I used to look flimsy. They called me skinny. I’m often interrupted, spoken over. Like a spider web, delicate yet industrious, strong, present, resilient, beautiful. Wounded, at times. Healed quickly again and again.
Am I still that web?
I certainly have more presence now. That is weight. Pounds, Libras, kilos. A few. I’m rounder. A tad voluptuous. I like it is what I say but really, a little thinner is what’s accepted, what fits, what looks good.
And that gentle voice that others like to interject, distrust, interrupt. It’s loud, determined, clear. Articulate is what the caseworker who responded so quickly to my call said to me. She came over fast. I’m often thankful that I have a voice and that I can organize my thoughts and arguments in cohesive ways. I wonder what other mothers going through my struggle and who don’t know how to do this, do. And yet me is all I truly know. My perception of anyone’s ideas, thoughts, ways of doing things is seen through that lens of mine. Bounced within the crevices of my memories and experiences. Affected by the things I’ve touched, smelled. Contained by the fractures of my bones and the wounds of my heart. Directed by the fears passed onto my cells by my mother’s protective spirit. That which I now stand up to and argue.
I am that web, swinging in the wind. Translucent, penetrable, capturing. Hmmm, not my prey but the gifts that life has to offer me even disguised in the most atrocious ways. But I’m thankful every moment for all of it. I’m me and thankful to be me.
And frustrated at how much thanks I have to give and how my web keeps me busy stitching, mending, lifting, hanging, that I don’t get to that, it seems.
I Am a Web is a Literary Self Portrait that I then turned into an Inhabitable Drawing. Both sketches, AS IS.
2019 Marshall, NC – Installation
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Portraits of me by my daughter Sophia