Trapped In My Chrysalis

Trapped In My Chrysalis - July 1996

I am at my soul's window behind the shaded curtains of cautious tribulation. I stay safely encased within my rotund frame protected against the eyes of men. I somehow traded sensuality for personality.
I figure if I can make them laugh than I am not dependent upon my body to impress. Thus, I have long since lost the battle to set my own standards of beauty and embrace my specific femaleness. I have let myself be measured by the likes and dislikes of Vogue magazines, commercials on television or the bodies of women twenty years my junior.

I was thin as a child and through young womanhood. I was a lifeguard for the very beaches I now avoid. Subconsciously, the origin of the weight is based in fear; fear of sexual expectation. Nothing could have prepared me for the startling irony I was to discover. My largeness has rendered me invisible. Within this invisibility I find great freedom. If a man is walking in my direction, I can look him full in the face without being afraid of him looking me in the eye, of him seeing me.

However, there are those warm balmy evenings when I want to be seen, admired....taken. I tell myself that my exaggerated curves are voluptuous and that Rembrandt would have admired every ominous arch of my body. But most times, I feel not as a woman but a caricature of a woman.
I admire those that have consistency of self-image as I try to unearth the Goddess that dwells inside me.

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