I want to ask her. I want to know if she fights almost daily the urge to chisel away at her body rather than chiseling away at meaningful work–work that will help people, that will make a difference. But to ask would be to assume that her struggles mirror mine, that we share values, and that they are ordered similarly. Asking would seem presumptuous, precocious.
And so I will not ask. Instead I will drive to the café and order the dark mug with the swirling milk and squeeze in at the only open table, right next to a group of twenty-somethings who are very happy to be connecting with one another, despite the fact that half of them are ostensibly working, their laptops perched on the table like Battleship boards as they speak animatedly over top of them.
I’m here to try to write about this, about the audacity of a woman who does not lack the self-discipline, the intelligence, the resources, the support, or the time needed to burn the fat and tone the muscle and smooth the skin but who dares instead to direct her self-discipline, her intelligence, her resources, her support, and her time toward something else. Something beautiful, something helpful, something interesting. That might sound noble, but living it can feel tenuous, for it’s the women with the chiseled bodies who get treated like royalty.
I’m writing about it because I can’t see a way to connect face-to-face about it. (“Hey, would you like to grab coffee sometime so I can ply you with overly personal questions that you may or may not appreciate?” or “Hey, would you like to grab coffee sometime so I can overshare and possibly put you in a really awkward position?”) As soon as I begin writing, however, I start to wonder what’s to become of this emerging thought process. Will I share it on the internet? After all, how else? But the internet, in its conceit, has not been known to bother itself with the fact that my intention is merely to share my experience, to be honest, to reveal something simple yet real, something that is frankly not important enough to talk about and must therefore be written about, all so that one person might, one day, sigh with even the slightest bit of relief and say, “I’m not the only one.”
The young woman next to me–a tattoo artist, recently moved to town–is on a roll. She’s networking, getting your Insta, shaking hands, showing her work. I stare at the page and watch my thoughts as they swirl around the drain.
I feel this all the time 💛 my favorite conversations are when I break through and actually ask those people out to coffee and ask those questions!