When you see a turtle it's a striking example of how an animal protects itself by carrying its hard exoskeleton on its back. The shell protects the vulnerable creature inside it. When threatened, the turtle can pull its head back inside and hide, until the threat disappears. When it's not threatened, the turtle can extend its stubby legs and move, ever so slowly, across the ground. I remember reading a few years ago that one shouldn't move a turtle far from where it's found because turtles rarely venture more than a mile from the place where they were born. I think I read that right after spotting a turtle in the middle of the road and getting out to move him out of the way so he wouldn't get run over.
I am like a turtle. I just realized it last night.
What separates me from the rest of the world isn't a hard shell, but it's a fortress of flesh.
I am fatter at this moment than I have ever been in my life. I am too embarrassed to reveal the exact weight, but I will say this: it's enormous.
I have to go to the internist in a couple of weeks, and a week later, the cardiologist. I have a heart arrhythmia and thus the twice-yearly cardio visits, where they take a readout from my pacemaker and tell me how my heart has been doing since the last checkup. It's pretty weird and sci-fi to have a tiny computer embedded in my chest, but it's better than being dead...
Why am I talking about something so personal?
Simple. I am holding myself accountable. I am also aware that, like the Catholic confessional, unburdening oneself to strangers can be quite liberating. Finally -- and most importantly -- I want to spread an important message about compassion. You see, when you look at a fat person, a person who has dealt with their feelings in an unhealthy but compulsive way. You may feel disgust. You may feel superior, if you are not overweight. You may also look away as quickly as possible because, let's face it, most fat people are not attractive, at least not in the conventional sense.
What I ask you to do, however, is to feel compassion, and let that be your overriding emotion. Fat people cope with feelings of sadness, grief, hopelessness, stress, etc. by eating. We don't manage our feelings well. We internalize everything and try to be sweet and cheerful rather than moody or fretful because that's what we are taught as children.
Like me, most fat people have struggled to handle emotions all their lives.
I have struggled with weight issues since I was about 7 years old. That was the year my father had to have hemorrhoid surgery and my mother was hospitalized with a blood clot in her leg and nearly died. I was sick with pneumonia that fall and stayed home from school for three weeks. It was a very stressful year, and I started stealing cookies (from the kitchen) to make myself feel better, at least for a few minutes. I didn't realize I was setting myself up for a lifetime of weight struggles. [below, me at age 6 before the overeating started]
I do remember that my grandmother would see me with the cookies and hold out her hand so I would give her at least half of them. She would smile and say "Thank you!" and not let me go away until she had at least 2-3 of my 4 cookies in her hand. I felt bad about eating cookies in front of her. She was chubby and always trying to diet. So was my mother.
At school, the other children -- mainly boys -- started teasing me about my weight in first grade. It continued, every year, the bullying, until 9th grade. Middle school was the worst. All through middle school there was a group of boys who taunted me every time they saw me. During those years, pretty girls were "foxes" and ugly or fat girls were "dogs." I would be walking down the hall in school and those boys would bark at me. I would want to just disappear, flooded with shame and embarrassment.
The summer between 7th and 8th grades my mother and I went on the Atkins diet together. I lost 35 lbs. I got back to school in 8th grade feeling much better about myself, but no boy expressed any interest in me. The girls in my class and I formed a tight bond, but I felt like an elephant amongst swans when we were together. It didn't help that our Social Studies teacher was an open misogynist and pitted the girls against the boys, tallying up our test scores after every test to show how much smarter the boys were than the girls. (I always made very high grades in social studies but we had some girls who didn't study.) One girl, who was also chubby, was singled out and the teacher said to her "You want to lose 8 lbs. of ugly fat? Cut off your head!" I was stunned he would say that, even jokingly.
The only reason that me getting bullied about my weight stopped, was that my brother decided enough was enough. We were on the school bus my freshman year of high school, going home. Brother was a senior. One of the boys started saying really cruel things to me about my weight. Brother told him to shut up, but the bullying continued. My brother [6'0, 165 lbs.] got up and walked up to the bully and punched him in the face. The bus driver threw Brother off the bus, but my parents didn't punish him, and the kid who got punched must not have told his parents because there was no reaction from them about it.
I was never taunted or bullied by that boy or his friends again. That didn't make my weight issues disappear, though.
High school was a social nightmare. I wasn't grossly overweight, but I was chubby. I have fat legs, and despite playing basketball and tennis, and swimming and water skiing, my heavy legs and cellulite persisted. The phrase "body positive" was unknown then. There were still two types of girls, foxes and dogs, and I was not a fox. I stayed very busy, with voice lessons, church activities, drama club activities, choral concerts, and hanging out with friends. I never went on a single date and I was never asked out to a single dance. [below, me at age 16, cutting the cake at my cousins' wedding]
I found out many years later that when I was in high school there were two guys who had crushes on me but they never said a word to me about it. I wish they had. It would have helped me to know not everyone thought I was repulsive. I felt like a social pariah, despite all my activities.
College was less painful socially but not easy. I socialized with a mixed group of friends but there was no boyfriend. I developed a crush on a cute guy my sophomore year, only to be sad when I found out he was gay. We became close friends though, and he is still a friend today.
College dorms are a nightmare for girls trying to watch their weight. Someone was always ordering pizza, or chicken fingers, or pulling out a big bag of M&Ms to share over a game of Uno.
Between my freshman and sophomore years of college my father paid for me to go to one of those weight loss programs where you get pre-packaged foods. As long as you eat only those foods, you lose weight. Problem was, I then went back to college, and between the dorm and the dining halls, I couldn't maintain the weight loss. I had few friends that year, and that made me overeat more. There are literally no photos of me from that time.
When I finished college, I was 22 years old and I couldn't find a job. I moved back in with my parents, and that was rough. They were not getting along well and I knew my dad resented me mooching off of him, because he told me so, daily. That's how he was able to talk me into paralegal school. I just went along with the plan so I could get away from my fighting parents and live in Atlanta for 3 months while I did my paralegal training.
I rarely talk publicly about being a paralegal, for a good reason. Saying negative things about the profession could come back to haunt me in a job search situation. It was not my career choice, though. Dad wanted me to be a lawyer and he thought after a year of being a paralegal I would want to go to law school. He was wrong. I saw how hard it was to get thru law school and the brutal hours the young lawyers put in, and I wanted no part of that. True confession here: reading case law put me to sleep, so law school would have been a snooze-fest for me..
[left, me during the husband hunting years]
Between ages 22-42 I actively engaged in The Great Husband Hunt. I dieted. I dressed very carefully. I joined gyms. I wore makeup. I had a plan: get married, have a couple of kids, become a full-time writer. I went on a lot of dates but didn't actually Fall in Love with anyone, until I was 42. That didn't work out. By then I had given up on having biological children and was in the process of adopting my daughter.
After I became a mom, the husband hunting stopped. I put back on all the weight I had lost, however.
Becoming an instant mom to a 13 year old girl who speaks no English is a trial by fire. There were many challenges and lots of Drama ensued. My daughter had issues related to early trauma she had suffered. I read books, took her to therapists, did everything possible, but every day was a battle. None of it was her fault, and I am not going to give details here.
Adopting my son in 2007 brought me great joy, but also added stress. He is missing his right hand, and also suffered a lot of trauma as a small child.
Overall, I loved being a Mom. It was just impossible to stay on a diet during those years.
Suffice to say, raising both my kids was great fun but also very hard. They both had significant issues. At the same time my mother, who had moved in with us, faced some health issues and I slowly became her 24/7 caretaker.
Add to those facts the fact that I got laid off from a great job in 2009, my daughter left home in 2011, and I suffered health issues requiring surgery in 2013 and 2015, and there's a recipe for disaster.
The weight kept creeping back and creeping back and my spirits kept sinking lower and lower. My mother set a great premium on always being cheerful so I tried to be cheerful around her. I failed a lot, but I tried.
Unlike most parents, I didn't have 18 years with my kids. I was basically child-rearing from 2005 to 2019. Then they were grown. I felt like I had only been marginally successful as a parent. Adopting older children was a passion for me, and I still believe in it wholeheartedly, but it's a very stressful thing to do.
I started writing novels around 2016 and it helped me to feel creative and empowered.
In 2019 my mother started becoming increasingly frail, and in 2020 she died. After years of being a 24/7 caregiver I was pretty much mentally and physically wiped out but I grieved hard for her. She was my co-parent and best friend. I got Covid and she got Covid, and although she died from kidney failure, I still felt terrible. Quarantining, masking, etc. didn't work. I was hyper-vigilant but we still both got sick, months before there was a vaccine.
In 2021 I struggled to find a job and I had to sell my house. I sunk into a period of Depression, without even realizing it. Instacart and DoorDash became my main food sources. I didn't socialize with friends. I stopped taking long walks with Lola because the doctor put me on a heart medication that zapped my energy.
A few weeks ago I finally felt like my luck change. I accepted a job as a marketing writer for a local mediation company. I am finally getting to do the one thing I really enjoy: write. Everyone I work with is kind and supportive. People smile and make jokes, even though we all work from home. Unlike paralegal work, I don't feel daily unrelenting and terrible stress.
I feel like I have awakened after a long Covid nightmare and now I am wondering where the normal person went and trying to get this stress weight back off. It isn't easy. I still have very low energy. I struggle to eat healthfully. I don't like living in an apartment but right now it's the only option.
Last night I realized that for the first time in my life I am not interested in losing weight just so I can find a husband. I want to lose weight so I will actually feel better. I am tired of being tired. I want to be able to walk the grocery store without it wearing me out. I want to get back out, resume normal life, be with people again. Losing weight after 50 is hard. It's hard to not be sedentary. It's hard to not get depressed and reach for a cookie, or three.
As soon as my new insurance coverage goes into effect I am going to find a therapist. I'm a big believer in therapy. It has helped in the past. Hopefully the therapist can help me to like myself and not beat myself up about the past.
Try to be compassionate to your friends and family members who struggle with weight. It's often because we try to cope with feelings by eating too much. We hide behind our flesh. We push the world away rather than allow it to hurt us more. Facing feelings is exhausting and scary. Faith helps.
I hope in a year or so I can revisit this blog and report a major transformation. Y'all pray for me.
Recent Comments