big enough?

there is a department store that i shop in frequently in santa fe. a few weeks ago when i was there, they had mistakenly put some misses' size shirts in the women's department. i mentioned it to one of the employees working in the area while i was there. she said she would fix it.

when i was there again yesterday, those same shirts were in the same place. i am not usually the kind of person who gets offended easily, but i do find it moderately insulting and offensive for them to not correct the mistake. simply put, i don't want misses sizes in the women's department!

there are plenty of clothes that i see and think, "that could be cute on me, but they don't carry it in my size." such is life as someone who is on the larger side of the scale. instead i am quite often offered clothes that are suited more for my grandmothers (ladies who are more than 80 years old). it irks me that "big" doesn't still also mean "fashionable." as a larger person, i am repeatedly told i am unhealthy, unhappy, unworthy, lazy, ugly, and FAT by society and the media. i try to laugh it off and keep in my head that what they think doesn't matter. i am not unhappy or unhealthy. i damn well am not unworthy. and i KNOW i'm not lazy. if they think i'm ugly, screw them. and fat is just a word. i can think of other, less offensive words i prefer to use when describing myself, but fat is probably as accurate as anything else.

i am bothered by the fact that stores (department and otherwise) feel the need to marginalize those of us who happen to wear a bigger size. target has a meager plus size area to begin with. it frustrates me no end to go in looking for something only to have the women's department overrun by clearance racks from all the other sizes in the store! put the clearance items in the section they came from!

i am also just plain offended to even see a size 4 in *my* shopping space! and don't for one minute try to tell me that skinny women don't feel the same way. i can hear it now, as i've heard it in the past. the skinny girl or woman shopping with her friends, finds a plus size shirt or dress inadvertently placed in the rack with her pretty little clothes. "i can't believe anyone is this fat! gross."

it has become acceptable to mock, ridicule, minimize, marginalize, hurt, and offend big people. we are one of the last groups who are put down, systemically, on a regular basis. the going opinion is that it is easy to lose weight if only you don't eat so much and get up off your lazy butt once in a while. except when it isn't. and it is completely demoralizing to do everything "right" and have none of it *work.* if wishes were pounds lost, i'd be as skinny as i was in college.

the stupid thing is those shirts aren't going to sell where they are. women who wear a misses size don't shop in the women's department. and women who wear plus sizes aren't going to buy those shirts—not even in a "this will fit someday" delusional moment.

i took care of the issue yesterday. i moved every last one of the out-of-place shirts into the misses department. maybe when they go to put them back, they will notice the fact that they are in the wrong place. if i go back and they are there again, i'll take them up to the front and demand that it be fixed.

accident in the making

i feel like a walking disaster area these days. **make way, people!** this one could crash any moment. CAUTION! bring out the orange cones and road flares.

things seem to be happening all at once these days. weeks are filled to the brim with activities. heck some days are done at an all-out run. his activities, her activities, my commitments, jeff on travel, all topped off with appointments for this person or that. in all of the scheduling chaos, one date confronts me and i can't cope.

i stand there frozen in willow's classroom. trying to work out in my head which day we can fulfill our school work credits. 4 days are possible. 3 are insanely busy already. jeff is still on travel for 1. and then there is *that* day. the one day that isn't filled with crazy is one little boy's birthday. his day. my day. our day. no one else's day.

but standing there, having to explain it to someone, leaves me speechless.

and it isn't just the one thing that is trying to occupy that space. there is a town-wide clean up that day, too. someone wants the scouts of our pack to take part. they need an organizer, and if i can't find someone to volunteer for it, i know it will expected of me. i simply can not. some might say, "you can put it together without actually being there to do it." except, no. i do not want to get anywhere near organizing this event for the pack. if i agree to it, i know i will be faced with that date over and over again. emails and information about it will involve writing that date.

frozen. speechless. cannot bring myself to explain why i simply am*not*capable.

after 9 years you would think it would be easy enough to just deal with it. that a date wouldn't stop me in my tracks and leave me breathless, speechless, and in tears. part of me says, "this is stupid. it is just a date." but that isn't the way it works in the moment.

i think it might be time to admit that the someday when i'm not affected by it will never come. and i'm not sure i want it to anyway. so then, it must be time to embrace it, own it, fess up—even if it is done in tears.

pain by proxy

today i saw a message that a friend had posted on facebook. one of her friends had lost her little girl in the night. 7 months old.

i'm not sure i can fully describe how much it hurts to hear that news. she isn't alone. a friend of mine has lost two babies (to some, pregnancies) in recent months. i know others who have lost as well. none of us are alone. i have found, since Jesper's death, that these stories, these women, these lost babies come to me more and more often. maybe because i am vocal about his death, my loss, this pain. maybe it is scrawled on me somewhere that i know, and so i'm safe, i understand. it doesn't really matter why. i accept them. where others may choose to stop listening at some point, i choose to *hear* when they speak of their pain. it helps me. it helps them. it is a small thing i can do.

i do not know her name. i do not know her face. i have never met her. i probably never will. but i *hurt* for her, with her. i've spent the better part of the day thinking about my friend and her friend and everyone involved. crying for them all.

it is not simply that the news makes my personal pain hurt again. certainly, it taps into my own pain, but that isn't the whole story. i can picture in my head the things they are having to deal with and go through. conversations they must have. things they must choose and decide. words they never in a million years thought they would have to speak. it is almost as if i can see into the heart and soul of that family.

not all of it is from experience. i was blessed with the presence of my parents when my son died. i never had to call family and friends and say those words. it was done for me. it took me a long time to be able to say it. i remember more than once being stopped in town by someone asking "how's the baby? he must be getting so big now?" people who didn't know. all i could do was stand there silently, the pain spilling out of every pore, marginally shaking my head at them. until finally, they would *see* me and try to suck those very words back in. i could not get the words out of my mouth . . . he didn't make it . . . he died.

i want nothing more than to put my arms around her and hold her, carry her, protect her for as long as it takes. my arms ache for that hug nearly as much as they ache for my child. i *hope* someone is there for her doing it in my place. no one should have to go through this alone. unfortunately, she will reach a time when she might feel very alone with it despite the presence of other, well-meaning, loving people. i sent information and encouraged her to find a support group, so that she won't have to feel alone even then. i hope that she can find someone to talk to who *understands* because they've been through it.

that's why i do this. it took so long to find someone else who had been through it, and i felt *so alone* until then. that level of loneliness is inhumane. the biggest difference between us right now is that tomorrow morning her loss will not be the first thing on my mind; it will be the second. and the pain i feel with her will ease much sooner than the pain that is my own.

11 years in

as of November 2011, jeff and i have owned our home 11 years. as of January 29, 2012, jeff has been employed by LANL for 11 years.

it is the longest i have ever spent in one place in my entire life, and it doesn't even seem like 11 years is that long. i am happy here. this is the house my babies came home to (the house i would happily have given birth to them in). this is the house my children are growing up in. we hope, one of these days, to put on an addition to give us all a little more space. i'd rather go through the pain and torture of an addition than moving. though sometimes i wish we could move to another house just to have a reason to **purge** the contents of this one.

i spent part of today at a birthday party for a wonderful 8 yo boy who is a friend of nate's. while i was there the mother of the birthday boy, asked if i had met that mom over there. i said, yes, we work in proximity to each other, and her child goes to the same school as nate. later another mom came in that i knew, and i went to talk with her. the birthday boy's mother was surprised that i knew her, too. i also knew the one dad who came to drop off/pick up his son.

the birthday boy's mother was surprise that i knew so many of the other parents, esp in light of an earlier conversation we had about the people i know who had all recently moved to the same street she lives on.

i said, this is what happens when you have lived in a town for 11 years.

i'm not sure when it happened exactly. the number of people i know has obviously grown over time; it was by no means overnight. and it even stalled a bit in the time around jesper's death. but yes, i can attest to the fact that if you live somewhere long enough, you will eventually know a whole lot of people who live in the same town. and they will know you, by name if nothing else. 

i guess time flies when you are building a life and a home and a family. 11 years flies right by without a thought.