The Fool

CW: trauma survivors, proceed with care

My baby-bones never fused. The pulsing fontanelle is a beacon for knowing eyes. These extra bones don’t feel out of place, but it’s important to the world that I merge them. Look closely, and you’ll see kintsugi threads glittering on my arms and legs. I can see where I’m supposed to fit better. 

It calls to mind how my scoliosis brace pushed hard against the yearning bones of my tween body, insistent on a shape that would work better for everyone around me. I yelled my displeasure, but folks weren’t listening to child protesters back then. I was so young. I didn’t yet understand how we gain acceptance in the world. 

I was starting to glimpse what life was like in the body of a woman, but my eyes were still dewy from childhood. My breasts made my entire immediate family uncomfortable in different ways. I lurched between hiding from my brother’s shaming gaze and straining my shoulders back to please my posture-obsessed mother. My father remained resolutely without comment, as he did on most things.

I didn’t understand at first how riotous my girl-body was. One night I wore just my plain white sports bra and soft purple cotton shorts to do the dinner dishes. Sweat pooled on my upper lip as I hunched over the sink, lemon Joy bubbles piled high and the dishes stacked higher. There was no such thing as air-conditioning in my world.

My brother burst into the kitchen and drew up short at the sight of me. He rushed to tell our mother that I should cover up. My mother told me to go put a shirt on. 

I was eleven.

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There was so much focus on standardized testing when I was growing up in the 90’s. Compliance meant survival in my world, so I got good at filling in those bubbles so very evenly, not a single smudge out of place to confuse the scoring machine.

I cared less about whether the answers were correct. The results never made a difference in my day-to-day, and doing well never improved my life. But every time Test Day rolled around, I sat and stared obediently at my teacher as they pleaded with my classmates and me to fill in those circles just as neatly as we could.

I was so good at filling in bubbles, but I drew a blank when it came to finding my place in the circle. What I could have used more than top-notch percentile rankings was for someone to sit me down and explain in concrete terms why adults and other kids alike always seemed so upset with me. 

Over time, I observed that the more comfortable I felt in my own skin, the harsher the letdown would be when the criticism and correction inevitably came. When a mask is often required, and it hurts to remove, it eventually becomes easier to just leave it on all the time, even if it’s not that comfortable and it’s designed only for occasional wear. 

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I’ve spent so many years hypervigilant, casing the joint. I don’t want to go anywhere new right now. I want to rest in routine. I want to identify and align with the pace of my own body. For a while at least, I want to know my surroundings with my eyes closed.

Over time, I want ways to be set in that aren’t wearing me into a deeper and deeper rut, but are lovingly spiraling my existence toward the world around me. Like tracks in a zen garden, my dreamed-for ways are undisturbed, not ossified.

I want ways that come from exploring every path in the forest and understanding in my veins which ones bring me to the hearth and which ones lead to hell. 

But the Fool doesn’t have any of that. Not yet. The Fool doesn’t even have her 30-day chip. She’s running on beginner time. Beginner time is a teen romance, rose-colored and not-the-whole-truth. It’s three dots before the crush texts back.

The Fool doesn’t promise that my experience will be easy, linear, or even something I want, but it does promise that something new is coming, and that I will have at least one little sidekick to witness me.

Some of my helpful companions might run right up to me, while others might only be a lone bark echoing off a cliffside, a voice I never see but who saves me from the edge nonetheless.

The Fool has big ADHD energy. She’s all about starting projects. That’s the whole point of her. The Fool is what happens when the World gets tired of reveling in its luscious completion.

Different sometimes means discomfort, so The Fool wears athleisure of the comfiest order, and she brings snacks and entertainment for the road. The Fool reminds me that accommodating my disabilities in a realistic way makes exploration more enjoyable.

Discovering my full humanity is awkward even in the very best of circumstances. That’s something to commemorate. That’s something that’s ok to do out in the world for everyone to see. I’m walking the walk, as much as I wish I didn’t have to. I had a major breakthrough in my thinking in a public library while writing this very essay. 

Normally I like to hide myself away like an injured cat when the big feelings come. But this time, I stubbornly planted myself in the hard wooden study room chair. I breathed deeply into my sit bones. I stared up at the tall, sturdy white pillars outlining the library mezzanine.

With shaking hands I claimed permission to feel everything. I sat and box-breathed like a Navy SEAL until I started to wonder if maybe…no feeling can ever really break me apart after all?

As I felt the air move in and out, I peeked from under the brim of my sky-blue baseball cap with the sassy-yet-functional ponytail hole in the back. I noticed that no one was looking back at me. No one could tell that I was having a big feeling. No one was telling me to go away.

I breathed until I began to understand that every new thing I try doesn’t have to be a success. What matters is trying all sorts of interesting things so I can have the best chance of experiencing my version of joy and fulfillment.

Openness and curiosity are sharp knives. They keep on slitting through my peeling wallpaper to reveal secret doorways and windows that someone covered over years ago. There are so many small magics in the world waiting to be stumbled upon. The Fool invites me to gather them into my hands.