“Fat Women are Disgusting, they just aren’t
attractive to me,” he told me as we talked in my usual bedroom I used while
visiting. Conversations started randomly and ended up on different subjects,
but this was a little different. He had never expressed this sentiment before
and there was a glaring conflict of emotions going on inside me with knowing
how we had just discussed my recent weight loss of one-hundred-plus pounds,
which had happened since the last time he had seen me, and after he couldn’t
pass up the opportunity to mention that I still had a little more to lose in my
thighs; one of my biggest insecurities when it comes to my body. Which, in some
respect, I’ve since realized he may have planted that seed in my head, even if
this new comment almost seemed like a subconscious thought coming to life.
My brain
has since grappled with this conversation over the last month since my visit
home, feeling something irritate me and make me feel less than, and possibly
derail some mental progress I felt like I had been making, as well.
Regardless
of his intent, and how he would probably proclaim that’s “not what (he)
meant" if you mentioned how this comment directly links somebody’s body to
their overall worth as human beings, they go hand in hand. When you say someone
is disgusting, most of the time it’s in a criticism of their character as a
person; sure someone can have disgusting habits like picking their noses in
public or putting their bare feet (or shoe covered ones, I feel) up in your
personal space on an airplane.
Though
that comment that I had never heard from him before was only expressed
after my own weight loss, and never before. I remember being teased by him for
the way my thighs jiggled in the car as we rolled down the highway, wearing
shorts on a family outing. My brain internalized it as a personal thing,
negating the fact that in all likelihood, depending on how any body part is
positioned in a car, the movement of the vehicle will make most body parts
shake like Jell-O, simply due to the laws of physics. I also got all the, “your
mama is fat” jokes from the nineties directed at me. I deflected and made some
right back to make it seem all in good fun, even if they hurt a little. I did
ask one day if the jokes would stop if I lost all the weight, and he just said
he’d say something along the lines of “You’re so skinny you could hula hoop
with a cheerio,” as some way to justify it wasn’t a personal attack,
maybe.
I feel
like I’m trying to justify his actions, like they are okay when I know they’re
not. Especially when I have had comments about my body and its over-sized form
(not just in weight, but height too-- I currently stand more on the 5’10 side
of the 5’9 height I tell the world I usually am when asked) from the
moment I entered kindergarten when a boy asked me if I had been held back
because I had tits at five years old. Yes, that’s the reason I remember it fondly
because he called my boobs, “tits.”
I
remember when I was house sitting a neighbor’s dog during the summer and we had
talked about how she felt I reminded her of a younger version of herself, all
his friend could say was at “least [I] had something to look forward to” and
when I questioned what, thinking it meant having a dog of my own, or house or
successful career, he could only state that one day I would lose the weight.
Flash forward to them, later that summer, laughing when I got upset that
the cashier at a local restaurant asked if ten-year-old me was pregnant because
of my over-sized belly. You know, that one thing you really shouldn’t ask
a woman, out of common courtesy.
There was
also a point of them having me pull them in a shopping cart with a rope around
my waist until that rope snapped, and I have no idea how or why, but still feel
the sting of humiliation radiate with that memory in shame; debating if I even
want to mention it here at all, since I think you get the picture of how he
treated me already, at this point
I know
this man, and I do believe this guy has a good soul because I spent my life
growing up with him. Does he have his faults? yes, like all humans
do, and somehow I feel more protective
of him because he’s my brother and I’m not excusing these actions, I know they
are part of a bigger issue at hand entirely, that has bled into our
general weight-shaming subculture and our identities, and undermines our
worth and value as basic humans.
And yet,
I fight with even writing this due to the fact that I have lost the weight, but
I know like all trauma in life, if it’s not addressed and expressed it festers
like an open wound you continue to pick at till its scabs and scars. My scars,
it seems, run deeper than I’ve realized until late, and I still feel like I
haven’t experienced enough issues with this as some, like women of color or
those who aren’t as able bodied as I am, or those who even feel they were born
in the wrong body.
I also
feel the need (after weight loss) still festering inside of me to somehow judge
myself still for this size or that number, or that body
part. I know though, that holds no comparison to a human’s right to be and to
exist. I feel that if you think you’re doing something other than shaming
someone for something you have no idea about, you need to learn to educate
yourself on how to improve first before you can help others. So first I’ve got
to, in a sense, air my dirty laundry or my personal shit to find a place of
peace within myself to simply be enough, because I still don’t feel that way
and I know I’m still, at times, looking for outside fixes for that, when I know
damn well that’s not how healing and acceptance work.
My
childhood wasn’t perfect but it was good, at least from what I remember of it,
there are a few memories and experiences from my childhood I want to
recreate for my own children one day, but there are also some things I feel I’m
still dealing with and never really understood that I was dealing with till now.
I
remember weight being a topic in our household from early on, from Jenny Craig
to Richard Simmons, Weight Watchers... hell, even fitness by Arnold fucking
Schwarzenegger; we had books and VHS (yes, those bad boys) tapes all my life,
talking about losing weight and being healthy. This may sound pretty
normal for most families growing up in the nineties, and for the most part it was
average. Though I don’t remember a moment where there wasn’t a struggle of
losing or gaining weight with my mother most of my life, and somehow seeing
that cycle may be created my own?
I have no
clear moment to pinpoint what really started the weight gain and why,
maybe the old adage of “Clean Your Plate,” rule that I still give my mom a
hard time about. When I tried to tell her I was full after being sick and
getting better, but I was told to finish my Happy Meal, until it came back all
over the back seat of the car, seeping through the flimsy box that had once
held my meal and toy and into my lap, not meant for this use of
recycling.
I also
know my Dad did the best he could and for someone who’s temper can flash like
the last point on the rope of dynamite before the bang at times; he can be the
most accommodating person I know for those he calls family. If it was what we
wanted and it made us happy when it came to food, that was the easiest choice
to make, regardless if it was good for us or not. But what parent hasn’t made
that choice more often than they care to admit?
I can’t
say there hasn’t been a point in my life where my body wasn’t a discussion
topic or a rumor of sorts in my life, or even my own worst enemy at times.
I remember the first time I found a man cute when I was way too young for him.
It was one of my Dad’s coworkers who was half his age and yet still more than
twice mine I’m sure, but I remember the day we came with my Dad to work
and I felt myself become insecure due to the moles and freckles on my arms,
thinking “who could like those?”
Also
fighting with my mom about makeup, wanting to play and experiment with it when
I was young and at least in my memory, her explaining that it was something only girls who were
vain and stupid used to, get guys or impress someone else, yet she wore it
herself for her own reasons I didn’t know till later. That one stuck with me
until probably after high school. Now I wear it for myself and play around with
it like crazy. In some ways I’m grateful
for that, since while I fought with the labels of what ‘vanity’ and
‘feminine’ were for a lot of my life,
due to this comment (and her making sarcastic jokes about the term “being
lady-like”) that I took, at face value, of everyone’s term of that when I did
something that didn't fit the stereotype of “girl” that our society likes to
label for us and not the joke of what a crock it was the entire time until I
got older and she explained it to me. The fact is I know the reasons I wear it
over just because society tells me I should.
I
remember being bullied in elementary school, once again, for my weight.
For wearing a certain dress that I liked because to a group of girls, I looked
pregnant in it. I overheard them talking about me in it with pictures on the
music room door from our show we had that year.
This
turned to me asking this said group of girls (awhile later) to help me lose
weight and have me run around during recess to fit in with them, and on their
terms, wear a sports bra cause that’s what they do. I can honestly say I had a
true Mean Girls experience before I was even eleven years old, but it
wasn’t all the drama of that movie and I wasn’t as nearly invest in it
when my own self woke up and gave me a guilt trip for letting them treat me
this way. To get them to like me or to feel like I belonged somewhere, or
someone finally saw me without judgement, because that was never that to begin
with, sore muscles kicking my ass back to reality I suppose.
I’ll say
I’ve been told I’m very kind and patient, but I can also be a stubborn witch of
a person as well, which is especially true if I feel something’s off from that
telling feeling in my gut. It won’t let me stick with it for long without
making me question everything. Sometimes to the point I think it even made me
start questioning my own worth or adequacy as a human when trying to know if I
was loved. At least in the ways I knew how to understand that, though I’m
learning that sometimes it’s not about how I feel someone else should love me,
but seeing how they do love me in their own warped little ways that they
know how to show or give. Based on their own experiences and walls and social
structures that they may not be entirely aware of existing in the frameworks of
their mind.
All this
came to a head around the time that my brain, one restless night, wanted to
remind me somehow, for whatever reason, that I was going to die one day.
Instead
of that being a release from the judgement or need for outside approval, it
made me cling harder and feel like a complete failure to see that they weren’t responding
to me the way I thought they should by showing me love, or acceptance, or
belonging, without judgement of some sort, which I’m beginning to see the
reasons to all that now more so recently than ever, and it took me losing a
whole person pretty much in weight to realize that, or at least for it finally
stick. But not before I wished and prayed on everything I knew from the stars
in the sky, to God, and to a fucking firework on the fourth of July, to be
reborn to get a restart at life.
Somewhere
in the life of the eight-year-old to
eleven-year-old me, I felt the need to find this acceptance of our
ultimate death wasn’t in letting go of the expectations of others for love or
approval and work on finding it in myself, I looked at as a sign of failure
because if I wasn’t loved for me and I was going to die, had I really lived the
right way? Was I really worth sticking around this planet for the seventy or
eighty more years this life hopefully had for me? I knew something was big with
that because I remember freaking out when my mom happened to come across a
prayer I had written out, asking God to restart my life; to make me new or
different or better.
I knew
there was something off with this and yet my mom “reading the paper” was doing
it more so as a lesson (I had been caught earlier in the day reading from her
journal) and didn’t mention anything about what was written. I’m honestly not
sure if she even read it, nor if she would remember this if I asked, but I know
if she had been aware she probably would have wanted to talk with me, I at
least know than as I know now there was an issue.
But
did I work on it? Nope! I let it fester and chose to find other avenues
or ways to cope and numb this pain when well as you guessed it those
wishes didn’t come true.
Still
here, still kicking; scars attached and popping up slowly as I’ve learned to
try to let go of coping tools and learn how to be truly here, now.
I
don’t want to admit to this, but there were days I would troll around like
Templeton after the fair, in the school hallways on bathroom runs in after
school care before my Dad would pick me up and pry into lunch pails students
had, long forgotten for the day. To using my lunch money that would be enough
for the week’s lunch in half the time on the chips and candies at the checkout
line till my parents put a no a la carte option on my lunch
restrictions to avoid that when it happened once too often.
Food
became my crutch when the anxiety became too much, and I know some people may
play the game of stereotypes and say “see, the proof is in the pudding
with this fatty,” to which I would say first of all fuck you and can you not
realize by now that one person’s story doesn’t speak for the world’s? Have we
not realized that yet?
Anyway,
it became my mission in a subconscious sense to either deny the truth of my
weight to myself, and at times blame the dryer for shrinking my clothes more
than it really does. To having eternal battles with myself about needing to
lose the weight because how uncomfortable I felt, or the way society treated me.
The way men treated me when being plus size was just another notch in the belt
to feeling like I wasn’t enough, that I didn’t belong, that I was too different
and strange to be accepted or loved. But in the same instant I think it did
help me with those who I cared for growing up as much as it made me an over
analytical analyzing mess of a person. It also helped me relate to others and
see myself in their shoes and know and understand those moments of not feeling
like a complete, rational normal human. What is that like, does anyone really
know?
I think I
spent most of my childhood, teens and early twenties playing a role of sorts,
not that we all don’t in some way always play a role in our daily lives. I
would watch my parents get mad at my brother’s actions in school or in life and
try to gain attention or acknowledgement by being the “good child,” or the less
problematic one at the moment sometimes. I had my fair share in that parental
disappointment limelight too, but in turn I think I also put a small wedge
between my brother and I when they spent most of our lives comparing us to each
other;” why can’t you be more like your sister?” I think I heard. I also think
I was told that once, maybe twice. That’s never fair of a parent to do to their
child, I get the reasoning but without trying to understand their (the child’s)
perspective or what they may being through, that’s just adding wood on the fire
of a shit storm they may be personally dealing with.
I feel
like such a melodramatic bitch going on still about my struggles here, in
middle school I got teased too and on multiple occasions went to the guidance
counselor’s office for help. I learned to at times either tune out or to turn
the comments of a group of girls calling me fat in the hallway just for the
hell of it, into something positive like it wasn’t F-A-T was P-H-A-T, or that
the number on the scale was just a statement that Earth’s gravity loved me
more. The kicker with this group, most of them used to be my friends and one is
actually still one of my longest friends and we’ve gone through some shit
together since.
I
remember having a falling out with two of what I thought were my closest
friends right before high school because of miscommunication and them seeing
possibly the cracks in my facade showing up and it freaking them out, because I
still didn’t feel completely safe being one hundred percent myself around most
people, but the way they ended our friendship did not help much.
We went
for our normal walk around the neighborhood, but they had me walk a little
ahead of them whispered talking about me and things I couldn’t quite hear, but
I got the sense that things were over, and something wasn’t right. The week
prior of hanging out while awkward at first was normal and things felt fine,
and they then had me stand at my door after walking me home, and they stood at
the end of the walkway from the driveway to that door and told me they couldn’t
be friends with me anymore, and when I didn’t say anything they told me that
was the problem and I asked okay what should I say, and they said you could ask
why, I asked would that change things and they told me no, so I said than why
bother.
If you
ever wonder why I’m quiet, there is your reason; about seventy-five percent of
the time, another maybe fifteen of it might be I just don’t have anything to
say, or the other twenty-five I’m just enjoying the moment and don’t think I
need to add anything.
I’ve
learned to be afraid of being too much, or not enough and not knowing where to
land and then feeling like I’m just too sensitive and I need to get over
myself.
Though as
you may guess, instead of just being in those feelings and knowing they are
probably all in my head, and they’re not real. That they’re just the thoughts
and ideas in my head, I over-analyze with them and then I try to numb them. Or do
things or eat things to feel like I’m better when I don’t think I've ever been
because I’ve never just allowed myself to be. The more I write this and the
more I try to be okay with feeling like a little bitch still the more this
self-reflection makes sense as much as it hurts, and I know my brain is telling
me the truth and I need to remember to be honest with myself and be okay here
and now just as fucked up as I am.
I’m
coming to terms with how much anxiety I do have as much as I never thought I
did, because I was numbing myself to the reality of it, I think most do,
however that I don’t want to judge on something I don’t know.
I’m still
trying to piece together my standings in my own body these days when most of
the time the body I am use to, was the one that I ended up realizing I needed
to change for pure personal reasons of my body just couldn’t deal with the
weight I had let it become. After failed yo-yo diets over the years with the
wrong intentions or just getting lost in my own issues again, do I have the
moments of being lazy or eating shit, yes but those aren’t the reasons that
caused the weight gain as they are present now just as they were
then.
I feel
like I need to tread lightly here because my reasoning's for losing weight were
due to being out of breath going up stairs and my feet getting plantar fascists in them when walking around due to the strain on my muscles with the
weight, for my body
I really
want to put that last point out there, this was for my own body for my own
mental and physical health, and I’m
still trying to understand what that means and also be okay with knowing I might
gain a few pounds back as there are parts of me I think are too thin now at
times and areas that need the curves I’ve lost, like the butt and the tailbone
not sitting right for long anymore.
There is
still a need within me, at least I feel so to get to this goal weight number
that I’ve had in mind for years, due to it being a number that has stuck in my
head since around that same summer when everything escalated for a brief moment
before I moved out of state to a new life (or at least chapter) when I started
my middle school years still looking to find acceptance in the wrong ways and
reasons, like thinking summers at my Dads were times I could spend losing
weight and coming back like a scene from one of those She’s All That movies.
There was
an afternoon my Dad, brother and I were in downtown and weighed in on this
scale in the building we were in, and I remember being no more than ten or
eleven years old and finding it off that I weighed the same as my Dad did, even
if I was already five foot seven. I remembered this memory also: I read
somewhere that the actor who played Captain America was normally around this
weight pre workouts and at that point in my life I was heavier than him at
his Captain America weight he added to his frame, his height being the
same as my Dad’s I believe.
I knew
there must be something wrong with me to weigh more than them by that much (at
my heaviest), but yet I also thought to weigh more than them period was off,
too. That’s how much I allowed the world of social constructs and
Hollywood to get to my basic understanding of self-worth. Thank fucking God I
was older and maybe a slight bit more over the Hollywood scene and its ideal
images when social media took its current place in our culture.
I still
find some interest in the beauty/social media world, but I can look at it with
a different eye appreciating what it has taught me but also know in ways it can
and does need to change and have seen some of that for at least some. Though
not where it counts to those who at times are the most invisible but yet I’ve
seen time and time again make the most impact out there, who don’t get the
credit they deserve.
There is
a big part of me that stays silent on my topic of weight or weight loss because
I know my treatment was a “privileged” compared the life’s some of these women
have had to live, or not gotten to live on their own terms because of the way
society has treated them. I really have no say in this topic but to point their
way to show how fabulous they really are. Let them shine, because they deserve
to just like they beautiful beings that they are.
This is
only a brief history of my own life and some thoughts on this matter, I feel
like I could have made this come across clearer or in a better way like always
but I also know that right now this is needed for my own mental state to
understand that it’s okay to feel these things ( even when I mess up and make
mistakes, and take a step (or ten) back time again, as all us humans do as we
learn and grow hopefully for the better) and to not always feel one hundred
percent okay, and when I’m having an off moment the best thing to do isn’t to
find a “fix” but to see it and embrace it with acknowledgement that I never let
myself have in just loving me, even if it’s just one day (or moment) at a time.
