I was eleven and big-boned the summer before I grew. My mom took me on a long walk; all life’s problems were solved and all life’s secrets revealed on long walks. She told me that it was okay to be big-boned, that all her relatives were big-boned too. She said we got it from the Swedes. She told me that people might say that I was overweight, they might call me fat, but not to worry about it. It’s just the way we all are, she said.
I was twelve years old when I started to grow.
I grew so fast my bones ached under the pressure. Mom and dad would warm up glasses of milk, hoping the silky, clinging fluid would lull my bones to sleep. I drank gallons of milk, cold during the day, warm at night, drank it like a drowning man drinks water. I grew tall and scrawny. I was five feet, ten inches before I was 13. There is a picture one year of me and my sisters, all similar heights. There is a picture the next year where I am double their size, like two kids in a trench coat.
I was skinny for a long time. I felt strange about it. People would ask me what I did. How did I get to be how I was? How could they be like me too? There was nothing to do. My big bones stretched out, that’s all. I felt embarrassed by it. People treat being skinny like a moral boon. I was just skinny by accident.
My sister and I saved up all our money one summer and backpacked for six weeks in Europe. I never would have went, I remember being on the phone with my sister and hemming and hawing and she said, “Look, you always said you were going to go with me. I’m going this summer. If you want to go, you have to come now.” So I went, thank god.
I remember in London we had a magic time. Everyone loved us in London. A hairdresser offered to dye my hair for free. A local radio station stopped us on the street to interview us. When we went for high tea at Harrods the Maître d' rushed over to us to exclaim, “You drink your tea PERFECTLY!”
We went to Top Shop for the first time in London. It was magnificent. We spent a whole afternoon in there. I bought a little cropped tank top made of lace with gold beads and details embroidered on the front of it. I bought a neon orange blush that still rolls around in my makeup bag, a little talisman of my younger, adventurous self.
We were trying on shoes when I realized the American mother and daughter who were talking loudly on the other couch were talking about us, “Look at her legs! They’re so skinny! A little too skinny, if you ask me!” I felt so embarrassed. I was embarrassed about everything at the time, but especially embarrassed about anything that was too much or not enough about me. We left and went upstairs to accessories and nail polish. I used their testers and painted my nails, each finger a different colour, trying to get back into the groove of our Top Shop day. Water off a duck’s back, or whatever they say.
The only time I tried to be skinny on purpose was in grade twelve when I got signed with a modelling agency. They said I had perfect measurements, except my hips were a half inch too big (toxic, I know). The plan I came up with was to stop eating bread, to eat a lot of peanut butter instead, and to run around my family’s acreage in rural Saskatchewan as many times as I could all at once. One time as I came running through the trees at the back end of our property, I saw my dad standing outside his workshop alert, eyes wide, staring at me. We surprised each other. As soon as he recognized me, his body relaxed, “Oh, Tahna, it’s you!” He had heard my heavy breathing and the crashing of my sharp limbs through the bush. He thought I was a moose.
Sometime during my marriage I wasn’t skinny anymore. It happened slowly, by accident, but I liked it. I remembered that Dove campaign from my youth, “Real women have curves.” I was so happy to finally have curves. I was so happy to be a real woman. I used to be so ashamed of my pointy edges. My husband liked my curves too, and I thought, “Oh good. Maybe now he will love me.”
I liked being bigger than I was before. I felt strong and like a power was growing inside me. I thought of the boy in eighth grade who, when I was working alone with him as a substitute teacher’s assistant, had picked me up and put me over his shoulders with the lazy, cruel ease of newfound masculine strength. I thought of how I had to push and scramble my way down, how even when I was off his shoulders he still held me by the wrists, how I wished my bones were bigger and his hands didn’t fit all the way around. How it was my calm voice and not my strength that got me out of his grip. I thought of how if I had been this size then, maybe he wouldn’t have bothered to grab me at all.
I was amazed that I could like myself bigger when all my life everyone talked about being small like it mattered.
In early 2023, in the thick of the heartbreak of knowing my marriage was ending, I visited some family. My older brother said, “You look good! Did you lose weight?” I snapped at him, “I don’t care about losing weight. I’m not doing anything different. I’m the same as I’ve always been.”
A month later, I put a pair of favourite work pants on (that I had learned to tailor to fit my bigger waist and bigger ass to perfection) and noticed for the first time that the back pockets looked concave. Nothing was filled out. I thought, “What happened to these pants? Why don’t they fit me?”
When I got home from work that night, I pulled out a bag of clothes I meant to take to the thrift store; clothes that had no hope in hell of fitting me these past few years. Every item fit exactly. I was skinny again, by surprise, by accident. I was distraught. I wanted to be big and safe, a moose in a bush. I didn’t want sharp edges. I wanted my still-husband to love me.
I shouted for my still-husband. I said, “Look at me! Look at my small ass! Did you notice?” He hadn’t noticed, but now he did. He mourned my ass like the death of a beloved dog.
I don’t know what it is to have a body just for myself. When I was young and skinny, I felt owned. When I was married with no sharp edges, I felt owned. Now, I am trying, really trying, to let my body be. I move my body to regulate my nervous system, to feel strong. I eat to feel clear and purposeful and motivated. I would be lying if I didn’t admit to the background rattle rolling around in my head at every moment, “Am I the correct size for love to stick?” I know they say it doesn’t matter. If someone loves you, really loves you, they will love you in every form. It feels like it does matter, though. It has certainly seemed to matter before.
This little voice won’t live with me forever. For now it’s enough to notice it, to ask it to lay down, to pet its head. These days I keep my bags of clothes in different sizes. I want my body to know it will be clothed whether it is sharp or soft. I want to feel safe expanding or shrinking with life’s seasons and changes. I want to trust that there is care for me in the world that does not depend on me defying life’s one guarantee: a changing life, a changing self, a changing body.
Talk soon,
Natahna
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The Recommends: Getting yourself a lil’ bubble tea. My order is a taro oat milk smoothie, 0% sugar, double boba. Sublime.
"I want my body to know it will be clothed whether it is sharp or soft." Wow. And I LOVE your Big Feels art!