Page 1 of Breathe Again

I’m the Villain

Mara

Everyone has a story.

We tell our stories in words, spoken and written, in film, in photographs, in scrapbooks, even through visual art. If we choose to tell them at all, we tell the story of who we are and how we came to be that way. Through our stories, we beg for understanding, forgiveness, and acceptance. We tell them because we long for belonging, and belonging requires understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness.

The entire fictional genre attests to our fascination with stories. The anticipation of those opening lines…. will it draw me in immediately orwill it take a few pages? Will I fall in love right away or will it take a few chapters? Many in number are the friends and lovers I have met within the pages of a book. Always the story opens in the middle, the crisis around the next chapter. It is there, in the storm, where we befriend and fall in love, where we bear witness to weakness and bravery, weakness and bravery that must coexist in order for either to exist at all. We travel with them over too many bumps on too short a road, we cheer the hero’s entrance and the saving of the day. Cue happily ever after.

Sigh.

Oh, the bereavement of a closed book when I must say goodbye to my newfound companions!

They’re just stories, but I love them. They’re not real, but they touch something in me that is.

Everyone has a story.

A series of snapshots, those pivotal points and chapters in a person's life that shape who they are and where they go. We get to choose which snapshots we reveal and which we tuck away into a shoebox at the back of the closet. Hidden or shared, they tell the story of our lives.

If my story were laid out upon the pages of a book, I fear I’d be the villain.

I get jealous, and when I’m jealous, I’m mean. More often a problem in our early years, over time I learned to temper my reactions because I saw how much I hurt him. I didn’t want to behave like that, but the feelings are strong and difficult to fight through.

It’s not easy to love a hot guy when you’re a chubby. Tall, dark, and handsome walks in and every female eye is drawn. Usually in the journey back up his long frame they catch the hand he’s holding and envy registers on their faces as their gazes slide over to me. Envy that is quickly replaced by surprise and followed by a smirk. That’s the women. The men, they differ. Some wouldn’t mind a taste, and some look at me with the same disdain as the women. Worse is when they look at him with pity. In those moments, I desperately want to put a paper bag over my head, and sometimes I want to die.

I know what they think of me. I can feel their thoughts, see it in their eyes, the slant of their mouths.

I don’t know what Zale thinks of me. Of course, he tells me, but I find it difficult to believe. It kills me that I can’t ever know for sure. If I could get into his head for a moment, just a minute so I could know for myself the way he sees me, then, I could believe.

I try to believe, but the evidence given to me by my own eyes defies me.

I am chubby. I have thick thighs, chubby arms, a tummy, and round hips. I have a waist. This is true. Also, my breasts, which were beautiful when I was young, are still surprisingly good. Long, bouncy, chocolate curls, with a scattering of silver locks highlight a face that is round and all too expressive of my feelings. My eyes are brown, my mouth is small but cute, my nose is okay.

I wish I had more time to look after myself, exercise, shop, get my hair done, but my Olivia is needy, not as much now that she’s twelve, but she still needs more care than your average bear.

Who am I kidding?

Even if I had more time to exercise, I’ve always been chubby. At forty-four it's a lot less likely to change than it was in my twenties. And back then it was near impossible.

I am what I am.

Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I often journaled before I sat down to do my serious writing, which is ironic, since my journal entries were serious and reflected my darkest thoughts and my serious writing was about a great fluffy cat named Parsley, and his Labrador sidekick, Spud.

It felt both good and bad to expel the dark; good to purge it but when reading it back to myself, I was disappointed and distressed with how little I’d progressed in my mission to like myself.

I needed to be kinder. I was slipping a bit, slipping back into some old patterns. Lately I was getting mad with little provocation. I wanted to throw something, lots of things maybe. In my mind I was Bellatrix, dancing through the destruction wrought by her own hand at Hogwarts. I understood her, she needed to balance the chaos and destruction within by creating it in the world around her.

I, too, craved balance. I fantasized about throwing my cell phone through the television. I envisioned the burst of glass and sparks, the shock of the crash, but I didn’t want to clean up the mess, or scare Zale and Olivia. More than likely, there was some safetycoating that would prohibit that kind of explosion, guaranteeing a highly unsatisfactory outcome all around.

Instead, I dug my fingernails into my thighs, and pulled my hair. I’d feel the urge to pull a blade across my skin and make myself bleed. How or why I’d get this urge when I’d never actually cut myself was beyond me. But the urge remained, and instead of giving into it, I used my nails where no one would see. I scraped my nails across my scalp, dug my nails into my head, gripped my hair tightly in my fists and pulled it hard. On my knees, resisting the strength of my hands until I could bear it no longer and my forehead rested on the floor.

This way there was no evidence of the madness.

This scared me, the return of the anger. It made me concerned for Zale and Olivia. I wanted them to have a healthy wife and mother instead of the psycho bitch I secretly feared was truly me.

I made an appointment with my doctor. I wondered if I was going through early menopause, or if my hormone levels were off, I even admitted that I felt tons better after having sex and asked if perhaps there was an antianxiety medication that could simulate whatever hormone it was that I seemed to be lacking. She referred me for a psychiatric assessment.

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