to be happy.

I have stared through the cracked skin and weary eyes
And found a spirit buried so deep in sadness that it no longer knows
It is there.
I have touched it, felt the shock of it at my fingertips and
Snatched my hand away fiercely,
Shamefully offended by its presence.
I have known him,
Comforted her,
Clamped my arms around them and
Hoped to suffocate their suffering.
I have loosened my hold on their pain
(as they do from time-to-time)
But forever remain hanging by a thread of barbed wire
Tearing at our throats,
Blood bubbling to the surface,
Making it harder to breathe.

Just... write.

Write a line.
Stare at it,
At the blinking, expectant cursor.

Backspace.

Keep going,
Keep typing.
You’re Blake,
Folded beneath a tree in Peckham Rye,
And the bark is imprinting its age into your skin.
You see angels – real angels,
Like the one you felt resting its chin on your left shoulder
The same week Nan died,
Or the one who slapped its tiny hand across your forehead when you were sleeping, and not living.
No one else sees them, but no one else needs to as much as you do.

You dream of Fear.
He’s always hiding at the top of a tower block.
You drag your feet toward him,
A slow slog, shoulders always slumped because the lift never works,
And what good is going anywhere if you’re not moving?
He waits for you: the storm that tears the sky in two and ripples through your bones,
The rain that bursts through the opening and drenches your consciousness –
Soaked, cold and panting,
Gasping for air like the Piscean whose fins were clipped at birth.

The angel must have woken you when she saw the tears on your face and
Inhaled the perspiration on your perpetually frozen palms
As you inhaled the hail.
Breathe,
She wants you to breathe,
To loosen your grip on Fear and climb higher,
Beyond him,
Toward the gaping hole in the sky.