It Has Nothing To Do With Being Chubby
May 2, 2008
I remember seeing the words “morbidly obese” on my medical chart for the first time when I was in the sixth grade. Though I didn’t fully understand what the words meant I pieced together it wasn’t good. No one had ever called me “obese” before, but as the biggest girl in all my elementary school classes I was familiar with “Fatso”, “Lard Butt”, and “Fatty Fatty Two By Four” and I felt reasonably sure “morbidly obese” was somehow connected. I was the slowest in gym class and the last to be chosen for any team sports. Except dodge ball. I was a demon in dodge ball. I went home in tears from Campfire Girls one afternoon because the safety pin that held my Campfire Girl skirt together had popped open and I was so embarrassed someone might see the gap at the top of my skirt I left the jabbing pin in my waist until after the meeting.
High school wasn’t any better, only now the kids who teased me were bigger and meaner and by my teens I’d outgrown youth sizes and had to resort to buying clothes at maternity stores. I don’t know about your high school but cotton jumpers decorated with little ducks were never in fashion at mine. As an adult my weight continued to climb which made me feel increasingly bad about myself, which sent me to the food to feel better or feel nothing at all, which caused me to gain more weight and so the cycle continued until at the age of 43 when I found myself on the upside of 325 pounds.
No matter how many wonderful things were going on in my life or the number of remarkable people who surrounded me, I was conscious of my size every minute of the day. Children would point at the fat lady. Adult strangers would scowl at me in disgust. Clothing continued to be impossible to find and climbing a single flight of stairs left me sweaty and painfully gasping for air. I had heart pain and high blood pressure. I had the added humiliation of not fitting through store turnstiles, of requiring an extension belt on airplanes, and being reminded every time I turned on the TV or opened a magazine or simply went out into the world and mixed with the general population that I wasn’t like everyone else. I know there are large-sized men and rubenesque women with a healthy self-esteem and body image. I wish I could have been one of them but I wasn’t. Instead I was miserable and not at all fond of myself.
At the age of 43 I joined a support group, worked a spiritual program, ate healthy and moderately one day at a time, and lost 140 pounds by the grace of God and a break between meals. For the past eight years I’ve had no problem buying clothes. I no longer worry about whether I’ll fit behind a restaurant booth or in an airplane seat or through a turnstile. At the first of the year my doctor reported that after looking over all the test results from my physical exam I was in remarkable health. Children no longer point and shout “Mommy! Look at that big lady!” and when I’m out in the world strangers return my smile with one of their own. I work out at the gym, I ride my bike, and I walk for miles at a time and feel great. The self-loathing is gone. I’m grateful for my life and my health and most days when I look in the mirror I feel really comfortable with who I’m seeing looking back at me.
But not all the time. There are still those times, rare though they might be, when I go into a new setting and wonder if people there are thinking about how big I am. I obsess that the clerk at the clothing store thinks I don’t belong in her store even though the clothes I’m carrying to the dressing room are the same size as the clothes in my closet at home that happen to fit me with ease. There are still those times when I feel fat. Why?
I had nearly 43 years of being conditioned to relate to the world and to myself as a “morbidly obese” person and that doesn’t change overnight. For 43 years children pointed and people starred. For 43 years I stood out in a crowd for no other reason than because of my weight and that made me feel different. I was identified in the world as a fat person and if that were just a neutral observation then that would be one thing but in our culture fat comes burdened down with an arsenal of groundless value judgments, and those damaging messages driven into anyone over a lifetime are bound to occasionally and randomly rewind and play again. When that happens, there’s a choice as to how to respond; listen to the old messages and let them determine how I see myself or when the old messages start up stop and remind myself that’s what they are, old messages that aren’t any more true of me today than they were when I walked in the world as a 325 pound woman. Just because I feel a certain way doesn’t mean those feelings reflect what’s actually true and so it’s important I find ways to come back to the center of what is true when the minions in my head start kicking up the dust.
So this is a little story from my life but I share it with you for a very different reason other than just spilling my personal beans. It’s kind of a quirky little way of leading into a bigger conversation on the old messages that keep bubbling up to the surface for some of us as we walk the Christian journey as GLBTQ people. I know the correlation probably seems beyond obscure at the moment which was confirmed for me by the puzzled “Huh?” look D had when she read it but come back tomorrow and give me another chance. I promise to not be so vague or metaphor-ish.
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Posted in Storytelling
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Amazing.
Anita, thank you so much for sharing this. It was really much needed, very encouraging. It was confirmation that again, I need to stop entertaining those “old messages that keep bubbling up to the surface.”
Thank you.
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Doesn’t sound obscure to me at all! I’m not dealing with weight issues–more like who I am in general. There are days that I hate who I am. And this has been one of them. I logged on tonight just looking for some glimmer of hope. Thanks for the lifeline.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Wonderful. Heartbreaking. Brava.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:50 pm
‘I get it’ As a new way of thinking is developing in me… lots of details that my inner self keeps sorting one by one and somethings in batches; I have times where I feel a horriable spasm inside myself. Like two worlds too seperate to blend. Three and 4 am is the worse for unwanted waves of ‘ugh!’ At this point it is more then old messages. Its my mind set that must change or else it will self distruct me. Pushing… Pressing… Moving forward. ‘here a little, there a little’.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:01 pm
I completely get the methaphor. I think everyone, or at least most people I have met, have the old recordings that jump out and grab at the worst times. I have never had to deal with weight, (until now that I hit the mid 30’s) but I also have many old recordings that play in my mind. Even when I am feeling the most secure with who I am and my place in God’s kingdom, the old homophobic messages play and for just an instant, I question. Thank you for reminding me that in this at least I am normal. Thank you for sharing your life to help clarify my own. I concur with L, Thanks for the lifeline.
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:29 am
I have a friend who came out about nine months ago. Recently, his wife decided she needed to end their marriage for her own sanity. Even more recently, he underwent some intense counselling, and now he’s decided to go right back into the closet, saying he’s not nor ever was gay, rather just confused. Thus, he claims, the entire foundation of his wife’s wanting a divorce has been removed. So why does she still want it?
Well, in his longish letter to me explaining his transformation via counselling, all I kept hearing was my own set of tapes. Gay is bad. It’s your parent’s fault—they were absent, abusive, or over-attentive. It’s a mental illness. You’re just confused, and you need to learn to love yourself “as God created you”, not escape into such self-destructive deviance.
And I started wondering a little about me. Am I just confused? Am I making the right decision? Fortunately, I have a lot of evidence that I’m not making a mistake this time around. But of course I’m often confused. The tapes that blare sometimes are contradictory in most messages, except that loudest one—you’re sick and bad.
Thank God that he can and does calm the storm when I call on him.
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:43 am
I agree with others that you are not being that obscure. And “old messages” are hard to erase, especially if they’ve had time to take root in your self-perception. It’s very hard not to hear the outside voices and let them become the inside voice. I think many of us LGBTQ people have encountered that struggle, especially when we hear condemnation coming from the pulpit. I know for me, in the past, I have transferred homophobic messages from the person in the round collar as meaning, “God hates me.” Not true! That priest may not like me, but the priest is NOT God. The God I believe in is the shepherd who calls each of us by name, knows us completely, and could care less about the labels we, or others, put on ourselves. That’s the voice of Truth.
Good on you for working on your weight, and thanks for sharing your personal story with all of us. I look forward to “the rest of the story”.
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:20 am
When I was 33 I lost over 70 pounds ( from 190 to 125, I’m 5′4″) but I never lost the image of the fat girl that was etched in stone.Today I am 48, I’ve been to the top of sports achievements, fit into a size 4 at times but when I look in the mirror, I only see the fat girl. My loving partner J always rebuts my comments and self-judgements and I wish I could see myself through her eyes. I have succesfully followed a 12 step program for 20 yrs for other, pray and turn things over on a daily basis, but not, until now, had I even thought about turning over my self image to my loving Father. There is nothing vague and metaphorish about how you describe your self view. It was very direct to me and hit home. Thank you immensely for the life tool, Anita, you have no idea how far your words reach.
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Wow Women (and John), I so appreciate what I read in your comments. Thanks to each and everyone of you for adding so much to this blog for the others and for me.
Deb –> I totally get those 4:00 in the morning waves of “ugh”, that sense of dread and doubt. I bet others do too. I don’t have them around my sexuality but I’ve certainly experienced them over other things. Waking up in the middle of the night with incredible anxiety over something I might have said or done the day before that I can’t take back or think might have been misunderstood; dread over a future event that I imagine unfolding in the worst possible way; or just those butterfly stomach swirling head kind of moments over things kept hidden in my heart. Here’s my really spiritual advice for those moments. Tell yourself you can obsess about them in the morning and then go back to sleep. If it’s God, God will speak just as loud and clear to you at noon as in the middle of the night, and if in the morning what has you going “ugh” at 4:00 a.m. seems like nothing at 9:00 a.m. then chances are it really is nothing but the subconscious working overtime. Keep moving forward girl, inch by inch…that’s how you get anywhere you’re headed.
Hill–> That those old messages get air time in your brains is soooo normal and that’s why I wanted to say it because I think just knowing that it’s a common thing can take some of the power out of it for us or lessen our sense that we’re doing something wrong or not enough that we should still question at times. It’s not having the questions that causes our troubles but what we do when the questions come, whether those questions are about being gay or being or doing this or that.
Bon–>Whew, I’m so sorry to hear of your friend and the messages that are being laid and enforced for him in counseling. Hearing that kind of story, of which there are thousands of similar ones, is so tragic because it takes someone who’s already in such pain and compounds it with the self-denial and rejection of something that intrinsic to their very being. It makes the heart heavy to hear but oh, how I LOVED your final words that “Thank God that he can and does calm the storm when I call on him.” Yes indeed and so beautifully said.
Susan–>What a great observation and isn’t it the truth, how the outside voices impact the inside voice. Those negative voices and messages coming from outside are so constant, and even when we discredit them and say they don’t matter, they weed their way in a little or a lot. And Amen and Amen to this
Connie–>Wow, congrats on your accomplishment and that you have a partner who’s there to give you a reality check. D does the same for me and I for her. I think we all lose perspective at times on how we look or who we are and we need someone who loves us to ground us back in what really is. Honestly Connie, can you even begin imagine how God who loves us with such great love sees us? I don’t doubt for a minute it would blow us away to see ourselves (and each other!) through God’s eyes.
You’re all amazing!
May 4th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
This is absolutely wonderful. Thank you for sharing this.
May 4th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Thank you. Perfect way to begin the coming blogs. I at nearly 35, have just begun my journey towards health and losing the weight. My goal for 2008 is to find healthy spiritually, mentally and physically… it’s no longer just the weight for me. I’m trying to follow your advice and treat it one day at a time.. but sometimes it gets pretty overwhelming. It’s nice to know your story though and your encouragement comes from a place of being right where I am. That’s huge. THank you.