Hey Big Girl!

I am thinking back to last week, standing on the corner waiting for a cab. I was wearing the same jeans I always and a black sweater, sunglasses. Trying to blend all 275 pounds into the New York scene without being detected as a hefty outsider. I don't know so many more places that can make one this conscious of appearance. What am I waiting for? I mean really? So I was standing on the street corner waiting for a cab, going to meet a friend. Scared someone will notice how fat I am if I am alone and cite my size as the reason for my singleness. Leprosy would be preferable I suppose but the social treatment would probably be the same. I heard someone yell something that sounded vaguely like "Hey, big girl." I barely had time for the cognitive process before I had turned to find the voice, petrified it was talking to me but needing to see that it wasn't. It was talking to me and the pain of acknowledging it was soap in my eyes, nausea, dizziness, internal screaming and naked humiliation at once. The funny thing was this guy's face, grinning, eyebrows raised suggestively- a compliment! Are you KIDDING me!? The audacity and ignorance. He was trying to get my attention then compliment me. While I realize that this may be someone's ideal body, it is sure as hell not mine and I don't mind if someone rents millions of billboards educating these men about how ineffective "big girl" is as a pick up. I was crushed. Standing there in my trying to look cool and with-it outfit, large girl version of what the stylish normal girls wear, I admitted that I was a fool. I wished it had rained on me then and soaked me straight through. I wanted my hair nasty and gnarled, permanent tangles, I wanted my mascara to streak down my face. I longed for the swollen nose and puffy red eyes from a crying jag. I wanted to become as glaringly ugly as I felt. No rain came to camouflage my tears as I maneuvered my mass into the waiting cab. I didn't even have the courage to glance up.

How did I get this way? Is it because I am American? Are we unhappy or lazy or bombarded by greed and wealth and abundance and this is how it manifests? I do not remember gaining this weight. Becoming fat and adopting the fat identity is not memory. I doubt I was even aware of whatever process produced this. I recall gaining weight at one point and not caring. It felt okay then. 10 pounds, 20, 80, 100- for some reason it made no difference. I was not an unusually big child. I was always tall and am grateful for it now, as always. Or maybe I was a chubby child. It doesn't seem that way to me now. I try to recall changing from my school clothes into my pink leotard in the back of our beige station wagon on the way to my ballet class. Hot and sweaty as usual, working hard to get those tights on. Was I struggling because it was a tough act to perform in the car or was I fat? I am comforted now by imagining that I was just tall and jammed in the back of the station wagon, trying to change as discreetly as possible without revealing all to people in passing cars.

I think. I reflect. I ruminate. I obsess. And I still cannot comprehend how I became fat. I recall so many times when I got sad or tired or lonely and ate. And ate and ate. What a sick thought to covet the will power to be anorexic or the physical and emotional ability to induce vomiting. I have never but wished I could make myself countless times. The truth is, until now, I would rather be fat. I am and have long been, on some level, extremely comfortable in this body. My mother used to say "When you don't need the extra armor, you will it take off." Of course now she says things like. "This is a serious health risk," extolling truths about skin elasticity and age. I have to change that truth. I have to want, more than being fat, to become fit and healthy. I am going at this from a different angle this time. A little at a time. Baby steps. First, want to jog a mile within a month. Want to lose 10 pounds. (NOT 80!! Not now. Just 10 for now.) I want to halt my stretchmark proliferation. Just 10 -not going full force, just starting to learn now and will BUILD MOMENTUM. This is not hard. This is easy and pleasant. A gift to myself. I feel stronger and more flexible. I feel quicker and lighter. This is only the beginning. I was sad when I began writing this entry and vowed to write until I felt better. Whew. Thanks for listening (reading).