Blessings of a Bigger Body

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Sometimes, traveling alone is like traveling on the moon. I am hyper-aware of what needs to be done to get to where I need to go. It’s as if someone turned up the dial on my brain and heart to feel things deeper, breathe in deeper, and see the world in technicolor. I am walking slower now to soak it in. I’m on a road trip to the east coast to see the leaves change color and to visit a bunch of strange museums. I wrap my scarf close to my neck. I check my phone for directions. It’s the start of a new day in Vermont, and I am ready.

Up ahead, I see a man walking towards me. I am five feet, eight inches, or five foot nine if I don’t hunch. And I am big. I am not a slender birch tree supermodel, I am a wide and thick redwood, deeply rooted and sound. My body has been the same since I was 12. Tall and hunched, too big for my britches, but now at 33, I’m growing into them.

When I travel, I am not nervous like I am in my regular life. I am here now. This is my experience, this is my body, and I am going to get through this. I’m going to navigate the hell out of my trip and see everything I want, eat all of the new snacks I find, and get into my pajamas by 6:00pm.

I walk by a man, a man in my regular life I would have crossed the street to avoid, and we are at eye level. I make direct and fierce eye contact.

I think about if someone were to ever try and kidnap me. Women do this regularly, by the way, think about all the scenarios in which we can get hurt. I would sit down on the road, right in the middle of it, and tell them to try and pick me up. “Just try,” I would say. They would have to see how deep my roots will go. How firmly I am seated. How heavy, strange, and unbothered I am by the prospect of sitting in a road. They would have to dig in their heels and really pull, and I would pull back. Lived experience teaches women to be afraid, but when you’re traveling alone, you convince yourself (however temporarily) that you can move mountains.

The “problem” with being tall, especially growing up, was people thought I was older than I was. Confident and competent. Able to do things. They thought I was the school chaperone when really I was a student. They thought I could handle body criticisms at age 10. Isn’t it obvious, you young pre-teen you, that your height and weight are too large for a dainty, delicate girl? Why aren’t you doing anything about it?

Through my bigness, no one saw my fragility. Through my bigness, it was hard to see my elephant heart thumping rapidly. I started shrinking on the inside to help protect my sensitivity. “I am big,” I wanted to say, “But I need a hug.”

I am big, but I am soft.

I turn a corner and am met with a grocery store. A quaint, small-town corner store with giant fall apples in wooden crates greeted me. Lately, I have been attempting to rise up to the challenge. Meet myself where my bigness resides. Find confidence in places I haven’t looked before, which is to say mainly the mirror.

I look inside the store past my reflection and see an old woman struggling with getting a cereal box on a tall shelf. I walk in and greet her like a red delicious apple.

“Can I help you with that?” The scarf is causing me to sweat, wrapped up past my chin.

“Oh, thank you,” the old woman pauses. She looks me over, up and down. “You are one tall drink of water,” she says as I hand her her grape nuts.

“I am useful too,” I reply. She nods and smiles. My big, warm body glows in the morning sun.