Snickerdoodles

I made thirty cookies this morning. I just woke up, found a recipe on Sally's Baking Addiction for snickerdoodles, and started throwing flour and sugar in a large bowl. It means nothing, but there is a version of me, six years younger, wondering how I've made it here. Rest, she tells me, and so I do -- I may never be productive in my father's house, but I may never hide myself in the bathroom to cry again, either. It is recovery like I've never imagined; monthly photo dumps on social media, learning to min (effort) & max (reward) while my friends waltz in and out, pretending to film a podcast while eating an acai bowl I didn't pay for. A boy tells me I'm happier now, that I seem freer, while making me roasted potatoes in his tiny apartment. He notices everything, from the looks I give him when I need rescuing from an awkward conversation to the seriousness with which I treat my job, so it somehow feels truer that he says it, even if I've felt it for months now. 

I wrote once, there are so many ghosts here and none anywhere else. I don't feel haunted anymore, though. Coming home feels like watching Selling Sunset with my darling sister, in pajamas I can't wear anywhere else. It feels like my father swirling plates of food in front of me all day, offering to cut my grapes in half because he doesn't want me choking. (Yes, I am twenty.) There is less I'm desperate to change -- maybe I am split across three cities, and everything I love will someday be gone. Perhaps there is a metaphor in these jokes, in the way I'm accused of being too much of a people pleaser while making cookies I don't even want to eat. If only I had the bandwidth to dissect my beloved life, but instead I think I'll listen to Justin Bieber while the sun sets aggressively early. I want to hate myself like I used to -- in some ways, it made me better -- but perhaps being old is simply getting tired, so I think instead I should watch Freakier Friday while my father prays as he has done every night of my entire life. 

What I am trying to say, poorly, is that I'm grateful, this Thanksgiving, for these legs, which let me stand on business. Which look good in one specific cut of wide-legged jeans, so now that is all I own. Which let me train for a marathon I'm not sure I'm capable of completing, but will continue talking about for the next six months regardless. It's a cry for attention, I'm sure. But I've decided that this is what life is about-- to feel it, not understand it. Medal around my neck in May or not, these legs are teaching me, slowly that for as long as I am alive, I can begin again. And again. And again. And again. And I don't need to find meaning in only the magnificent and the Leviathan -- these legs are worthy enough. This braid in my hair is good enough. I wake up terrified I've thought my last good thought. If that's the case, it was good enough. I used to stare at myself in the mirror for hours, and my sister would slap me on the wrist, aghast at my arrogance. I'm now not sure when I stopped doing that, though, or why. This is the face of a girl who is so, so loved. This is the smile of a child finding herself, slowly, messily, erroneously, while running a marathon she can't complete, but surely. All I was ever doing in that mirror was saying, Look, Mama, this face has worth that is not my beauty. This body has value that is not my paycheck. Won't you stare at it with me?