settle

Okay. Settle.

Settle.

Settle down. Settle in.

Settle in, my darling.

Are you sitting comfortably? Yes?

Then let’s begin.

/

What are you thinking? 

You’re thinking of wood, and hot iron. You’re thinking of sunshine, and of the congealed masses of mosquitos and seeds in the pool. You’re thinking of the thick turquoise. You’re thinking about the pump, the pump they hadn’t used, and how inviting the water was.

You’re thinking about this morning, and about how the dirt congregated towards itself at the bottom of the pool, and about how the sun shone down on that thick, chlorinated water.

You’re thinking about how you got in anyway. You’re thinking about how you got into that water anyway.

You always do these things. You always do the icky things.

You always emerge anyway.

/

This morning, as you walked back up to your front door from the pool, you were wet - too wet, dripping wet - and you were wearing your bikini, your one bikini, and a towel that was only ever supposed to be furniture padding.

You were wearing a bikini at seven o’clock in the morning. You had waded in, happily. You were all green, all blue, all flotsam.

And, as you pulled your thumb down on that hot, metal lock - you had a sudden, gorgeous sensation - this is my life. I get to live this life.

But then, there was the itch. The niggling sensation at the back of your head that wouldn't permit this happiness to just - be.

Last week, one of your best friends told you that you aren't happy. 

Okay.

So we’re settling in.

So - what?

/

To be told you aren't happy by another person - that's a thing. To be told that you're going downwards - it scratches at you. To be asked where things went wrong - it sticks, a little. 

You got there. You can endure it. The things, the scratches, the stickiness. 

But from someone you call a best friend?

Oh. That's an entirely new matter.

Not happy? Going downwards? Going the wrong way?

You just cleaved off in separate directions, you tell yourself. She's doing the Her Thing, and you're doing the You Thing.

Much in the same way that all your friends do their own thing and you sit, without judgement, knowing that mistakes may or may not be made. You sit, knowing you’ll be there regardless.

You settle for them, as they are. You settle in with them. You allow them to make their own nests.

But then - there’s your friend, your specific friend. The specific friend that you cannot, will not, will never let go.

She asks where things went wrong.

Went wrong.

She comes prepared with a list of your wrong-doings. She recites her list, and then refuses to listen when you tell her that - okay, yes, some things have gone wrong along the way, and some decisions I’ve made have been poor ones. 

But she doesn’t listen when you say how freeing it has been, in the past year or so, to re-learn how to inhabit your own life again. Your own body. Your own choices, and dreams, and time. 

/

There was one thing that hurt you the most - the mention of men. She cites the photos you post, the flippant comments you make.

She’d been watching. She totted up the mental arithmetic of what she saw, and she equated it to men, your need of men - men, men, men, the attention of men, and insecurity. 

You want to reach through your phone. You want to scream at her.

You want to tell her that you don’t give a flying fuck what men think. You want to tell her how wonderful it is to inhabit a body that’s yours, and you want to tell her that censoring nipples is dumb, and you want to tell her that men are going to jerk off to women on Instagram, regardless of whether it’s with or without clothes - so as long as they’re not making it known, who even really cares?

Men jerk off to all sorts of shit, you want to say. But you don’t.

She tells you that you aren’t the person she once knew. 

Okay.

But who was the person she’d known? Half a person. Half a person. Half a person, a vague recollection of a whole person by a whole person’s own volition. Half a person who’d cut away so many parts of herself to make room for a husband - a husband, a man, a lifeline - who had tried, time and time again, to fit a narrative that would never have worked. Half a person who sank so deep into herself that she couldn’t recall what, or who, was even there to begin with.

But you’ve remembered, since then. You’ve picked up your books. You’ve tapped furiously at keypads. You’ve sent mail. You’ve walked miles, miles, miles, many thousands of miles - and you’ve found her.

You found the curious child in the bedroom who wrote the headline editorials at twelve years old.

You found that girl. You found the girl who worried about tornadoes. You found the girl who stayed up all night to make sure a storm wasn't coming. You found the girl who grinned at the camera when she was third in line to meet the Queen. You found the girl who begged her mother to listen to the music, drink some coffee, don’t hit things. Let’s not have a bad night.

You found the words, and the gusto, and the rage - the outright rage - to sit and wed that curious girl with the woman you inhabit now.

The nudes? The job? The as-yet-unseen version of you? 

That’s all you.

You want to scream, scream at the top of your lungs. You want to say - no, you want to shriek, shriek, shriek - I am just me, now. I had to regrow the second half. It was messy, and it was painful, and it wasn’t always pretty, but I’m here now. I’m here, I’m here and I want to take up space and live in this extra space as colorfully and vibrantly and magnificently as I so choose.

You never got to have your own room.

You elect to take up room, now.

And that’s what you’ve been doing, of late. 

You also want to say, to your friend -

I am sorry you weren’t here for it.

The truth - the real truth - is that no one was there for any of it.

All you’ve ever known is you.

/

Recovery is a strange beast. Yesterday, recovery was quiet - it required naps, lots of naps, and it required cancelled plans in favor of solitude and warm sheets and the smell of Max’s warm, soft neck under a very, very needy chin.

Today, recovery jolted you awake at 4am, asked for some food, and pulled your shoes on for a walk before the sun rose.

You’ll never know what recovery will ask of you in it’s entirety, because it never laid itself out, but you have learnt what is required of you - listening.

You have to listen. You have to listen, and pay attention, even when it means doing the things you ought not do.

You give it what you can. You tell it fuck off when you can’t.

Recovery is about listening. Recovery is about listening, listening, and listening again. 

Listening fosters love - a love that doesn’t dampen you down. Love doesn’t tell you that you’re not thin enough, pretty enough, docile enough, polite enough. 

Your version of love - the way you learned love - never spelled it out to you. Your very specific sort of love - again, the way you earned love - was all by deduction. Guessing games. Insinuation. Osmosis. A big, fat, ugly gamble.

But that’s that. That’s what was.

What was is in the past.

/

You think back to one of the photos that your friend saw. She deduced that the photo was a cry for attention - a photo of you, leaning against your kitchen counter, naked, showing nothing but a flash of hip from the side. 

How could she have known how much strength it took you to take that picture in the first place? How could she have known that the Amy that she knew - that she thought was happy - would have hidden under a baggy shirt and drunk a bottle of wine to get away from that body?

How could she have known that you have spent so much time listening to, listening and learning and loving the skin you inhabit to finally scream yourself silly and say - no more. This is your life now. This is your body. You are lucky. You are lucky. You are lucky. 

You have endured. 

/

You've been reading two of Glennon Doyle’s books at the same time, recently - one before you go to bed, and one as an audiobook for walks - and, in both, you see so, so much of yourself reflected in her words. The stifling sensation of being a woman in this world. For so long - to borrow her metaphor - you were cheetah raised in captivity. You were Tabitha.

Your friend hurt you, this week, because she couldn’t see that your choices - whilst incongruous with the vision of you that she’d seen through the window of your three years together in the desert - were not all mistakes. 

When she asked you what happened, the honest answer is that you threw yourself in the face of uncomfortable things because that was what you needed. You would never have grown if you hadn’t learnt those lessons for yourself.

And - well. You’re proud of this. You’re proud of who you’ve become.

You became someone honest, however ugly the truth looked. You begun to marry the curious child in yourself with the woman that stares back at you in the mirror.

She has a different body, now, but she has the same chicken pox scars on her pinky finger. She still has the same beautiful little feet. The mole on her right toe is still there, still square between Big Toe and Next Toe.

You love both people equally. You love the child, and you love the woman. They are one and the same, now. You are no longer half a person. You no longer cater for others. You do nothing for anyone, unless you so choose.

And that’s how you know you’re doing quite alright.

You are settling into yourself.

You’ve become a myself.

At last, at long last. 

You are glad for the growing pains that have earnestly shown their scars.

/

You are also glad that you can type the word myself and think did Mickey and Minnie have a Dobby?

/

Some people will have references. Some people will have a sense of humor.

It is not your concern if these people have either.

/

And she settled happily ever after.

/

“To settle” has a negative connotation -

But the first meaning, per the Merriam Webster Dictionary, is to place so as to stay.

/

You choose to stay. You choose to settle. You choose to make a home out of the battleground that was your body. You choose to build a settlement in the midst of it. You choose to jump into the water, not knowing how cold it will be be, and you emerge from it. You smile anyway.

You smile because you jumped into the water. You smile because you know that to settle doesn’t mean you have to stay in the water. You smile because you emerge from the water, every bit of your shivering flesh emerges from the water - and it has settled.

You know who you are now. You accept the ripples. You have settled.

/

Are you sitting comfortably?

Let’s begin.

Let’s begin again.