Weighty Issues

Weighty Issues

I am fat. There…I said it. Finally the secret I have long held inside is out. Whew!

It isn’t as if I didn’t say it out loud and in a public forum that it would make it real, I mean, anyone who looked at me twice, would be able to see I am fat. However, saying it out loud makes it “out there” now.

I can remember the very first time someone called me fat. I was all of about ten years old and the hurtful words were meant to wound me. It was my brother who had been upset over something I cannot remember. I can still feel the way I cringed over the word, a word spoken to hurt and hurt it did. I crept up the stairs to my mother’s room and stood in front of the full length mirror turning this way and that trying to see what fat looked like.

In the reflection was a girl who had a small rounded belly, long bird legs along with a flat chest and in that moment, the belly grew larger in my eyes. I was now fat, it had been confirmed and the struggles began. Forever after that moment I would wrestle not only with the word, but with my weight. I had been labeled and I felt as if my very fatness was growing by the moment.

From that moment on, my life revolved around my weight. As I look back at pictures of myself at that age, I am amazed at the pencil thin girl with long brown hair and cat-like eyes. My face was thin, legs long and slender and my belly, well, it is almost non-existent. My issue with my weight may have begun at age ten, but it wasn’t until much later that the actual real live, honest to God fat developed.

My teen years were fraught with trying to fit in and living a life at home that was anything but normal. An alcoholic mother who often was so insecure she would lash out at me to get me to cry, crying to her meant love. If I would cry she must have felt I loved her. Her sickness, my co-dependency was all instrumental in my weight issues. I wanted to fit in, fit in at home, at school and with all the pretty girls I came in contact with during those years. I wanted my mom to love me and the girls at school to accept me.

I learned early to carry myself tall and straight, sucking in my abdomen to make me appear thinner than I would ever feel. The looks I got as I walked down the hallway made me more self conscious. I felt that the eyes must be examining my fat. I felt so insecure I would hide myself within. I was considered stuck up by school mates, stiff and unapproachable. Little would the kids I went to school with know the home life I led and the reasons behind my shy, quiet nature nor little did I know that the boys liked what they saw and made the girls jealous.

So my journey began. I developed a chest that was quite large. I was a late bloomer in that department, or so I thought, but in fact developed womanly curves far beyond my age. The fact I was curvy and taller than most of the girls in my class, only made me stand out more.

Throughout the years, my weight has gone up and down, up and down, and not unlike a roller coaster and often making me so frustrated. When I read back at old journals or New Year’s resolutions, my weight issue has always been at the top of my entries.

So here I go again, only this time I am in my fifties and the metabolism is almost non-existent. For the next several months, I shall blog about this “Fat Girl” inside or outside of me. As I begin yet again another weight loss journey, I pray I can whittle away the “Fat Girl” and find inside the real me. Thin or fat, there is a self discovery in process. Anyone who has ever had a weight issue may well recognize themselves in my story.

Teresa Gale