onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the tag “shame”

09 Feb 2012

I am my own best frienemy

So after my last blog post, my friend recommended I have a sit down talk with fat Kate. Not the fat girl who lives inside me (I already know about her. She still wants her cake back), but with the Kate who had to live in a fat body. Ask her what she wanted and needed. Apologize to her. Ask her how I wronged her and make amends.

I learned a long time ago, that when we wrong others, we have to diminish them in our minds in order to live with our own cruelty. We have to be able to justify it. And we will go to great lengths to justify it. Unless we clean it up. That’s part of the human condition. Sometimes…ok, often…hell, usually, the people we have wronged have, indeed, done something wrong to us as well. Something that hurts us. Maybe they wronged us first. Maybe even maliciously and intentionally.

But there is a person I want to be. It is the kind of person whose highest priority is peace. And peace does not come from revenge or blame. Peace comes from doing what you think is right. Peace comes from being able to look God in the eye and say that you did your best for love and from a place of love for the whole world. (This is not the Good Girl talking, by the way. She didn’t have peace. This is not about being a doormat. This is about being responsible for the ways that I do wrong, regardless of how I have been treated. Boundaries are important. They should be tended to. But the way I treat others and the way I am treated are not connected! I only have control over my own actions.)

So I want to clean up the messes I make. Even if it’s with someone who made a mess all over me.

And that includes fat Kate. She had to live in a shameful body too. And I have wronged her. I’ve been Peter at the crucifixion. Who her? She’s nobody. She’s just this girl I used to know. Don’t mind her. Let’s just go over here and you can check out how fabulous I am now…

But hating her was starting to hold me back and pull me down. Hating her was hurting me and stealing my peace. And not knowing why I hated her so much made it scary and murky and painful. So I took my friend’s advice and stopped to listen to fat Kate.

I didn’t know how! Really! You have to believe me! I was doing the best I could! I always did the best I could! And you became the woman I always wanted to be. I didn’t like me, but you are amazing and fabulous, and I honor you! I gave up sugar and eating and I felt all of that pain, was willing to feel all of that pain, because I wanted to be you. I wanted to do whatever it took to be someone I respected. So I did the work as much as you did. I did it because I didn’t like the life I was living. I got clean around the food and around life. But you pretended that you got a new life. You did not get a new life! We are still the same person. It’s just that I am eternally stuck with the body and the pain, and you get to move on. But you won’t fucking move on! You keep looking at me like I’m the definition of Kate. Like no matter what we’ve managed to do together I am Kate, and you are something else. Something not real. But we are both Kate. And I would appreciate it if you would feel about you the way I feel about you instead of feeling about you the way you feel about me. If I had looked and spoken and acted like you, I would never have considered myself unworthy. So stop living like you are unworthy now.

My life has been built around “begging the question”. It’s a logical fallacy. I have been surmising that nobody will value my love because my love has no value. The answer is the question. The question is the answer. This is little kid logic. But then, I have been using this logic since I was a little kid. My body looks different, but it is the same body. And in that body is the same brain. And my brain has been thinking these same thoughts about the worthlessness of my love for as long as I can remember.

I have been thinking these thoughts so long that I know them without putting words to them. But that’s the key. To name them. To distinguish them in words. See, I’m basically an avoider. Oh no! There’s something scary! Don’t look! So I don’t look. And it stays scary. And unknown. And undistinguished.

But when I distinguish it, I get information. Quality information. Information I can use to find a solution.

I wronged the girl I was by refusing to see that she was doing the best she could. And I refused to see it because I was using her as a scapegoat. I saddled her with all of my self-hatred and left her in the past, so I wouldn’t have to look at why I hated myself. Because it’s scary. Because I have been afraid that the things that caused me to eat myself to morbid obesity were not in my past, but a living part of my soul. And I wanted to hide them. I wanted to con the world into thinking that I am worthy and honorable. It doesn’t matter that this life I live now is not a lie. I have been living as if it is a lie. And that has the same psychological effect on me as if it were. It leads to the same kind of worry and hiding and shame.

What’s funny is that fat Kate could see it all along. Stuck there in a 300 pound body. Still hating herself. Still in immense pain. Eternally. Perhaps that is why she could see it. Because she looks at her and then at me and says “Hot damn! I turned out great!!!” But I didn’t want to listen to her. I didn’t want to look. Because it was scary. Because what if I looked, and I saw that I have an ugly heart and a broken soul? What if I found out that this life really is a lie?

Losing a lot of weight takes a lot of time. And the changes may be drastic, but they come slowly and subtly. Actions and behaviors can be changed. But that happens slowly too. It happened so slowly for me that I never had to stop hating the person I was. Until life held it up to my face and refused to put it down.

No, I will not stop thinking of my love as worthless by tomorrow. It will take time, and more importantly, practice to change my thinking about myself. But in listening to fat Kate, I got information that I can use.

So this is what fat Kate wants me to understand: I am my words and actions. By being a woman who tells the truth, honors her word, and works for peace, I am being a good person. Being a good person means I am a good person. That the circular reasoning going on in my head leaves no room for value. The question and the answer both rely on my lack there of. And that she did not go through hell so that the world would think I was beautiful. She did it so that we, she and I, would think I was beautiful. Inside and out. She wants me to stop trying to bamboozle the world into thinking there is nothing wrong with me. She wants me to start seeing that there truly is nothing wrong with my heart and soul. That there was never anything wrong with hers. She just wasn’t good at life.

She really was doing her best all those years. She really didn’t know how to do any better. I know that. I was there. And when the opportunity presented itself, she really did do whatever it took to get her shit together. I know. I was there for that too. So I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was too afraid to look and listen. I’m sorry I was too selfish to honor her. I’m sorry I treated her like an obstacle I overcame, instead of a sad and scared little girl. I’m sorry I looked at her like she had an ugly heart and a broken soul. And I am grateful that she could see me when I could not. Thank you, Kate. You did a really great job.

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04 Feb 2012
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Telling the ugly truth and letting the chips fall where they may

This blog has surfaced an inner conflict in me. It’s hard to put words to. It has me confused and hurt and ashamed. It is about how I see obesity in general, and the way I was treated when I was fat, the way I saw being fat when I was fat, and the way I see it from this body. They are all jumbled and mashed together. I am full of fear and anger. And I am sad.

Being fat in America is not fun. It is associated with being lazy and a slob. It is associated with not caring about yourself. With a total lack of will power. With being pathetic. It is associated with many things that are not true. Some of the go-gettiest go-getters I know are overweight. Some of the most meticulous house-keepers. Some of the best dressed/coiffed people I’ve ever met.

But living in a 300 pound body was a horrible experience for me. It was exhausting. And shameful. To huff and pant my way up a flight of stairs. To dread the thought of tying my shoes. To live in abject terror of having to hurry, God forbid, run anywhere. And most especially, to have to do any of those things in front of other people.

Because I also remember the looks, and the comments and the cruel ways that I was treated by others. And it hurt. I was so sensitive. I was fair game. Except it was not fair. Everyone was allowed to express an opinion about my body. Everyone! Heroin addicts living in boxes on the street were allowed to comment on my size. Society told them so. Too much cake, it seemed, was my waiver of any claim on common courtesy.

But I hated being fat too! I thought it was shameful too! How could I disagree? How could I stand up for myself? How could I separate being treated disrespectfully from the reason it was happening? I couldn’t then. And I am not sure I can right now. I know that belittling and shaming me was gross behavior, but who punished me more than me!?

I do not lack willpower. I can be the most stubborn mule on the planet. But I was never ever ever able to control my eating with willpower. Because my eating disorders are bigger than will. I’m sick. I treat them now, but they are chronic. They will never go away. I will never be able to eat sugar again. At least not if I want to be happy and peaceful. Not if I don’t want to kill myself with diabetes or other obesity related illnesses. Not if I want to like myself and my body. Not if I don’t want to be fat. And I don’t.

For the first 25ish years of my life, I thought there was something wrong with my body. That it was fat. That it was broken. That by the luck of the draw, I got a bad one. And then somebody said to me. “Sweetie, there’s nothing wrong with you! Calories in calories out. Do the math.” And I was skeptical. But it turned out she was mostly right. There is, actually, something wrong with my body. It can’t handle sugar. When I eat it, I can’t stop eating it. But my body is not naturally fat, as I believed for so many years. The problem I had/have has a solution. There was and is something to do about it. And doing something about it was literally the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. If that woman hadn’t said that to me, “Do the math, Kate”, I may have gone through my whole life hating myself because God cursed me with a fat body. But I’m not cursed. I’m blessed! I’m so incredibly grateful!

So here’s where is starts to get sticky and muddled and painful. I promised myself (and you) that I would be honest in this blog. And I am afraid of the things I am about to write. They are not what is known as “tactful”. And I am afraid of hurting people. People I genuinely like and love.

But I hate seeing fat people. It hurts my heart. It makes me feel ashamed. It brings up a lot of guilt and bad feelings I don’t even know how to name at this moment. And that is confusing in this body. Because even at 5′ 6 1/2″, 134 pounds, I see me in them. I am them. And I hated myself in a big body. I felt ugly and grotesque. I felt less than. Totally unworthy. And when I look back at her/me, I still feel like she/I was totally unworthy. Seeing another person living in a fat body brings up my own self hatred. It makes me look at the person that I was, whom I don’t like. Whom I’ve never liked. I did not like her then. I do not like her now. She is the part of me that I wish I could wish away.

It’s funny. I learned to reconcile with the liar in me, and the drama queen, and the good girl. I learned to reconcile by stopping those behaviors. But now it seems I have to reconcile with the body itself. And right now I don’t know how to do that. It is not enough to just not be fat anymore. I am not fat. I have not been for years. But that has not eliminated the icky feelings I have around obesity.

So the honest-to-God truth is, I do not know how to honor another person’s choice to be fat. I can live and let live. I can be respectful. But I do not know how to not care. I do not know how to see someone live in a fat body and not relive my own pain and self-loathing. I do not know how to reconcile the body I have with the body I had. I never want that life again. But, good Lord, I never want that body again.

And it’s fucking possible! It will always be possible. Like I said, my condition is chronic. The possibility of a fat body lives inside this little body. It wouldn’t take long for me to reach 300 pounds (and then some) if I lost control of the food. Seriously. A year. Maybe less. So how do I honor someone’s choice to live in a body that I fear?

Of course I have fat people in my life. Yes I love them. Yes I do understand intellectually that not everybody who is overweight has eating disorders. But when I hear overweight people say that they are comfortable with themselves, I cannot imagine it. I have a fantastic imagination. I can grasp many foreign concepts. But I have lived this “concept” of being fat, and it was nothing but torment. So in all honesty, I do not know how to not judge it. It’s personal. It’s raw. It is not fair, but it is what is so. And I am ashamed of my own judgment.

I don’t know how to wrap this up. I don’t know how to give you the moral of the story and an eloquently executed insight to take with you for the day. I do not know what to do except tell you, and pray to God for a solution to my own judgment. So now I have told you and I am praying about it. And it’s time to let the chips fall where they may.

Posted in Life, Relationships and tagged , , ,

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