Waking up in the morning and shaking my head incredulously as I sit up in bed and see my naked shoulders with careless tan lines reflected in the murky mirror across the room. It's sunny again for the fourth or fifth day in a row and it begins to feel like I've never felt rain before. I stand up and pull a dress that used to belong to my mother right down over my head. She didn't like how she looked in it, all curves and pure woman so she passed it off to me. Me, who has to tie knots in the sleeves to hold it up because I can't fill out the bust. Me, who can't go outside in it because I'm afraid somebody'll catch sight of my knees. It seems so natural and so normal to hear women comment on each other when you're no taller than you are innocent. I don't think I ever looked at my mother as anything other than my mother until I found a photograph of her one bright morning where she had a smile - a toothy, goofy, gummy smile, and it was me. Only it wasn't. I began to see her in pounds and beauty products rather than flesh and bones and all of a sudden I lost that huge respect for her that I'd had as a young child. I miss the way she was with my father when things were easier, before I noticed her standing at the mirror sucking her stomach in and sighing gently to herself. It's not that things have changed so much. I just never noticed the cracks before. I came home last night with my eyes wide, my belly full and my head full of drunken ramblings to my father sat on the sofa, grinning, greeting me and the first thing I notice is that he's home, not that there's a new tv that's doubled in size compared to our older one. It makes me sigh loudly, but it's nice to see him smile a bit. He doesn't do that so very often. I wonder when we get to a point where we stick in a relationship for other people's sakes instead of our own, and when we should give up and give in and cut the bullshit. I accidentally took a recording of my parents talking in bed only a few months ago, all laughter and easiness, and when I found it and listened back to it, it made me laugh at first. Hard, hard laughter. But it turned to tears eventually. All these things just fall apart.