Eight months ago, when I lived in the sleepy Welsh village of Fishguard, I wrote this rather impromptu diatribe of ridiculousness after a run through the woods. It seemed like a fitting marker for just how small my life had gotten and the fact that my mental health was hanging by a thread. It got my creative juices flowing when writing seemed too heavy.
Sometimes writing about the mundane, helps open a window in one’s noggin and bring fresh air in. Sometimes you just need to laugh at yourself and write all the stupidity out of you. Simply because levity is good for the soul. This is your permission slip to write. To Laugh. To write some more and laugh again. Do it. Do it now! (Or go for a run).
“Run. Because zombies will eat the untrained ones first.” – From the Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide
Recently, I got a package of energy from the universe *God seriously, where’ve you been hiding the good stuff!?* (for the spoonies out there, it was just over a teaspoon added to my regular spoons of energy, so I decided to go for a wee slow jog through the woods to see if it was possible for my rehabilitation and to gear up for the ever impending zombie apocalypse (that we all know is going to happen). By jog, I don’t mean jog like you know jog, I mean something far slower, possibly a slinky moonwalk or meandering crawl.
I’d gotten some super cool matt black ‘iets frans’ leggings (all the hype at Urban Outfitters). After several cheap ones proving to be the emperor’s new clothes, with the staying power of a gnat and showing off the entirety of stripey big-girl pants to forest dwellers and dog walkers. I decided to splurge on ones that boasted the power to ‘Slay all day in super grippy waistband’.
Now given that my jogging is snail pace, since within 2.3 seconds of any speed, my heart ejects out of the top of my head, whilst my body threatens to collapse into a bush and send my spirit to the light, I wasn’t expecting much. I set off, and for the shortest time, I had a sense of elation re. moving slowly through the woods in spandex. “Oh, this is rather pleasant and do-able”, big grin on face.. “Well done me.” Feeling very proud of my purchase and the energy it took to get leggings on thighs the size of tree trunks.
Until, Shite! The leggings gave out, they lasted seven seconds, then headed south at lightning speed. There I was thinking ‘I can’t stop now or I may never get the engine running again!’ So I carried on, big girl pants now slipping down butt crack headed for the core of the Earth, legwear shimmying away, at risk of flashing an eager shiatzu and a little old lady in a motorised scooter. I was mentally egging myself on, like “It doesn’t matter if they get to your thighs, run girl run! Like a mild breeze!”
I was gripping the sides of my hips while swearing loudly at the Christ our lord, *Sorry my good Sir! My bad!* pausing for intervals to hulk up the sides of ridiculous leggings. Lift up my top, reach my arms underneath and yank up the waistband as far as it would go, leaping into a jump, administering wedgie (thrill for the day). Hoping to the god of leggings that I might get a break to do a three-minute slow manoeuvre through the Welsh countryside.
The whole three minutes was spent hauling up my failing leg wear, stomping, swearing loudly and cackling manically at my ridiculous garments whilst thinking of a Ross Noble sketch and trying not to pee myself. Not only were my leggings going, but my sports bra and top were slipping off my shoulders too, despite their best efforts to hold up my bangers. I didn’t understand why my skin was so ultra silky today? Was I melting? evaporating in the wind? was I even ALIVE!?!
Was I a phantom trying to wear clothes?, a wailing banshee terrorising the squirrels in cameo sports bra!? I didn’t know anymore. Nothing was working. I was like some kind of leggings troll, strolling through the forest, haulking, romping, and thundering. My ADHD was on hyperdrive.
I was so angry at ‘iets frans’ for failing me like all the rest, but determined to make better future choices, I started reciting the ‘Brownie’s pledge’ (that my inner child had immortalised to memory) to a nearby bush. “I promise I will do my best to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, (to banish leggings, and adopt shorts) to serve King and my community, to help others, and to keep the brownie guide law!”
My knickers were now lingering in my left sketcher somewhere feeling pitiful that they too have disappointed my gigantic arse. I noted to self to buy new undies and started thinking all the ways I could keep the leggings up; from hairspray to wig glue, to the more severe form of staple gun and barbed wire.
I started spinning into a scene of envisioning hot leggings girls at the gym all pert and toned with their peach coloured matt bottoms ruched into impressive form, whilst I died of embarrassment with my leggings at my ankles attempting to hide my lady parts with a rusty kettle bell.
Back to reality; I tried as hard as I could to make it work. I tried gripping the top of the waistband and swivelling it around my waist with my elbows out, side to side like a 50’s kid doing the olde ‘Gee Wizz’, telling it to behave, tucking a bit of my top into it, then all of my top, pulling knickers from realm of trainer and up over tucked in top, slow jogging even slower in tiny steps, marching like a Nazi soldier with both my palms pressed firmly into my hips. I must have looked utterly demented. I didn’t care what I looked like at that point, I just needed to get the shipwreck (aka body) moving!
Then just as things were getting interesting, but still not workable, I discovered I’d been in slight agony the whole time, not the usual agony, this was something sharp and poking. Was I being stung by a bee? A nettle? Did I have a piece of twig in my leggings? My mind couldn’t grasp what was occurring until my hands found a pair of scissors. Yes! All that time I’d been running with a tiny pair of nail scissors (from a Christmas cracker) lost in the realm of spandex, (or whatever the feck iets frans leggings are made of).
I can’t for the life of me figure out how I didn’t feel it, I must have had a stroke whilst trolling it up and down the path (I was putting my best effort in to look ridiculous simply because I was determined to show the leggings who’s boss!)
At one time a female runner came upon me, as I tried to act cool and runnerly like, ‘Hi, lovely day!’ I said, turning arse to fence, hiding the fact that my enormous derriere was protruding from the waistband of my appalling Dutch leggings and also slightly crossing my legs, now realising I had a full bladder, with piss rising in my eyes. How did it get this bad? In life, I mean? That even with a butt the size of a small continent, I can’t keep it in anything reasonable; jeans, trousers, knickers, leggings. I’ve been trying all my life and failing miserably.
Mind you, some women inject extra fat into their hips and butt to make it even bigger; it’s called a ‘Brazilian butt-lift’. Personally, I think if you have to move fat around the body to appease your body dysmorphia aka mental illness, you need to get your priorities straight. I mustn’t want to train my glutes at a gym once my health’s recovered, for fear of never being able to wear trousers again!
I just don’t understand how to keep leggings on. I’ve looked high and low for one’s that stay, but it’s a losing battle. They are perhaps the most irritating thing a girl can own. I don’t know how all the chav’s do it. Womping around, dragging their knuckles and screaming toddlers, in see-through Primark leggings that have loose elastics sprouting from the crotch like wanton white pubes.
Leggings and tights should be pulverised and burned along with ALL bra’s, and dare I say it all the useless sports bra’s that couldn’t keep a tennis ball in place! I make myself sound voluptuous, like Mrs Doubtfire in tights, but honestly, I’m moderately curvy, I’m 5ft 8”, 14 dress size with a Joey pouch and 34D boobs that nowadays are never where you want them, all at the sides. The joys of ageing is your boobs lose their pert, ducks in a row appearance, and each one decides they hate the other and both go their separate ways, until they both end up on the floor at the age of sixty-five.
I love my body, but I don’t like being a bigger frame at all, it doesn’t make it easy to do the McIntyre skip, (the Michael McIntyre skip-check it out on YouTube, it’s hilarious and my favourite method of locomotion) My height doesn’t make me look big, but I feel heavy, as if weighed down to the earth (by my deadly sins) and it has made the chronic illnesses harder. I don’t feel like myself, but that’s okay. I’m burning countless leggings and slow jogging my way to health. Getting the sexy back after my swamp witch phase has abated, I just don’t have anything to wear!
*Note to self: Buy shorts and remind yourself that you’re doing the best you can, that one day you’ll be running like a ‘hurricane’ without sharp devices, in some description of legwear that has true staying power, possibly spray-on cotton from Tokyo! Love yourself exactly as you are, Beckle-freckle-speckle!
**No trolls, squirrels, bushes or woodland people were harmed in the making of this jog. Only the ego of an idiotic woman with trendy legwear.