Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters

If you are, know, or think you might ever meet a girl or young woman, and you haven't already been persuaded to pick up Courtney Martin's new book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, go read Hugo's review of it now. I'll try to post my own thoughts about it when a)I finish the book and b)I'm a little more coherent than I'm feeling right now.

We interrupt this silence...

Recently, I've been noticing that I seem to be a bit thinner than I have been the last couple of years. Or at least I feel thinner. I've also been trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I look to myself as though I'm thinner now than I was in high school, despite the fact that in high school I had a lot more muscle and I now weigh more.

So, a classmate and I are studying for our Hebrew exam by looking at my high school and college photos and talking about people, using lots of pretty object pronouns and everything. Only right now, he's off changing his laundry (something we don't know how to say in Hebrew), and I've just been looking at the pictures.

There's one page with several pictures of me with my high school boyfriend, in various poses and lifts from show choir. I am wearing a t-shirt and shorts. One of these has me hanging down by my legs and hands - and I can see my hip bones.

Yeah. I guess I was pretty thin in high school after all.

I danced!

Tonight, I went back to my old studio and braved the advanced class at my old dance studio. I'm relieved to report that my body still remembers a lot. Mentally, I can still keep up, and physically I'm not even doing all that badly. Am I out of shape? Yes. I'm a little slower, considerably less flexible, and significantly rounder than I was when I stopped dancing. (Although, skinny seems to have gone out of vogue in that studio - I was by no means unusually large for that class, which was both nice and odd.) But my turnout is still as good as my bone structure will allow, I can still pick up combinations about as well as most of the girls (even if it's because I'm paying better attention), and it didn't hurt too much. (I kept going back and forth during barre between wanting to push myself and wanting not to injure myself. Then I pushed my leg a little too high during an arabesque and decided to go for not injuring myself. Hey, I never said I liked being out of shape....) Sadly, the only plain technique class this summer is Tuesdays at 4:15, which is a little tough with work, but I'm told I can come learn choreography for the fall performance and stand in for missing dancers, and there's an adult beginners class, so I should be able to take some classes, anyway. I'm pretty excited about it (can you tell?).

Alleluia

So, I passed the one-year mark of good health a month ago, and didn't really think much of it. Too busy, I guess, plus good physical health has been something I've mostly taken for granted throughout my life.

Tonight, though, I realized something else about the last year - that I've only experienced one or two flashbacks all year, and that the ones I have had have been pretty minor and I've coped with them in really healthy ways - writing, researching, talking, drawing, etc. And I realized that I don't even feel guilty about it, because it's not because I've really thought any less about Emily. I guess I've just felt safe enough this year to process not only the event, but the associated grief. I've been able to do things this year that I imagine more successful therapy experiences might have helped me to do before.

So tonight, I'm thankful - and I'm celebrating a little. I'm celebrating the fact that I'm starting to be able to remember Emily with less pain and guilt. I'm celebrating the fact that I can recognize and assess more of the pain and guilt that is there. I'm celebrating the fact that I have friends who are willing to hear about both the pain and the healing. I'm celebrating the realization that there's actual healing happening here and not just repression.

Thanks be to God - alleluia, alleluia.