phoenix {rising}
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Eureka!
<<2003-03-10 - 10:03 p.m.>>

Tai Chi today kicked lots of ass. I was in the zone. It's a funny and wonderful place, the Tai Chi Zone. My mind gets very clear, empties out, zeroes in on its center. It's a fantastic feeling. The great thing about Tai Chi is the way your conscious mind is devoted to your body, devoted to the forms. When you are doing Tai Chi, you are not killing time, you are not trying to think of something else until your workout is over—you are concentrating. On the forms, on your body, on the way it feels to have your chest pulled out and open by the arm extensions around the kicks (my kicks are coming along nicely—today I learned to lean back and open my arm extension wider when I think I'm going to lose my balance, which is deliciously counterintuitive). My pivot is better. My rotating kick is much better. The instructor said he "just love[s]" the way I execute the arm forms of the kicks. Called it "elegant." Neat. Smugness.

And I had this one moment of clarity, and I know it may seem obvious, and I know it may seem corny, but I had this feeling for just a moment in which I emerged from the Tai Chi Zone and suddenly went Oh. Suddenly thought So I'm fat. So what? I mean, seriously. Why should I let the fact of being fat get in the way of anything? It's ridiculous and it makes no sense.

I will bear my body without shame.

Stacey, the leader of the Fat Girl Speaks group, is going to take bellydancing lessons, and maybe I will join the group. Maybe I'll take bellydancing lessons here. Maybe I'll just get the fuck over it already.

I have wasted enough time with shame.

Maybe I will fly home to John and fling myself into his arms. Maybe I will tell him about all the sense it makes. The Lovely Miss Claire volunteered to call him up and tell him that I would be the best thing that ever happened to him. And just maybe I should take her up on it—well, no. I should tell him myself.

Grow up, little girl, and be brave.

It's funny. This comes on the heels of a session with Zibby in which I said If my father doesn't think I'm attractive, how could anyone else? In which I spoke small-voiced about how rarely he was home. About the things I used to do to relate to him. Play soccer. Play basketball. Get fat. You know, the usual.

But it is funny, the juxtaposition. The strange tentative confidence, the what if? on a day that began with admitting my fear.

Catharsis, perhaps. They do say that voicing the silence is therapeutic, and I do believe it, and here I am maybe doing it.

It scares me a little bit, how close I am to telling John, You should be with me.

Shut up, stupid naysaying voice. Go away. I'm busy, with my life.

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