No, that’s not a baby in my belly. It’s just me. It’s just the way my body is shaped. It’s my just me, breaking down food, puffing out when there’s too much to work with, or when I get lazy and fill up on grains. It’s just me when my period comes, my insides inflamed from the tension of clearing out.

I’m stretchy. Women are stretchy. Our skin can be pulled in amazing ways, over babies or beer bloat or the shapes of muscle and bones and fat that mold us into us. Now a mom, I’m even stretchier. My belly can flop over my pants with just the teensiest meal weighing it down. It has become friendlier with gravity. Which shouldn’t be cause for embarrassment.

But somehow, it is.

I’ve always had a pooch. That’s just where my weight goes. That’s where my emotions go. It’s the center of me, and it’s solid, rooted into itself like a planet, pulling the rest of me into orderly orbit. It’s what I listen to when I am ambivalent and where I breathe into when I am overwhelmed. It’s my gut in every sense of the word. And it’s there for you to see, as much as I would like to keep it a private matter. It reaches from my core out into the world.

It’s always been this way, although the daily reminders didn’t start until I wore an engagement ring. Then it became public property. Something people felt entitled to comment on, inquire into, dish out unsolicited advice about. It wasn’t until then that I began to hate it. To look at every other belly around me, comparing, wishing I was in a different body. It’s not the way it looks in and of itself that upsets me. Rather, it’s the fact that it’s particular shape inspires people to break into my personal space, my personal business. To comment openly about where my fat is.

My body is not here to be your pick-me-up, your spiritual moment, your chance to tell a story. It’s not for you at all, actually. The fact that you think it is—or perhaps don’t consider that it’s not—angers me. When I was actually pregnant it still angered me (at least until I was undoubtedly pregnant). I suppose then, though, I didn’t show my anger. Perhaps because though there was anger, there was finally the absence of shame. It finally didn’t sting. And being human, I rested in that. I am supposed to look this way. People are supposed to be really happy when they see me. I am a magical being, creating life. I’m doing something really spectacular. More spectacular than digesting food.

I wish when I saw myself, I let my ability to digest food be enough.

I suppose that how it often is for women. Our bodies are more worthy of taking up space if they are full of someone else. For someone else. Making someone else feel good, whether by eroticism or baby-making. And as someone who also loves my body for those capabilities, the whole thing is difficult to reconcile. And so I suppose I’ll take it on as my journey. Because I can’t wait anymore for the world to change. And I’m not going to do more sit-ups just so you leave me alone.