The Center is Me

My feet are not too big for those shoes…the shoes are too small.

It occurred to me the other day that I have spent my life thinking that I was the wrong size, or wrong personality, or wrong whatever it was. It was me that needed to change, shrink, alter, bend, twist, flex. The center was outside of me, and I was supposed to adapt somehow.

Wait a minute! What?

I remember my parents trying to continue buying a certain size shoe for me, as they thought that my feet had grown as much as they should, and how tight those shoes often felt. I remember using band-aids to stop my poor feet from getting bruised or calloused. Now part of that is certainly the design of the shoes. They are designed for the sake of fashion, especially women’s shoes, and we somehow had to learn to adapt and figure out how to make them work. In whose world is a stiletto heel healthy for any foot or posture? And yet we strived to learn how to walk in those things, trying to adapt ourselves to make it work. 

This attitude and pressure to make ourselves fit into things extends to more than shoes… things like our bodies and what sizes we are supposed to fit into. The smaller size is considered better for women. The opposite can be said for men and the width of their shoulders. We have tried to squeeze ourselves into clothing that did not fit properly, even using items (shapewear- as in this is the shape that you are supposed to be) that helped to make us look smaller underneath the clothing so that we could better fit into them. There has been a pattern of trying to change our bodies to get into a certain size, the right size.

Shoes, clothes….and even personalities became the focus for this all. If someone didn’t like part of you, then it was your job to fix that, and to mold yourself, shut yourself down, quiet yourself, to better fit the acceptable mold for what we were supposed to be to please others. 

Here is a radical idea… what if the thing was the wrong size and fit and it wasn’t about us at all? No, my feet are not too big. Those shoes are too small. No, my body is not too big, that dress is too small. 

No, my personality is not too much. Your expectations are too confining and they don’t fit me. I am the center, not the clothing, the shoes, or the expectations and molds that we are supposed to force ourselves into.

Ah, the gifts of aging. Aging can bring the realization that we have the right to finally occupy our bodies and ourselves as they are. It’s a shame that this often happens later in our lives, when our bodies and very souls are finally screaming to be heard for who and what they are, when lumps and bumps from what we tried to squeeze ourselves into now tell us they must be considered. They are part of us and need to be accepted. Perhaps even more than accepted, they/we need to be loved as we are. 

I am righteously angry, not too angry. I am asserting who and what I am, not a bitch. I am entitled to what I want and need and am not too picky. I want to be up front and center with everyone else, not sit quietly in the background. 

I do not need to shrink myself to fit your expectations. You need to change your expectations to fit who and what I am…or leave. Either way, it is not my job to change or bend myself to please anyone else. Enough already. 

What if society’s expectations are the things that need to change and not us? How freeing that would be. We are ok and we don’t need to twist and bend ourselves to fit what doesn’t fit. We need to bring the center back into ourselves. 

If someone doesn’t like that, they can leave, with my blessing, leave and go have a good life, just not be part of mine. I don’t have time for that crap anymore.

 Life is brief, and we need to claim our right-sized space in this world, our size, our space, our very souls, and our right to have things be the right fit for us. Finally.