Trapped In My Chrysalis

I am at my soul's window behind the shaded curtains of cautious tribulation. I stay safely incased within my rotund frame... Protected against the eyes of men. I somehow traded sensuality for personality.
I figure if I can make them laugh than I am not dependent upon my body to impress. Thus, I have long since lost the battle to set my own standards of beauty and embrace my specific femaleness. I have let myself be measured by the likes and dislikes of Vogue magazines, commercials on television or the bodies of women twenty years my junior.
I was thin as a child and through young womanhood. I was a lifeguard for the very beaches I now avoid. Subconsciously, the origin of the weight is based in fear; fear of sexual expectation. Nothing could have prepared me for the startling irony I was to discover. My largeness has rendered me invisible. Within this invisibility I find great freedom. If a man is walking in my direction, I can look that man full in the face without the fear of returned eye contact.
However, there are those warm balmy evenings when I want to be seen, admired....taken. I tell myself that my exaggerated curves are voluptuous and that Rembrandt would have admired every ominous arch of my body. But I feel not as a woman but a caricature of a woman.
I admire those that have consistency of self-image as I try to unearth the Goddess that dwells within me.