thinking out loud: on WEIGHT
I am small and petite but I am obsessed with weight. I don’t know when it started or when I was first aware of it but I love the sensation of volume and strength against my body. Of people or things. Weather even. Opposition. Heaviness. Resistance.
My childhood (boy)friend Stefan was big and very tall. In fact, he was the tallest and biggest in class while I was the smallest and tiniest. I was six years old when we first met on the first day of school. We had identical blue schoolbags and looked pretty stupid next to each other with what seemed like a meter between us. We instantly became best friends and were inseparable during all of primary school. On sleep-overs we would hold hands falling asleep, and I still remember the comforting calm of disappearing in his gigantic paw.
This is not only about height or size, however, just as much as it isn’t only about people.
I like the sensation of heaviness and mass against my body in all sorts of scenarios, also with things. Pushing against an enormous heavy door for example. You know, the kind of door that is almost hideous, a caricature of a door, built for giants of a distant dinosaur era. My building has such a door. It is so freaking huge and heavy I have to throw my entire body against it to push it open and even then I am struggling and huffing and puffing. I love it. Makes me feel fragile and small.
I also love when a person collapses onto me after orgasm. I invite it. The opposite of being protected from the weight of flesh and bone during its most relaxed and heavy. When I physically feel that a person is letting it all go and is no longer holding on to anything. Just letting everything fall onto and into and through me. When I can hardly move under that archaic weight. I like that a lot. It makes them feel good but it makes me feel good too. We are both comforted by immobility then. Like a disarming heavy blanket of calm.
Speaking of heavy blankets.
I don’t usually have problems sleeping, like at all. I can sleep anywhere and in any scenario, stressful times, good times, lots of worries, no worries - I sleep. So naturally, I never had to look into sleep aids. It is a world fairly unknown to me, so when a lover gifted me a weighted blanket I was confused at first.
Not sure you are familiar with weighted blankets? If you are like me, and sleeping comes easily to you, chances are you are not. However, if you do suffer from sleep problems, or are on the Autism spectrum, as they also help here, there’s even more reason for you to look into them.
Anyway, as the name suggests, weighted blankets are filled with a heavy material of some sort, my blanket has glass beads, so they don’t provide that fluffy lightweight feeling of regular bedding at all. Instead, the blanket literally weighs heavy on you, depending on the weight category you chose, quite heavy. The result is you don’t just feel covered and warm, you feel snugly protected, hugged almost, calm, and immobile. Of course, you can still move. Anything else would be silly and not safe. But the weight on your body encourages you not to. Moving your body against weight takes effort, so instead of moving and being restless, the weight motivates you to stay still.
I am naturally restless. Mentally, intellectually, physically. As a writer and dancer I never not move. When I dance my mind is still but my body moves. When I write my body is still but my mind moves. Back and forth and up and down and sideways and under. Spinning spinning running jumping. It is rare that both, my mind and my body are completely still. Maybe I should give meditation a go but I am not particularly keen on sitting still only to be still in my mind also. Doesn’t seem too appealing to me and I guess that very fact is even more reason I should give it a try. It’s probably good for me and okay okay I will one day. Maybe. But not today and anyway, that is why I love weight! Weight doesn’t let me choose. Weight forces stillness onto me. Surrender.
Weight does to me what a firm, expert grip does to a dog.
I am not too experienced with dogs but I am pretty sure that this is what I’ve seen happening: A dog snaps and barks and lashes out and pretends to be the boss, then some dog expert dude pushes the dog’s head fearlessly and firm down to the ground until the dog surrenders with a last howl into a still bundle of accepted powerlessness.
That is sometimes how I feel. Like an untamed dog unleashed. Too wild and free for its own good. And weight gives me a glimpse into the tranquility of surrender. The liberation of immobility. A cathartic experience of being fragile and weak.