animalia

so. i'm trying to loose weight for this wedding. or, actually, my mother tells me i need to loose weight so i am just to keep her from breathing down my neck. i'm beginning to think that this wedding has become a convenient excuse for my mother to make me feel entirely miserable. first she tells me i need to learn how to dance. now she tells me i have to loose weight. what will happen once the wedding is over?

i suppose its good for me, but if you knew my mother, you would be hard-pressed to admit it yourself. what with her exaggerations: "you'd better loose that weight or else we'll have to rip the seams of that dress and add fabric just so that it will fit around you..." she makes me hate myself.

aside from the self-loathing, there is the, um, health issue. i haven't had an asthma attack in the longest time. but even though its easy to disregard now, it will never be easy to forget--all throughout my childhood i wasn't allowed to do normal things. i wasn't allowed to have a dog or cat, i wasn't allowed to run around, i wasn't allowed to go to a lot of outdoor things because asthma can be triggered by an enormous amount of stuff. i had to nebulize often and once i got really sick during a trip to New York and New Jersey over Christmas. but the doctor said i would outgrow it and i clung to this small bit of hope.

as i got older in grade school, i could feel myself growing out of it. i played hardcore basketball from fifth grade up to seventh and i could participate in the annual jogathon. during P.E. i wouldn't sit out the class anymore. i had a best friend--she had no asthma and she had no shame, and while we ran laps in P.E. i did everything i could to keep up.

i think the last time i was really sick with asthma was...junior year of highschool. i was coughing a lot, so much that i couldn't breathe, couldn't sleep. in the end, my mother brought up one of the beach recliners and i had to sleep on that, with my back elevated. but this wasn't comfortable for me and i slept little. i tried returning to my bed early in the morning, but i started coughing all over again. if you've ever had asthma, you'll understand me when i say that i was completely miserable.

now i am 19. and as i jogged with my father this evening, i felt that familiar burning in the lungs, the tightness. i stopped running after two rounds and felt the constriction in my chest--a thing i haven't felt in the longest time. i coughed once, twice and that was it for me. i walked the remaining 6 rounds.

sometimes i feel like i'm falling apart. i got my asthma from my father. coupled with the asthma is eczema which has marred my hands for the past 16 years. i inherited hypoglycemia from my mother. of course, i didn't know this until i collapsed in the bathtub one day. that's the closest i've ever come to fainting.

i suppose i'm writing this just to prove that you don't need to have a good reason for doing something. a lot of joy comes from doing something you know you can do. and while it gives people more happiness to do things they thought they could never do, there is always that steadfast, reliable happiness of running three miles because you can, or sleeping in a beach chair because you want to and not because you have to. i cannot run three miles, but i can read of places farther than that. i can't race a car, but i can drive aimlessly if i needed to. i have my imagination, i have my dreams and some say that these will take you farther in life than anything else. i might not be strong like my mother, but they say i'm a slippery fish and i guess that's something in itself.

i suppose for every shortcoming there is a talent.