Frankenstein

Sometimes I don't recognize myself.

I look down and I don't even see my feet. I can't even see my bellybutton, or the area below it, unless I look in the mirror. The jokes about me swallowing a basketball, or a watermelon don't feel like jokes to me. Add the sometimes creepy, mostly fascinating undulations of my belly, the way its shape transforms from perfectly round to pointed to some other asymmetrical form, and it's like some alien attachment.

I guess it's a good thing this huge belly hides my feet. Because I don't think those fluffy, puffy, red-mottled, took-a-beating painful things down there are really my feet. If they were, they'd be slender, gracefully attached to ankles, then calves. Those swollen things down there seem to have gobbled up my ankles, leaving a roll of flesh instead. They have a mind of their own, cramping up, and egging my calves to cramp up as well. Usually in the middle of the night.

Joining them in that midnight rebellion are these things that used to be my hands. I wake up in the middle of the night with arms and hands that don't respond to my mental urgings. Instead, they freeze, claw-like, then retract, shooting pins and needles up and down my arms. In the daytime, I can't fully command them either. I can't open small bottle caps and those pesky aluminum packs because my finger joints hurt.

My nose, which I have to admit, has always been on the round side, is bigger, rounder and bright red. Like I stood under the noon sun with SPF75 on every part of me except my nose. My thighs and butt have accepted boarders, and are now happily living in crowded quarters under the shade of my belly.

The only new body parts that I do like are the boobs. Now these, I can live with. But when I give birth and start to breastfeed, I feel like I'll be giving up ownership too.

I miss the old me. Where am I?