Giant Bodies

What I remember: feeling cold, and tired, and vaguely unclean, as though I had forgotten to shower that morning. Somewhat hungover, which was impossible, since I hadn’t discovered that feeling, not yet, not really. A thick ache that clung to the back of my eyes. What I wore, too: green hoodie, denim shorts, hair pulled into a ponytail. Black sneakers — my hiking shoes. Sunglasses. It was June, but, having spent the last two years in Florida, I was wholly unprepared for coastal Ireland’s temperate sixty degrees. I remember the goosebumps lining my limbs on the bus, and the flimsy tourist hoodie that made no effort to quell them. I remember falling asleep quickly, head buzzing against the sun-warmed windows.

I awoke as the bus made its slow, final turns into the parking lot, like a child recognizing the specific curve of their driveway. A cloud of white dust coated my shoes, socks, ankles as I jumped over the three steps down and hit the gravel. I was the first of my family off the bus — a tendency of mine. I stood for a minute, taking in the landscape: the sprawling green fields dotted with wildflowers, the impossibly clear blue sky, the smell of the dust melding with the salty ocean air. Everything seemed saturated with light, and life — nearly glowing — but maybe that feeling exists only in my memories. Nostalgia can do that.

It was a halcyon summer, in hindsight. A beautiful golden period sandwiched neatly between a hard “before” and a harder “after.” I was wonderfully ignorant, as only a thirteen-year-old can be: my future was both impossible to conceive and completely, utterly possible. I didn’t know yet that this would be the last trip the four of us would take together. I didn’t know the pain of hunger, the pain of lacking. I was not yet aquatinted with the greedy stares and hands of men. I wasn’t aware of all the ways my body could, and would, be turned against me. 

I knew some, though. I knew when to bite my tongue around my father. I knew how quickly pressed lips and a glare could turn into an open hand to the mouth, back pressed to the floor, a scream. From over my shoulder, I watched him laugh with my little sister at a seagull flying overhead. I turned and started down the trail.

I darted between the hikers until I could pretend as though I had the trail to myself. The path was matched by an old wooden rail, which served as the only barrier between me and the staggering cliffs below. The wood had been worn smooth from thousands of hands over the years, and I let my fingertips trail along its edge absentmindedly. A few meters behind, my mom called out for me, but I let myself believe I couldn’t hear her over the sound of the waves, and continued onward. I could feel their respective disappointment, anger — a heat blooming at the back of my head — but I knew silence meant safety. My father, ever concerned with the maintenance of his image, wouldn’t dare yell in public.

Alone, I allowed my attention to drift, as it so often did, to my body, how it could currently be perceived. Had my eyeliner smudged? Was my hair framing my face just right? I turned the familiar questions over in my head and did a quick scan of myself — touched the hollow between my jaw and my ear, smoothed the frizz of my ponytail back.

It was around this time that these questions, which began as a minor preoccupation, began to increase, both in frequency and intensity. The obsession wasn’t simply a matter of wanting to look pretty; it was an effort to regain some authority over a life that was becoming increasingly incorrigible, as though if I did my mascara just right, I could beat my entire life into submission. As I made my way toward the ocean, my back tensed — a sign I was being watched. I straightened my posture, imagining my back profile, my shoulder blades, my spine snapping into an acceptable posture. I was aware of every inch of my thighs. I felt my face, puffy from sleep. That is the moment my sister captured on her digital camera: pure discomfort.

When I rediscovered that photo about a year ago, I was struck by the vast expanse of time, and life, that had wedged itself between me and the girl in the stupid tourist hoodie. By that time, I hadn’t spoken with my father in years. I had cycled through a few shitty boyfriends, and a few other men who I won’t dignify with a title. I had succumbed to an eating disorder, then recovered, then succumbed and recovered again. My body had accumulated scars, stretch marks, freckles — proof of time’s passage. That little girl in the photo was nearly unrecognizable, or I was.

***

The Giant’s Causeway, located just three miles north of Bushmills, Northern Ireland, is a vast expanse of approximately 40,000 interlocking basalt columns gradually receding into the sea. The landscape is exceptionally stunning, but it is the columns themselves that are the site’s most remarkable feature: they are all, incredibly, perfect hexagons — a fact that is as unbelievable to me now as it was all those years ago. Irish folklore explains that the Causeway is the remnants of a passage built by giants, created after one, Finn MacCumhaill, was challenged to a fight. While I stepped over the columns, I imagined the giants, crashing toward one another through the sea. I thought of their huge feet — strained to see the outlines of their footprints in the ground. I saw my own footprint next to the miraculous hexagons, ephemeral proof of my time here, woven into the sand. I heard my family laugh at some invisible joke behind me as I looked back up at the thin line dividing sea from sky. I imagined that the giants’ battle took place right there, on the horizon, and I could almost see it: their giant bodies, fighting. Now, I think that kind of violence — the gory kind between bodies — is a sort of necessity. Without it, we have no stories to tell.

Later that day, we would get back to the hotel, and my father would reveal that the very moment he had stepped off the bus, a bird had shat on his head.