Being not skinny comes with its own set of sort of trauma, but being the only fat person in a skinny person family (or friend group) feels like a completely different language.
It has taken me years to come to a point in my life where I don’t hate my body and become nauseous at the idea of pictures being taken of me. However, there have still been moments where these thoughts come back with a vengeance.
The problem with being fat is that weight will always and forever be on my mind. I may be neutral with my body, because life is short and why waste time hating yourself, but that gets thrown out the window whenever I do something wrong.
For example, in the beginning of the school year, I ended up accidentally driving on a flat tire, causing the rubber to come off the tire itself. My brother sent a picture of it to his little group chat and instead of laughing at the situation, this guy, who I’ve only said 3 words to, decided to make me, or more specifically my weight, the center of the joke. He “assumed” that the flat tire happened because I exceed the weight limit that my car could handle. This led to a downward spiral that no one in my life could understand. I stopped eating, deciding that it would be more useful to disappear in size. I stopped wearing clothes that made me happy, resorting back to the method of sweatshirts that still haunt me in my nightmares. I decided to show off my body to men online to remind me that I was still pretty, no matter my weight.
In retrospect, I understand that these responses weren’t the correct responses, but his joke brought me back to 5th grade where I was first made to diet and cringe at the idea of showing my body to someone. It brought me back to every moment where I have been placed after my weight, that my personality simply couldn’t exist because I wasn’t skinny. It brought me back to when my friend’s legs would shake whenever I sat on their laps, forever inserting the idea that they should sit on me, and that if I were to ever sit on anyone, I would simply be too heavy. It brought me back to 6th grade where I learned, later in the future, the consequences of having internet access at such a young age. It brought me back to middle school, where all my friends were getting their first kisses and boys wouldn’t even look at me, in fear that I would become obsessed. It brought me back to being catcalled for the first time because bigger girls developed faster than skinny girls, and wondering what I did to have a grown man follow me as I wore a dress in the sweltering summer.
Even though now I trust myself in regards to my body, these thoughts haunt me like a ghost stuck between the now and the afterlife. I am terrified of being picked up, I hate sitting on people’s laps in fear of being told that I’m too heavy, I hate pictures of me from other people’s perspective because I’ve lived in a world that was tinted with rose colored glasses, and I now can’t distinguish between looking pretty and looking like me. The truth is, even if I lose weight, even if I find someone that doesn’t seem to care about my weight, these thoughts will always be in the back of my mind. Waiting for the right moment to pounce, sending me once again into a downward spiral that only I can explain. That only I can feel. That only I can see.
Because to the rest of the world, while my life may be deploring itself to the pits of hell, I look like I always look, and a measly comment that was made in passing, one that was made as a joke, and was forgotten about in a minute, has stuck itself onto my skin, and has changed the way I viewed myself for the next months.
It truly has taken me years to come to a point where I can wear a bikini in public, and I drink to that, but it’s exhausting trying to explain why I think the way that I think. And why I may be fat, but I don’t hate my body, that I find comfort in my curves, that I know I can be liked for my being and not the extra weight. That I can be confident in a skin that most find unattractive. Because the secret is: life is short. Why waste time hating yourself when life is beautiful and is full of enjoyable moments that remind you just how good it is to be alive and truly living?
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