Oops.

Hours after I uploaded my last post, I saw my nurse practitioner (NP), the only medical appointment I’d had since the beginning of the pandemic (excluding vaccine shots), and learned that I’d lost, not gained, weight–twenty to thirty pounds.

Given this sizable amount, how could I have been so wrong?

It turns out there are quite a few answers:

1.  I don’t let a scale into my house–nothing to motivate dieting and consequent self-loathing. Past increases and decreases in my weight have always been accidental. However, I’d never before assumed I’d gain weight when I’d actually lost it.
2. My height shrank along with the pounds, so maybe my BMI remained the same. After calculating it, my NP declared me “overweight.” Before, when I weighed more and stood taller, I was “obese.” BMI is not the culprit.
3. My NP told me that weight loss, especially when rapid, can lead to newly hollowed body parts sagging. And these days, more than just my belly sags.
4. My NP also explained that menopause changes a woman’s body. Weight gain moves down to her belly. I’m menopausal, and my belly, when lined up with the rest of me, bulges and sags more than it once did.
5. Finally, despite a minor in Women’s Studies and fifty-two years of resistance, I still internalize sexism and fat shame. How could I not in our society? Any change in my body, unless it tightens, feels ugly to me.

No doubt, a combination of these answers explains my mistake. Despite whichever may be the cause, these two things from my last post do not change:

1. My belly sags farther down on my right hip than on my left, even folding over itself. I learned from my NP that I have “moderate scoliosis,” an abnormal curve in my spine that explains how gravity pulls my belly to the right.
2. My belly defies fibromyalgia. When settled before the TV, my partner still slides his fingers across my belly and between its folds. No pain. None at all.

Given what this update does and doesn’t change, I’ll finish this post the same as the previous one: my belly equals freedom: freedom from pain, locus of love.

Fibromyalgia has turned my body into a battlefield. Taps poke. Caresses chafe. And it gets worse as the day progresses. The more I use my legs, feet, arms, and hands, the harder the poking and chafing. Once I make it home, I surrender my brain to the TV. Only its mind-numbing effect distances me from the pain.

My partner often joins me in my mind-numbing endeavor. He’ll sit to the left of me on the couch. After the TV has sufficiently dulled our minds, or at least mine, he’ll slip his hand under my shirt, dress, or sleepshirt. It doesn’t matter which as long as he makes it to my belly. There he’ll glide his fingers back and forth across my belly’s expanse. Back and forth as long as I’ll let him.

My belly has grown over the course of the pandemic, but it actually started to before. Two of my brain’s medications cause weight gain by keeping me from feeling full when eating. Also, I have been menopausal for at least two years and have, as a result, lost two and a half inches in height without losing any weight. Add to that the pandemic, which has eliminated my only form of exercise (walking to and from bus stops), and my belly now sags. It even folds over on itself at my right hip. When I shower, I have to lift it up in order to clean whatever is wedged underneath.

I can’t tolerate my partner’s belly exploring indefinitely. My need to hide its girth will eventually overtake his need to touch it. I’ll push his fingers away, gently. He’ll wait and advance his fingers across my belly, again. Then I’ll wait and force him to retreat, again. Over and over until I articulate my demand: no more belly.

A year ago, he went too far.

His fingers made it all the way across my tummy to my right hip. Once he arrived, he wedged them in between the two layers of belly rolled on top of one another. It didn’t feel gentle to me. It felt more like he’d crossed over a battle line and shoved in a flag.

“How can you do that?” I barked. “Do you want me to feel fat?”

He turned away, eyes down. “It’s the only place I can touch you that doesn’t hurt.”

Now I turned away, eyes also down. He was right. My fibromyalgia refuses to let him touch me most anywhere else for any duration. Too much pain. But my belly, my big, fat belly defies it. There my partner can touch me freely, easily, even absentmindedly. It stimulates no pain. Only my shame can stop him.

So I’m trying to surrender my belly to his fingers, to celebrate its fibromyalgia-lessness. I’m not always able to do so, but at least now I know what my belly is: freedom from pain, locus of love.