Fat.
January 17th, 2008 by trancejen
I’ve taken anti-depressant medication and have gone to psychiatrists and therapists for a sad, staggering twenty fucking years for depression and eating disorder-related issues.
Still, I find it impossible not to be aware of every ounce of fat on my body, twenty-four fucking hours per day.
I still feel it there, every ounce, and whether it shrinks or grows I feel that it is like a cancer, and that my happiness depends upon whether or not I am in remission, whether or not the flesh is waxing or waning.
It is (”it is”, not “I am”), for the record, at an almost all-time high, and I feel panicky. I find myself grabbing manically at my hips, my stomach, finding fat that should not be there, pinching hard as if to excise it manually, failing to do so, and almost crying out in frustration.
I find myself coming very close to chucking a trip to see friends that I love dearly and miss greatly out of sheer embarrassment, because they will see me and judge me. I know this because I have judged myself and found myself guilty - guilty of the sin of sloth, guilty of the sin of gluttony, guilty of the sin of being this creature, this fat thing, oh God, I am this fat thing.
I think that somewhere along the line, most formerly thin people (read: adults) get over no longer being skinny youths, angular, able to eat without gaining, able to scan the racks for the clearance size fours, able to curl themselves into a small compact ball, tight, fine-boned.
I am so not over this that I cannot imagine not being able to feel the knobby bones in my wrists, a small consolation. I remember hipbones like poky little crescents and feel longing. I remember long skinny legs and want to sob. My legs are covered in bruises because I poke at the jellied fat that covers them now. They are wide and flabby. They are shaped like the chops of meat on the food pyramid.
My stomach disturbs me most of all. My stomach, once so narrow and flat, now bisected by a surgeon’s scalpel and shaped like an ass. Now something I can pick up in both my hands like a baby. Like a fat baby. It sickens me. Its very warmth sickens me. I want it to be cold, like the the model of a woman’s reproductive system in the gynecologist’s office - a nice plastic stomach with removable parts that I can neatly remove and restore to its former glory.
I am constantly aware of my size, my girth, my width. It is everywhere. It is everything.
As much as I know all this, I still feel as if it is not me, as if I could unzip and step out of this fat suit and be who I am, the true me, the thin me, the me I was.
It is all so deluded, I know. It is all so very juvenile.
I know that when I was pregnant, I crossed some sort of line, and that anorexia and bulimia became compulsive eating. It was as if, given permission to eat for the first time in my life, I ate without stopping. I gained one hundred pounds.
I never shed a lot of that weight, unless you count various bouts of anorexia/bulimia that have led me up and down the scale. All the medication I’ve been on hasn’t helped, but as far as I’m concerned, there is no excuse, there is no excuse for this greed, for this heaviness and lack of exercise or control nine years later.
There is no excuse for me to be this person.
There is no excuse for me to have become this person, and I am so ashamed.
That is what kills me the most, the shame. The shame of looking down at my fat body. The shame of looking at pictures of myself in which my face is enormous. I am deeply ashamed.
I am slowly losing weight, but I don’t know what to do about the shame.
In my dreams I am thin. I am so thin, and I move so lightly.
When I wake up and feel the expanse of my skin, sometimes it’s damned hard not to cry.
trancejen wrote on 01/17/08 at 12:23 pm :
two entries today, BTW.
whyme63 wrote on 01/17/08 at 12:48 pm :
Good grief,
WomanWriter!You have such power. How can you be so evocative and hypnotic, at the same time you are as raw and real as a punch to the head.
When you write about feeling helpless, the very act the writing reveals your power.
What I’m trying to say, in my very clumsy way, is “You good, kid.” (me, on the other hand, = incoherent.)
melissa wrote on 01/17/08 at 1:37 pm :
I kind of (ok, really) know what you mean…Except the part about ever, EVER being a size 4. I’ve always been 11, 12, 13, 14….blah! Now I’m spilling over the waistband of my “fat” pants and silently cursing my oh-so skinny friends when they ask me to go shopping with them.
Keep in mind that we’re all a bit rounder after the holidays, and that nobody is judging you as harshly as you’re judging yourself.
For-Tart wrote on 01/17/08 at 1:59 pm :
Baby steps, Sis. You can do it.
Bozoette Mary wrote on 01/17/08 at 4:08 pm :
All I can say — and I know it doesn’t help, but I have to say it anyway because I can’t hug you right this minute — is that you are not your body. And I think you are beautiful, no matter your weight or shape.
Janet wrote on 01/17/08 at 5:01 pm :
It’s hard- I kind of feel myself going through similar feelings right now. NO ONE is as hard on us as we are. Go see your friends and enjoy yourself- they will be happy to see you.
Christine wrote on 01/17/08 at 5:20 pm :
Jen,
I have been reading the books of Geneen Roth about compulsive eating–you might want to give them a try to quiet your head. I am *so* not a self help book person, but my roomie had them on her shelf and I started reading one on a fluke. Logically, I know the whys about my eating habits, so I thought there’s nothing they could offer me–but they quieted that self hater a wee bit. I hope to get even better and hope you can too.
True wrote on 01/17/08 at 7:39 pm :
This is so powerful, and so true.
But the people you love… they don’t give a shit. They may want you to be healthy, but they’re going to love you if you have saddlebags the size of Memphis (oh, wait, that’s me) or thin thighs and poky hipbones. Go and be with your friends and let their friendship help you.
The shame… I don’t know what to say about that, because I have it too. The Geneen Roth books mentioned above are really good. So is just taking a deep breath when it feels overwhelming, and trying to divert my attention to something else. I don’t know. But hang in there.
LA wrote on 01/18/08 at 6:59 am :
I’d ask you to nudge over on the shame couch so I could sit with you and we could do some tandem doughnut eating, but my ass is too wide. I need a whole couch to myself. Outgrew the fat pants last month and refuse to buy bigger ones so I don’t leave the house much. Nekkid in New England in January…ew. Frostbitten flab isn’t pretty. Go to GB, hon. At least you get to go back, I, apparently, was banned for life. ~LA
kat wrote on 01/18/08 at 8:18 am :
Aww…those could have been my words…the shame, especially the shame. Please know that you are not alone and that you CAN and ARE doing something about it. It just doesn’t happen overnight like we want it to. Hang in there, luv!
Melinda wrote on 01/18/08 at 2:59 pm :
Not being there will make us more sad than any amount of weight you may have put on, you know. I, for one, cannot wait to see my gorgeous friend with the husky voice again, so no chucking or you’ll make me pout.
michael wrote on 01/18/08 at 3:16 pm :
You so better not punk out on this trip!! I missed you in March in Chicago because I wasn’t feel so hot and I REFUSE TO MISS YOU AGAIN!!!!
You are coming and that is the end of it.
Trance wrote on 01/19/08 at 3:43 pm :
I’ll be there.
Claire wrote on 01/23/08 at 3:14 pm :
Holy Crap. I could’ve wrote this blog. I lived in the double edged bliss of eating and not gaining weight but never really being able to lose it either, until I got pregnant. Suddenly, even though I was on a restricted diet, I was gaining 10 lbs a month.
I am still fat and even though I am only technically 10 lbs fatter than I was pre-pregnancy, I feel 100 lbs fatter. *SIGH* We need a support group.
SOG knives wrote on 07/18/08 at 11:46 pm :
SOG knives…
Interesting ideas… I wonder how the Hollywood media would portray this?…
dani wrote on 07/21/08 at 10:38 am :
I have felt like cutting fat out of my thighs with a knife before; every flabby spot can bring tears. I’ve been a size 0, and lower, since 9th grade, been to an eating disorder clinic, state hospital, and seeing a psycjiatrist for the passed 3 years instead of a psychologist, like all the years before. now i feel like shit for being so week that i have to “take something”(anti-depressant) just to “live”.
People fucking horses. wrote on 08/5/08 at 5:30 pm :
Old people fucking….
Pictures of fucking people. People fucking. Black people fucking. People fucking vids. Fat people fucking. Cops fucking people….