/ Birthright /

creative non-fiction

From Fire & Ash / The Sinister Bell / Therapy Homework: Bullies

Birthright

They discovered her in Austria, just a tiny little thing of immense proportions buried beneath the rubble and birthplace of my female ancestors. The divine providence of this is not lost on me. I’m speaking of the lovely Venus of Willendorf of course. The male scientists who pulled her from the ground claimed she was a gross exaggeration of the female form, almost too ridiculous to imagine. They had no idea they were looking at a literal goddess. But when I saw this tiny statue with her striking, gratuitous silhouette I knew better. Her mass was clearly not exaggerated at all. In fact, she had been carved with such intricacy it should have been obvious to anyone looking at her that her body had been immortalized with absolute reverence and devotion.

I knew that reverence all too well. As a little girl, I often stared at my mother’s large body, or largesse, with that very same awe and admiration. I thought she was stunningly beautiful and larger than life itself, with her big, beautiful breasts and round, soft stomach. Some of my happiest times with her as a small child were spent bathing together in her bathtub. Her naked body took my breath away. I watched as she lifted her large, heavy breasts so that she could wash beneath them, and how her body took up space and displaced everything around her. We laughed as she stepped from the tub and took all the water with her while my tiny body trembled from the cold air. “Mom, where did all the water go!?!” I would shriek through chattering teeth. Her unselfconscious laughter would fill the room as she replenished the tub. It was the closest thing I ever felt to joy as a child. I would look down at my flat chest and unformed skinny little body and long for the day when I would have those same big, beautiful hanging breasts and soft, round stomach. It was an inheritance I knew would be mine someday and I felt so honoured.

I would be sadly and brutally disillusioned, however, before I left elementary school. The other children saw something very different when they looked at my mother’s body. God, they were cruel. They mocked her, treating her body with absolute scorn and disdain as if she were something deformed, ugly, and disgusting. In an instant, they stole my birthright from me. They stripped me of my pride and dignity and replaced it with fear and shame. I would never be the same again. The little girl who’d once felt so connected to both herself and her genetic inheritance would become disconnected from all that had come before and all that lay ahead. Her body was no longer something to cherish but something to fear, control and punish.

I started restricting food and dieting at age 10 in order to prevent the very thing I had once longed for. My naturally thin body now looked dangerous to me; I called this danger “fat.” It became an obsession: every inch, every curve, every angle. I was terrified that my body might take up space the way my mother’s did. And it was then that I began to notice things about my mother I hadn’t before: the way she squeezed herself into heavily boned girdles or how she would go days drinking tea and smoking cigarettes with little else to sustain her. Or how she cried when my father called her Wally one too many times, his pet name which was really just a shortened version of Walrus. I vowed to never let these cruelties happen to me no matter what measures it took to prevent them.

By the time I was 17 years old, I would become anorexic. I starved myself thoroughly and ritually, counted every calorie and morsel, and felt compelled to exercise for hours every day. I forced myself to burn off every thing I ate and more, a brutal ledger keeper who would accept no surplus. I was emaciated and weak. My bicep was so shrunken I could wrap my small fingers around it until my thumb touched my forefinger. My shoulder bones protruded from sweaters, skeletal and stark. I was reducing myself to little more than a pile of bones and still I was not enough and too much.

Despite this herculean effort to shrink myself, I could not sustain the endless torture of starvation and punishment required to achieve the impossible. And, to my absolute horror, the destiny I had so thoroughly renounced would come hurtling back towards me; it would be relentless, ruthless, and unforgiving. The goddesses required their pound of flesh, after all—indeed, their hundreds of pounds of flesh—and they intended to collect.

Almost overnight, my body transformed into something unrecognizable. It was alien to me, and it no longer felt as if it were my own. In fact, it was my mother’s body, as if she had cloned her very own and forced it upon me against my will. I no longer felt the same reverence for it I once had; instead, I disavowed it. I wanted to return it to her and reclaim my own. It was the body that made me, created me, nurtured me, and a body that loved me, but I could no longer feel any connection to it. I felt only shame, fear, and anger; and those deep, painful feelings began to eat away at me, macerating me from the inside out. I turned my back on my birthright. I turned my back on my mother’s body. And I turned my back on all of the goddesses before her.

My unruly body was born into a world that no longer sees goddesses; there is no pantheon to honour anymore. All this world sees when they look at a woman like me is an unfortunate lineage of grossly exaggerated and obese bodies to which they are unwilling to bear witness. And so without any place to belong, without a home big enough to contain my uncontainable body, I hid myself away where no one would ever see me. Covered in darkness, I willed myself to forget the legacy that had once been written just for me.

Now, after decades of lonely self-induced exile, I have somehow managed to shrink myself to slightly more respectable proportions. I mistakenly believed that the shame I felt would fade away with my unwanted pounds. But I am still so disconnected from myself. And after years of existing this way, I wonder if even the goddesses would recognize me. Or if they would turn their backs, betrayed by my faithlessness. Part of me wishes they would. But this seems unlikely. Especially when so much of them remains no matter how hard I try to vanquish them. The large heavy breasts that are impervious to malnourishment and remain disproportionately large to my now smaller frame; the soft, spongy stomach that refuses to pull up and remains full, round and exaggerated; the visibly engorged vulva with her folds of fat and flesh. It all remains. However many times I change form and shapeshift, the toll always comes due. I was born to be a goddess among a pantheon of goddesses; it was my birthright. And the goddesses will not be denied.

It is only now, for the first time, that I can see among them a little girl wide-eyed with wonder. Her joy cannot be contained, just as my body cannot. Her eyes shine with love and veneration. With absolute fearlessness, she is eagerly awaiting to take her place there. She reaches out her tiny hand and calls to me, “Look! We’re really one of them. It happened. Our dream really did come true!” She stands in triumphant awe of my body and all of its soft, defiant curves. I remember how she longed to see my soft, round body replace her tiny shapeless one, to feel the weight of my heavy, hanging breasts upon her; and how she dreamed of the day when we would emerge from our childhood chrysalis a proud, beautiful woman. She is so undeniably overjoyed of who we have become. And for just a moment I forget to hate myself. I forget to look away from my reflection in disgust. I forget to cover myself from the hostile eyes of others. And for just a fleeting moment I see myself through her gentle, loving ones and I am restored. I am whole and unashamed. For just a moment…

But the moment passes and it all begins to weigh so heavily on me once again. I can find no relief from my loneliness and shame. It still feels as if there is no home big enough to contain me and my uncontainable body. But when I see the lovely Venus of Willendorf I feel a quiet shift inside of me. There is something nostalgic about her absolute willingness to take up space that feels so comforting to me. I recently placed a bronzed replica of her on my desk where she watches over me as I write and think and dream, where her unapologetic body whispers secrets to me of a shared legacy that belongs to both of us. And she reminds me that if there ever comes a day when I find the courage to reclaim my birthright, there is a pantheon of goddesses—and a little girl beaming with pride—waiting for me to take my place among them.

From Fire & Ash

Make me a bird, she dropped to her knees. 
Please God, she whispered.
So I can fly far, far away. 

This familiar script—ear-marked, tattered, worn—was not my own. Mine was not so beautifully imbued with childlike enchantment as hers. Even then, I knew better than to ask for a fabled pair of magical wings. I knew there would be no phoenix born from fire and ash, no bird of prey strong enough to defeat my foe; no myth, no magic, no might.

This story is rarely told with such simple measure. The audience demands its gratuitous gore. Stripped of its resolution, the truth is so much less satisfying. A tragedy, this. Because hers, just as the paper horrors you consume, features innocence lost and monsters untamed. But here, the darkness moves in shadow, veiled by virtue of her youth; and to this conceit you cling. So you keep company with the refined, respectable gentleman while she remains tethered to his unleashed inner brute. Forsaken, she falls to her knees and invokes a prayer, her last gasp flung into the abyss.

Somebody stop him, she pleads.
Or send him away.
I need you to save me.
Please, God. Please

The Sinister Bell

“Unconscious fear memories appear to be indelibly burned into the brain. They are with us for life. These memories are resistant to extinction. Under stress, even fears that appear to be extinguished often spontaneously recur. Once an emotional memory is stored in the amygdala, later exposure to stimuli that even slightly resemble those present during the trauma will unleash the fear reaction.” ~ Jeffrey Young

The sinister bell was rung, its reflex rendered into truth. Branded, marked, conditioned, I was set anew and forever unchanged. It was bloody and brutal and just as nature intended.

It has been almost surreal to watch the furor rise up around the topic of resilience, as it is stripped of its origins and history in real time. Whether it be in forums or expert panels or your therapist’s office, there is no mention of the dystopian-esque experiments that produced animals and children so scarred from the conditioning imposed upon them that it could never be undone. It could never be undone. And the researchers of the time knew this before they gave up and moved on to other questionable experiments. Yet, despite this history, the failed notion of resilience has been resurrected by the relentless therapeutic and wellness economies that have sanitized it for profit, and sold it back to the masses as some sort of ideal for psychological wellbeing—their most recent panacea cum quackery. And according to this latest exercise in pseudo-science, I am failing very badly at resilience. Very badly, indeed. And to those who might agree, I say this: fuck you.

I am resilience. I remain loyal to the bell that stripped me of all that was mine and all that could be. My loyalty cannot be swayed by the ringing of a sonorous other; I will not be seduced by your beautiful lies. I am resilient and unchanging and bound to what has come before. I return constantly, devotedly, unwillingly. No joyful ringing can undo what was done. I return to the terrifying resonance that was set upon me by the ringing of the sinister bell. This is your precious resilience, is it not? To be unchanged by the crushing winds that signal the coming of a harsh, new season. To return to some natural default once the raging storm has passed. So, then, where is my recognition for remaining so admirably unchanged? There will be no acclaim for me or my impoverished brand of perseverance, however. You do not desire the brutal, bloody resilience born of a natural, hostile fury. You want something more befitting, more malleable. You want me to accept and to conform and to acquiesce. You judge my resistance as failure, my refusal as weakness. But you are wrong. I. Am. Resilience.

Therapy Homework: Bullies

My therapist remarked that I consistently refuse to stand up to bullies in any serious way, that I won’t even “talk back” to them in defense of myself. I explained to her that after a lifetime of living with them, I’ve realized that there is no point in doing so; it merely feeds their sadism. She argued that I’m not just talking back for myself but for the sake of others as well. She thinks I need to learn to express my anger more. And so the assignment was just that: talk back, express my anger. I was ambivalent. But then I stumbled on a Reddit post written by someone looking for advice for her debilitating learned helplessness. She seemed genuinely vulnerable. This is the reply she received…

Anonymous Reply: “You’ve crafted a perfect narrative of self-pity, haven’t you? Your childhood might not have been ideal, but guess what? You’re an adult now. It’s time to stop using your past as a crutch. You’re afraid of failure, but here’s a reality check: everyone fails. The difference is, successful people learn from it and move on. You’ve become comfortable in your bubble of fear and excuses. To overcome it, start by taking responsibility…And, no, it’s not too late, but only if you stop whining.”

To say that something “snapped” inside of me when I read this would probably be an understatement. And so I decided to take my therapist’s advice and “talk back” to this online bully (though I never did post it) …

I wish you’d choke on your nasty fucking tongue. I’m so tired of assholes like you bullying everyone you perceive to be “weak”; so smug with your cruel, puritanical thinking and your privileged neurotypical impunity. Go fuck yourself. God, you are so vile. You’re a digusting, little weed that grows and thrives no matter where you’re planted. But you’re exploitative, predatory, hostile, and toxic; just generally awful and unappealing in every possible way. No one wants you in the fucking garden, asshole. Don’t you get it? You are the ubiquitous, ugly, twisted thing that suffocates and chokes everything that is beautiful and worth keeping. But you have the audacity and arrogance to lecture the flowers on how best to survive in the garden they make valuable and beautiful in the first place. Go fuck yourself, you arrogant piece of shit. Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself.

I’m still not sure if I passed the assignment …