thegirlwhorecognizesherself3

 

She is still way overweight, still struggling with her life and her scarred little heart, still struggling to be present, but even in the midst of this, sometimes there is a moment when she recognizes herself. A moment, say, on the top level of the parking garage of the casino outside of town, the one with a glorious 360-degree view of the Spokane area, where she raced the sunset with her camera and her binoculars to watch the moon rise, huge and golden, above the mountains, the valley, the beginnings of the Colombia Plateau that spreads out for mile after flat mile until suddenly plummeting hundreds of feet into the great river that twists from one end of the state to the other. The wind was harsh and icy that night, so strong that even on a tripod the camera was useless, and it ripped tears from the corners of her eyes, tears that were still wet on her cheeks when she took the photo. Nothing she wore matched that night: red shirt, blue scarf, olive green sweater, multicolored arm warmers, white bandana, all snatched up in a hurry, and the combination was bad enough that she was too embarrassed to go into the restaurant for dinner, but somehow when she got home with this one photo for the night, it looked not so bad after all–it looked perhaps a little eccentric, but authentic. And maybe that last tear in the corner of her eye isn’t because of the wind at all. Maybe it’s gratefulness, and just a smattering of tentative joy, that even now there is enough of her present to (sometimes) recognize.

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