06 -- What it Feels Like for a Girl

‘If only I could be as slim,’ she says out loud while measuring my body with her eyes approvingly. The last time I was measured aloud like that by a fellow woman was when my mother took a look at my belly and called me fat.

‘Maybe in another life,’ I retort with light encouragement, all while looking at the woman’s hat, longer hair and many things of textile origin she is carrying while crossing my path diagonally, like a passerby in a movie. Her looks signal safe for me to say that.

‘No, in this one,’ she remains somehow categorical yet not strict, no guilt is being pushed toward me. We part ways amicably, mentally tipping our hats to each other — her hands are busy and I wear a bandana.

The part that aches the most when it’s pushed like a button again and again with no safety grid around it, is dismissal. Dismissed by your own people hurts the most. Invisibility of your own presence — you can feel it physically.

Mercury retrograde in Cancer had us revisiting old rooms inside ourselves just to find out we do not live there anymore. That address is not mine anymore, and I listen to me now.

What It Feels Like for a Girl (2000), Madonna