Belly LOVE: The First Time

Published on August 3, 2010

I was lying on the living room floor..

Trying to think of what to write for Belly LOVE….

So I picked up the camera and just started shooting.

I LOVE the floor.

Ever since I was a kiddo, I LOVE the floor.

I LOVE to sprawl out and lay there staring at the ceiling whenever I can.

I remember my pre-teen years–sleep overs and all of us girls on the floor giggling and writing our names with flashlights on the ceiling. I can remember the floor of Becky’s basement–it was that speckled linoleum and a disgusting pea green color. And we would all lay there in a circle looking up and someone would take a picture.

I remember being in my early twenties after midterms or finals and laying on the floor with my room mate listening to The Verve and drinking cheap red wine out of plastic cups. We could talk for hours–transform dreams into plans and somehow find our way back to conversations on nothing again. And somewhere in all my box of junk are photos of us drunk on the floor, I’m sure.

I remember my first Love. We used to lay on the floor of his apartment alot and twirl our fingers in each other’s long hair and feel that words were not necessary…just laying there in each other’s arms said enough.

Then there’s my Mom’s house. The home I grew up in. The home I used to lay on the floor and watch Saturday morning cartoons on. The home that since I left has been completely remodeled and made to suit my Mom’s distinct taste. When I go there, I never recognize it anymore….and honestly all I want to do is lay on the floor and find that one thing that still feels like home.

But I don’t know if it was the lying on the floor–or the angle of my photos–but something opened inside me last night and I realized deeply that through all these years of experience, my Belly has been there. My Belly–my whole body–has carried me through this journey of my Creative Juicy Life so far. My Belly remembers those deep giggles when I was 11, the drips of red wine in my twenties, the softness of a lover’s hand across my Belly….the longing to find my way back home.

My Belly is a soft scrapbook of Life, LOVE, happiness, hunger, pain, and secrets I still hide. My Belly…..I finally accepted….is one of the most beautiful, gorgeous things alive.

And as I laid there on the floor last night, staring at my photos, I fell deeply, deeply in LOVE with it.

I think for the very first time.