Spotlight

Today, as I explored the feelings around being called 'Fatso' on the subway a year ago, I realized something. That woman made me feel like I was in a spotlight. That spotlight, I had been in before, where all my faults and some imagined ones where laid out before me and everyone else. Where I had no where to run, or hide.
I found everything in me trying to shrink, trying to hide. I was tense, and my stomach was a knot. I was right there in the emotion, and at the same time, part of my consciousness was trying to run, to dissociate from the stress of being there. Everything I did not allow myself to feel then, and everything I hid from them, I felt today.
There was so much physical to that feeling I almost lost the moment in feeling everything in my body.
Counseling is about the hardest thing I have done.... but I am in it with open eyes now. Even though walking into that office is hard, and I come out, with sore muscles, headaches, tired eyes, and tired body, I know that everything I lay down is something I never have to pick up again.

I did it, you know. I want to shake my fist at you. In defiance. The defiance I could not show then, I show you now. You. will. not. defeat. me.