A soft, fumbling body

Being new, being not good, being human

It’s after midnight in Florence - the only time the city is truly empty - and I’m walking back from a dinner alone, the late November wind swirling around me and the statues that haunt the city. I had two Negronis and a glass of wine at dinner, the second Negroni placed in front of me with a wink by the sort of Italian “career waiter” that you have most likely encountered if you’ve ever been to a true restaurant (not an Instagram installation). A gift for you, he said, and we both laughed. It was my second time there, having fallen in love with a simple dish of pasta and prawns in a light, fishy, citrusy sauce garnished with chopped pistachios.

You must really love food, he had said to me when he brought my plate and saw the look on my face. If it was any other time, I think that comment might have crushed me. A woman who has spent more years fighting with her body than doing anything else. But I took it as a compliment and I smiled brightly at him. Yes, I really do. I think that’s what earned me the second Negroni.

That week in Florence was almost a year ago now. I had gone to Dublin to see about a library and was supposed to return home after a few days but I decided to run away to Italy instead, snaking my way from Rome to Florence and eventually to Venice before spending thanksgiving in Paris. It was exactly the diversion I needed at the time, a couple of weeks shy of another birthday and swimming in the familiar existential waters. Just a few days before that night in the restaurant, I sat down at a bench in a park and wrote down my annual birthday list. Instead of new year’s resolutions, I write birthday lists - memories I want to keep from the dying year and things I hope for in the coming year. It was the first time that list didn’t include anything about making my body smaller, neither a lament or a goal.

Instead, I wrote down hopes and goals that would make my future self feel grateful that I was looking out for me. I decided, practically, that I would just let my body live in peace. Because it’s not so bad. It gets me through life. I think it’s on my side, and it’s time I got on its side, too.

So I replaced lose weight with do at least four new things this year. My corporate-formed brain thinks of a year in four quarters so I figured it would be at least one new thing per quarter. And here we are in the fourth quarter, just over a month shy of my next birthday, and I’m supposed to be learning Tango. I signed up for four classes while in Switzerland this August, buoyed by an evening spent walking peacefully, blissfully alone by the most beautiful lake I’d ever seen.

Back here in the real world, the days finally culminated into the first day of class. And I did go. I summoned up every ounce of courage in me and I got myself there in small intervals. Can I walk outside and to the bus stop? Can I get on the bus? Can I get off the bus? And so on I went until finally I walked inside and put down my bag and embraced the faint smell of human bodies that have been working in movement. The instructor was as chipper as expected but I didn’t hold it against her, and my partner was a kind and enthusiastic man who told me he was reconnecting with his love of dance because it was the last time he was ever truly happy. I stepped on his toes a lot. Eventually I stopped apologizing and just let it be what it is.

After that first lesson, I never went back for my remaining three classes. The shame of combining my soft, fumbling body with the humiliation of being new at something was just too much for my anxious little brain. After missing the second class, I called my instructor to tell her that something came up and I wouldn’t be able to continue. I understand, she said, it’s very hard to be new at something.

It’s very hard to be new at something. I had been found out, exposed. But that’s essentially it. That’s been the quarterly exercise of this year; small, low-stakes exposure therapy for being new and not good at something. I don’t have it all figured out but I can tell you that some of my most thrilling days were ones when I was doing something new and realizing I don’t know anything about this, so I don’t have to carry the weight of being good at it (or doing it right, whatever that means). I can’t draw to save my life, but now I love doing it. I dabbled in calligraphy and found it too fussy and pointless so my handwriting will remained chaotic, true to me. I took a short online course in video editing and learned that there’s a new medium of storytelling that I actually like and can explore. I am absolutely terrible at all of these things but I am learning how to detangle my worth from how good I can be at something. In so doing, I am learning that for bigger things in life, the scary changes, perhaps I don’t have to come all prepared and ready to do it all perfectly. Maybe there is no such thing.

As for tango, we’ll just put it under tried it and failed. And that is okay.

Thank you for being here, and for reading this silly essay when I’m sure there are much heavier things on your mind. On all our minds. I am so sorry for where we are as humans. I hope you can be still. I hope you can be with people who make room for your humanity.

Something(s) to read

An Unnamed Letter

My friend Sara wrote an honest, vulnerable essay about something that I’m sure most people can recognize. It’s about many things, but it’s essentially about that moment of trepidation when you’re presenting your different self to someone new and you don’t know how they might react to you. My place in the world is very different from hers, but I found truth in the essay and it was a reminder of something that Maya Angelou said perfectly in Human Family: we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike. Read Sara’s essay here.

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad

It’s 1914, the start of the first world war, and Midhat Kamal is sailing to Europe for university. This hero’s journey takes our protagonist to various places - physically and psychologically - while the war rages on. Eventually, he returns home to British-occupied Palestine. It’s a deeply touching story of one person’s life as it unfolds in the midst of the horrors of war, occupation, love, hope, anger and much more.

Poems from Palestine

A couple of years ago, The Baffler published a series of poems from Palestine. Maybe it is because I beleive the written word to be sacred, or maybe it’s because much of the discourse on social media makes me want to run for the hills, but I have found myself going back to these poems often.

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Take good care,

Lidiya