On Being Fat

Well... what the fuck is there to say.

I feel very strongly that this could truly just be a whole series of posts... so I'm sure I'll get to say just a small fraction of what I'm thinking and feeling and then we can just... put a pin in it. 

I don't want to write some long chronicle of my entire journey with anorexia, thinness, fatness, internalized and externalized fatphobia, etc here... There's just not enough space and it's 11:22 AM (which is early for me, hello quarantine) and I'm still waking up. So I'm just gonna jump around and do some stream of consciousness stuff. Welcome to my brain.

It's been hard getting fat. I'm not gonna lie. It's been hard having mostly thin friends, so that when I started getting fat, I was like wait, who do I even talk to about this?? The only person I really knew to turn to was my closest fat friend, and I leaned on her way too hard. I had no frame of reference for how to process weight gain in a healthy and productive way - because like, why the fuck would our fatphobic society give us a road map for how to gain weight without having breakdown after breakdown, until we finally fold and try to lose weight again? So basically I was out here in the weeds, just trying to find anything to cling to on my journey to "body positivity" (whatever that meant), which at that point was really just a buzz word I had heard online. And I felt... so lost.

I still feel so lost sometimes.

Even with a partner who loves me, who is so sweetly and deeply enamored by every inch of my body. Even with a dietician to help me think all of this stuff through while still making sure I eat enough. Even with thin friends who are educated on disordered eating and fatphobia enough that they support me pretty well (most of the time). Even with fat friends who are on this journey, too. Even with a vast online community of gorgeous fat babes who lift each other up on the daily.

I still feel fucking lost. Like... a lot of the time, actually. 

And again, I guess that's really the point. We're not supposed to be comfortable getting fat. We're not supposed to be comfortable staying fat. We're all just supposed to stay on the hamster wheel of restricting, dieting, "I'm so bad for eating this," exercising to shrink our bodies, feeling guilty when we don't exercise to shrink our bodies, feeling guilty for having bodies that are unshrinkable... and we're supposed to do it forever. 

God forbid we fucking hate the hamster wheel. God forbid we get exhausted, beaten, bloodied, starved, sick, and angry enough that we want to break it. Burn it down. Find every hamster wheel in the world and smash them to pieces. And then torch the pieces.

I mean, anorexia was killing me. It didn't really feel like it was at the time... I didn't realize I was starving. I was just hungry. I was really, really hungry, all the time. And I spent a lot of my day thinking about hunger, whether I was hungry, how to stay hungry, how to ignore hunger, how hungry I was - trying to see how far I could push myself into the black wilderness of hunger before I simply drifted away and lost myself completely. I ended up with my head in a lot of toilets, throwing up acid because nothing else was on my stomach. Throwing my digestive system into spasm, forcing it to be unable to process what little food I gave it. Sending myself into a seemingly never-ending cycle of gastrointestinal distress in one form and then another. Losing days, weeks, years, lifetimes to hunger. Never hungry enough.

By the way, if you force down a granola bar or a banana at 7 AM you can usually last about four to five hours without eating. You have to drink a lot of coffee, though. But then eventually you'll hit your lunch break and you can force down a can of tuna and crackers (no mayonnaise though, but you can put balsamic vinegar in it - I know, it's disgusting) and then you can last another five hours or so. You may get really hungry when you come home from work, and if you accidentally eat a whole bag of Sun Chips in one sitting, just make sure you wait a while before you eat again. You'll be really exhausted by then, so you won't really have the energy to cook - but if you keep some frozen fish fillets in the freezer, it's pretty easy to heat one or two of those up in the toaster oven for dinner. And then you can just sort of wait until it's time to go to sleep. Feel free to supplement with cigarettes and/or alcohol at any point in time. 

Of course, you may be miserable. Food may become scary and eating it may become pretty difficult, physically and emotionally. But you'll be thin. Oh, so thin.

I mean... never thin enough, obviously. 

But still. You may drop one or two pants sizes without noticing, and then you get the absolute thrill of a lifetime when you try on a new pair of jeans in Old Navy and realize they say "Size 4" on the tag. Wow. A new low. But just make sure you never give up on getting smaller. Just make sure you keep shrinking.

If you really wanna up your game, date someone who's mean to you. Isolate yourself from friends and family. Give in completely to the desire to shrink. Start shrinking your life as well. Eventually, you may get sad enough to stop eating altogether. Eventually, you may get small enough that people start to worry about you. People may start asking you if you're okay. This is the sweet spot: for the first time, you may actually start to feel thin enough. Your smallest clothes will start hanging off your body. You'll look really gaunt and sick, which is exactly what we're aiming for here. 

Now, just make sure you keep this up. 

I mean, never thin enough.

Obviously.

*insert BIG DEEP BREATH here*

Is everybody okay out there? I'm sure as hell not. Jesus. I mean just writing that, reading it back... it's absolutely haunting. I purposefully stayed numb for years to it. I like, made extra sure I did NOT think too much about how much I was eating, did not think too much about how much I was thinking about eating. So it was crazy so have a couple of friends in ED recovery start to talk about their behaviors and to be like... wait... I do that? And to start to read about diet culture and disordered eating online and to be like, wait....... I do that??? It wasn't really a realization I came to on my own. There was just a mirror held up to me. And after all of the work I had done around trauma, substance abuse, family enmeshment, self hatred... after clearing away as may cobwebs as I could... I was finally able to see my own reflection.

I think, on some level, I was ready to heal my relationship with food. It was scary, and I had a lot of doubts about whether I was even allowed to do that. But I was ready to give it a shot. What I was NOT ready for, however, was getting fat. I was like um, excuse me? This is absolutely not what I signed up for. I wanted to start eating again and stay thin. Like... I thought that was the deal here. 

I had all of these ideas about how I was "naturally supposed to be" thin. Which is like, not a thing? Our bodies are not naturally supposed to be any one thing, especially in stagnation. But we are especially not naturally supposed to be as small as possible. And I was entering my late twenties, and my body was probably ready to get a little bigger anyway. Plus, I had starved myself for at least ten years and my body was trying desperately to store up fat for the famine. I just wasn't letting it. 

But even so, I had ideas about what I was supposed to be and what I wasn't. I still have those ideas - they are so deeply, sickeningly, immovably rooted in me that I haven't been able to pull them out yet. Like, sort of at all. 

Anyway, I remember sitting with my friend at a coffee shop, listening to her open up about ED recovery for the first time, and in an attempt to paint a picture of my own body anxiety (since she was unlocking all KINDS of doors in my mind), I told her that I always felt like I was supposed to be thin because I had such small wrists. I truly believed that. As fact. Until the moment that she asked me whether my skeleton had anything to do with the size of my body. She was like... bones? Your bones are supposed to determine this??

And I was just flabbergasted. It's hard to fully convey what an effect that question had on me. All of a sudden, it seemed so silly that I was basing my idea of my body, how big I was allowed to be, on my fucking wrist bones. I actually laughed out loud. And that was really the beginning of something.

But the shitty part is... I would love to say that it was the beginning of a beautiful upward trajectory toward loving myself inherently. That I've been on a journey since that day to love my body, and that with each passing day I love it more and more, and I just generally get to live in Liberated Body Positivity Land from now until the day I die. But uh. That's... not exactly how it has gone down. As you may imagine.

But I did not imagine.

Here's how I think my brain expected things to go: I would get a little thicker, a little curvier. I would learn to love my precisely one (1) tummy roll. I would get a slightly fatter ass, and would feel really good about that. I would stop at around size 10-12 pants, maybe pushing 14 at times, but only temporarily. Finding a good bra would still be a pain in the ass (always has been), but I would still be able to scrounge one up at Target if I dug around really hard. I would gain confidence and feel like a Thicc Queen. I would continue to shake my ass (now slightly rounder) at the club, and I would still feel confident that any of the guys and gals watching me would want a piece of this whole snack. In fact, if anything, my journey into Body Positivity would give me the security and liberation to wear even tighter jeans, shorter crop tops, skimpier bathing suits, bolder makeup... I thought it would be a cure all. 

But I didn't realize I would have to get... bigger. Like, a lot bigger. I didn't realize I would be sitting here a year and a half later, size 20 or 22 ish (we're not completely sure), having no idea when or if I will ever stop gaining weight. Still feeling desperately attached to the idea of plateauing off at some point - and secretly, quietly, perhaps losing a little weight at some point, too? Don't tell the dietician that. Even though she uh... for sure already knows.

Here's how I did NOT expect things to go (but how they have gone nonetheless): I've gotten a lot thicker. A lot curvier. My ass is now much, much fatter, but fortunately I still do feel really good about that. I now have to pay more for my clothes, and work much harder to find them. I am fat from every angle, in every outfit. There is no strategic camera angle or strategic item of clothing that will conceal my fatness. It's in my arms, my face, my legs, my ankles, my fingers, and my tummy. Absolutely, more than anywhere else, my tummy. She has grown and grown and grown. I am covered in purple and red and pink stretch marks. Like, everywhere. For real. I also walk differently. I now wonder if my body can do certain things, like roller skating or jogging. I have to choose my seat at restaurants more carefully. I have to research whether or not I will fit into a roller coaster seat (haven't had to cross that bridge yet though, thankfully). I am actually just consistently asking myself in general, can I fit through there? Between those people? Through that aisle? Am I gonna knock something over if I try? I haven't had to deal with medical weight bias yet, but I am so very aware that it is *right* around the corner for me. I have reached the level of fatness that defies euphemism. I'm not just thick, curvy, fluffy, plus size, etc. I'm like, legit fat. Fatter than 90% of the people I know in real life. Fatter than many of the fat celebrities I looked up to when I started this journey. I don't have a flat tummy, I don't have toned arms and legs, I don't have a pronounced jawline. If there's a way you're "allowed" to be fat in this culture (read: a little thick), I'm not it. 

I'm just fat.

And when I was thin, I would have heard someone else (never me, obviously) say all of that, and I would have replied, oh my god, what's wrong with that?? You get to be fat! You're still perfect and amazing and worthy and valuable! Diet culture is a fucking scam! You're a GODDESS!!! SLAY!!1!11!!!

But of course, now that it's me... I'm like... um, no. This was not the plan. This was not what we signed up for. Being fat is for other people. This is surely temporary. Maybe if we hate ourselves enough, we can force our hand and start restricting again. Wait, shit... restricting isn't doing anything anymore. Okay. Regroup. Maybe if we love ourselves enough, we'll start eating intuitively (aka perfectly) and our body will level out at our personal "perfect weight" (aka smaller than this). Wait. Fuck. We're still gaining weight. Okay uh.... I'm out? I don't have any other ideas???? FUCK

*cue 374th body anxiety panic attack this month*

I don't know, man... it's crazy to type all of that out. But honestly... I think it's crazier that I haven't done it yet. Not like this - not like a list of facts. Not without malice or shame. I talk about this a lot, but typically only when I'm in emotional distress about it. I might go off on a rant when I'm angry at diet culture, or I might have a teary breakdown when I'm in a spiral of body shame. I might even write a vulnerable (and probably uplifting) Instagram caption about it, under a sexy underwear photo that took three hours to get right. 

But I don't really like... sit with it. I don't write about it, just for me. I have to talk with my dietician about it, so I do that. And I talk about it with John a lot, because, well... it comes up a lot. Having a body, and a partner who loves and kisses and fucks and witnesses that body... you kinda have to talk about the body. But I don't really talk to *myself* about it. I cry to myself about it, I panic with myself about it, I scream at myself about it, I try to ignore it to no avail. I try to force myself to feel fine about it, to "move through it" (aka get over it), to self soothe and just generally stop engaging with it. But that's... sort of it. And all of those interactions are completely internal. And more emotion than anything else - definitely not an active conversation.

I don't know.

I don't have anywhere specific I'm going with this. And I also had absolutely no idea I would be writing this much, so I didn't plan ahead and I haven't eaten yet. And that needs to happen like, now. For real for real. I'm laughing at how I started this post by saying I didn't want to chronicle the whole journey, and then that's exactly what I ended up doing. Or at least... a good chunk of it.

But honestly... I'm really happy I wrote this. The only writings I've done around fatness and ED that have been somewhat similar to this post have been Instagram captions. And I always try to end those on a positive note. Plus, they have to be snappy and engaging and uplifting, with the right balance of vulnerability and performance. So it's a huge relief to be able to write this and just say... to be continued, I guess? Like I don't have a way to wrap this up all nice and pretty and put a bow on it.

But I do know that I really, really needed to start having this conversation with myself. What does it *really* mean to be in recovery, for me? What does it mean to be fat? What does body anxiety feel like? Where do I want this journey to take me? How has where I came from inform that? 

How does all of this feel, in *my* body? In *my* life? 

I don't know, man. But I'm excited to just start writing about it. It's high time I give myself space to process all of this shit, in a way that's just between me and me. Because at the end of the day, that's what this is - my relationship with food, my body, love, sex, fashion, friendship, everything - it's between me and me. 

So... here we go. 

To be continued.