onceafatgirl

Free to be funny another day

I was reading a blog the other day. It was a parenting blog. I am not a parent. It was about DIY cleaning products. Which I will almost certainly never make or use. I was reading it because it caught my attention and I clicked on it.

It was funny. It was one of those sarcastic-mom blogs. The kind of thing Erma Bombeck was writing before blogs. Even before the internet being readily available was a thing. I liked what I read. It was fun.

And it got me thinking about the fact that this blog is not particularly funny.

I am funny. In my life, I make people laugh. A lot. And I will be blunt. Eating disorders, while serious, and worthy of an authentic conversation, can still be pretty hilarious.

Anything that is not killing you at any particular moment can be funny. Even something that is killing you can be funny.

So I thought about how to make this a funnier blog.

I thought about the things that make my friends with eating disorders laugh. Like how my boyfriend will eat one snack cake in a package of two. He will just leave the other sitting there. He’s not even controlling himself and saving it like a good, obsessive eater would. Really? You can’t just mindlessly eat the other one because it’s there? What, you’re too good for that? Or when a friend talks about how her grandmother used to tell her that if something had fruit in it, it wouldn’t make you fat. So she would eat big, rich desserts that had some element of fruit and didn’t expect them to make her gain weight. How could I have gained weight? All I ate for dessert was fruit!

But then I wondered if it would land for people who didn’t have eating disorders. Or if it would just be salt in the wound for people who did, and who were not having an easy time of it.

And then I remembered one of the things I love about having my eating disorders under control. I have time and space. For whatever. I don’t have to do everything now. There’s another meal coming. There’s another day coming. There’s another week coming with another blog post to write. If I want to be funny, I can think about being funny. I can try it out some time. No rush. And it will be OK if it doesn’t turn out for the best. I don’t write for an audience. I write for myself and sincerely hope that people get something out of it. But if they don’t, that’s not actually my responsibility.

A while ago I thought about writing some fiction. And I am writing some fiction in my spare time now. I thought about starting an eating disorder blog long before I actually made Onceafatgirl. I thought about quitting smoking before I quit smoking. I didn’t jump into any of those decisions. And in the end, I ended up doing them. In my own time. At my own pace.

It’s so freeing to remember that I really am free.