In anticipation

Parisian girls with their perfect skin, pomaded and perfumed by the best in the world, glowing under a European sun, so soft that it makes them glow. Parisian girls with there calm worldly poise honed from the constant knowledge that they live in a place where everyone wants to live, they drink coffee at cafe's that other girls dream of, brush shoulders with the cool crowd, wake up each morning n Paris. Parisian girls so small at the waist that their clothes are like the clothes for dolls, stepping easily through a world where they are secure in the knowledge that every hot blooded man or woman is lusting after them. They wear the latest styles, the best designers, the slimmest cuts. They will be sure enough in their beautiful bodies that they can be gracious as they walk all over me with their expensive stilettos.

I anticipate my arrival in Paris. Blundering out of the plane, crashing through streets built for slimmer women, catching the eye of Parisian men for all the wrong reasons, big and clumsy and whale-like I am beached on a foreign shore where I can barely ask directions with my clumsy tongue.

Every shop window will reflect me back at me. Every woman who passes will be a sad shake of the head. Every fine pastry and baguette will be a complicated dance between hunger and gluttony.

I read someone's Post Secret note that had been posted on twitter. "When I see fat people eat I feel angry and confused". Now when I eat in public I wonder who is judging me. Which skinny pretty girls are tutting and looking and thinking that my ugliness is my own fault because I allow myself to eat. It is bad enough here in Australia, in our wide brown land. In Paris, I fear I will be knotted up inside by my own bad opinion of myself and by the beauty of others. They ask me if I am excited to be going to Paris, but truly, sometimes I am just plain scared.