Stomach Rules

My stomach is the guttiest, flabbiest, most stomach-est stomach there is.

I have hated my stomach with the heat of a thousand suns for as long as I can remember, for as long as I have had a stomach.

I send a weekly newsletter about writing, creativity, and the noise in our heads that tells us we're not enough. This week it was about my stomach.

I remember standing in front of the hall mirror in my house as a teenager, turning sideways and sucking it in, watching it not move, no matter how I stood, no matter what shirt I wore, no matter how dim the lighting. It was still there, stomaching, ruining everything.

The rules that came with my stomach were printed as clearly as a Mattel toy with "batteries not included" on the side of the box. They said things like "jean waistlines will garrote you in half for the rest of your life," and "hope you enjoy one-piece bathing suits," and "you better be funny, because hot is off the table." No one read me these rules; they were shouted at me like background voices in my brain and ran on a continuous loop, and, like my stomach, were eternal to me. This was the noise that came with the stomach.

And then my son was born, and he hit the ground running. I don't mean that metaphorically.

I mean that from the moment he was able, he had vast distances to go, heights to climb, and bugs to eat. He was not an observation deck child; he was a "this is why we make people wear safety goggles now" child. He darted into traffic first and asked questions later. And the noise around him became things like "don't contain his enthusiasm," and "encourage his creativity," and "don't let your fear become his fear." And so I let these voices convince me that I had to run alongside my son and facilitate his adventurous spirit because it was good for him.

But really, it was me. I was afraid that I had waited too long to become a mother. I was afraid that he would be an only child and therefore a lonely one. I was afraid I would fail, had already failed. And so I overcompensated. I climbed up the bouncy castle with him on my shoulders, and I squeezed us both into the McDonald's playroom slide. I pushed myself beyond the brink of my own panic because the noise in my head convinced me I needed to do that. And I was happy to do it, for us, happy to listen to the noise, and live around it. Happy to overcompensate, run after my little man until I was wheezing, and wear big shirts to cover my stomach.

The problem was that my son refused to hate it. My stomach.

From the time he was a baby, he loved it. Reached for it. Snuggled it when he was tired or overwhelmed. Propped his head on it when he had a stuffy nose and was too young for medicine. When he was just tall enough to reach my thighs, he would slide his head under my shirt in public to grab some alone time.

He was not embarrassed about it. He had no noise in his head about my stomach being the worst stomach to ever stomach; he had not gotten the memo that it should be hidden in shame. To him, it was the warmest, safest place in the world, which I attribute to its complete lack of muscle tone. In any event, it was his happy place. How could I reconcile the deep self-hatred and burning rage I felt every time I thought of my stomach with the smiling face of my beautiful son sleepily looking up at me with his cheek resting on my skin, his arms wrapped around my waist, standing in line at Marshalls?

Let's take a wonder about this, because someone is lying. Obviously, it's my son, right?

The noise we carry in our bodies, about our worth, our enough-ness, our beauty, about the truth of it all, goes on as long as we let it. A child, before they are told what noise is the right noise, just goes with what feels real.

My son loved my stomach. Could the noise have been wrong? And if it's wrong about that, could it have been wrong about my mom-ing? Was I good enough all along? Could I have gotten away without going down the McDonald's slide? Because I'm still in trauma therapy for that.

Writing slows us down just long enough to see where we start and the noise ends. So we can write above it.

Because maybe the noise doesn't know everything.