Drink me.

I'm going to get a bit personal here, for a moment, and talk about things that I normally keep to myself. 

At 5'8", I'm of fairly average height for a woman. I'm not particularly tall. At a 150 pounds and a dress size eight, I'm really quite average all around. 

I've never felt like it, though. I've always felt like this: 

Maybe it comes from the fact that I was told by doctors that I would likely grow up to be over 6' tall, and I began intentionally stunting my growth for fear of that when I was just a little girl. Maybe it's the fact that I was taller than my mother by the time that I was ten, and that I reached my current height before I entered middle school. Maybe it's the fact that one of my childhood best friends was so tiny that in third grade, our teacher couldn't see her over the desk and thought that she was absent on the first day. Maybe it was that I grew up in a small house with low ceilings and tiny rooms that gave me a sense of claustrophobia. Whatever it is, I never, ever wanted to grow. I always felt that I was too big. 

I've done various things to make myself seem smaller-- I wear lots of vertical stripes and clothing which is cropped in a way that shortens a person, I choose prints and patterns which are cute, dainty and diminutive, I slouch as much as I can possibly get away with (which I was doing fairly well for myself with, I felt, until Malignus decided that I needed to improve my posture) and I'm never seen wearing heels. I did bring a pair with me to TASSP, and it was the first time that I wore heels in as long as I can remember, certainly at least a year. 

There was one thing which I always took comfort in, sort of an adage that I'd come to love: "All girls are the same height when they're over a lap." I really, truly believed in this, and it did wonders for me. While being spanked OTK, no matter by whom, I felt truly small. I don't mean that I felt "little" or that I felt "young." I felt like a small thing, and it was an absolutely beautiful feeling. 

Recently, I was talking to one of my Tops about these feelings, and about how badly I wanted to have a smaller body, and I said "At least I can take comfort in the fact that when I'm over your lap, you can't tell!" 

"Well, you know that's not actually, true, right Alex?" he asked. I shook my head. I thoroughly believed that it was true. "I can still tell how far you stretch out to, and your center of gravity is still in the wrong place." 

I never believed in Santa, or in the Easter Bunny, or any of that stuff, and I originally didn't believe in God, then forced myself to, so when I stopped believing, it wasn't painful. As a result, this was the first time in my life that I really experienced having something which had previously been rather sacred to me taken away. 

You're sure? I'm still too big? 

I still haven't recovered from it, entirely. It never mattered to me what my size was compared to the person spanking me, but suddenly, it's become something which is on my mind. 

I know I'll get over it. I know I'll let go and stop worrying and let myself feel safe and good while being spanked. I'm just still a little heart broken. 

The day that I had that conversation, I called my doctor friend and my scientist friend and asked them if there was a way that I could be shrunk. When they promised me that there was no safe way, I started doing research on my own, JUST IN CASE. 

I know that I'm just going to have to find a way to accept myself. 

For a while now, I've been dating a boy here in Sioux Falls. He's clever and funny, he gets my sense of humor, and on our first date, we spent most of the time discussing Hume's empiricism. He's also 6'5" and extremely strong because he does physical work. For the first time since I was a teenager, I felt small beside him. I could put my hand up to his and feel like I had little, tiny fingers. He could pull me down with the tiniest of efforts on his part. We were just "getting there" romantically, but I had high hopes for it. See, I don't need all of my relationships to satisfy every part of me. That would be very against the point of Polyamory for me. I was hoping that if I had, for the first time since I was a girl, someone who made me feel small sometimes around, then I would get over the complex that I'm big in general. I imagined that having someone who made me feel small would make it so that I never felt "too big." I thought that it would make me alright with my body.

Sorry, not happening!

Anyway, it doesn't matter what I imagined might happen, because he met someone with whom he wants to have a monogamous relationship, so we won't be seeing each other anymore. 

I realized tonight, that this may actually be a good thing. There are no "drink me" bottles floating around, and I'm stuck with myself for the rest of my life. The truth of the matter is, I don't need someone else to make me feel good about myself. I have to rock what I've got and be truly confident in myself in order to be happy and successful. The way that I look or appear to others or seem next to them shouldn't influence the way that I feel. 

The truth of the matter is that I'm the only one who thinks that I'm so large that I take up the entire room and I've got my head on the ceiling, but as long as I'm seeing myself this way and acting like that, people *are* going to see that I'm not fully comfortable with myself. 

So, I'm going to be alright with myself, no matter where my center of gravity is. 

I'm not going to surround myself with environments that make me feel better about myself. I'm going to feel okay with myself.

I'm not entirely sure *how* I'm going to get there, but I know that I will, because I am nothing if not determined.