Fat Failure

{I am putting a trigger warning on this post for eating disorders, body issues, and self-harm.}

I'm still new to the concept of fat acceptance.

I have been trying to love my body for years. I understand that I have tried everything short of weight loss surgery to lose weight and was never able to get lower than 140lbs. On a 5ft frame, that is still pretty big and still put me in the overweight category according to the BMI. I had to eat nothing but apple juice and saltines, plus throw up two to three times a day for a whole month to get to that weight too. When given the choice by my very scared (now ex)girlfriend between eating and not puking and being put in the hospital against my will, I decided to try to eat again. Within a few months, I had regained all but 2 of the 40lbs I had lost in that scary month, and had gained anxiety attacks and an occasional heart issue as well. When I tried to get my heart issue examined, I was told to lose weight first, regardless of my protests that I hadn't had a heart problem until after I had lost weight. I have come to the realization in recent years that my girlfriend's threat probably would not have been carried out, not from lack of intent on her part, but because by most medical standards, I was still fat even after starving and purging for 30 days straight.

When my Grandmother was on chemotherapy for her second (and eventually fatal) round of breast cancer, she drastically lost weight. All people at her office could see was that she was skinny. So what if she was going bald? So what if she was nauseous and tired all the time? So what if she was dying? At least she was finally thin!

And we reach my central point...the value we have on thinness. The myth that it is better regardless of how it is reached. I have been told that I should lose weight before I could get fertility advice, because I am supposed to put my health in jeopardy for arbitrary standards of what is attractive in order to win the right to reproduce.

As much as I want to love my body, I am buffeted constantly with images, people, advertisements and medical professionals telling me that fat is BAD and since I'm fat, I must be weak-willed, lazy, gluttonous, and immoral because being fat is a "choice" that I made. It started from childhood, with a schoolmate calling me "chubby" in the first grade to my dance teacher when I was 12 nick-naming me "mama cow" because puberty made me balloon to my school mates in junior high taking up the nickname and mooing at me in the hallways, and in the end, all of this is considered justified because I wouldn't be fat unless I wasn't trying to be thin, amiright?

I have accepted this idea of the morality of body shape/size to such a degree that when I don't do something right, I criticize my body. When I feel incompetent, I can feel my body very acutely, and the feeling of it touching my clothing reminds me of how big I am. I tell myself to stop being so damn fat as if my fat disappearing will take all of my foibles as a person away with it, and being thin will mean that I have attained perfection. It takes all of the mental energy I have not to freak right the hell out and break down crying when this happens. I know that its not true, I know that its a fantasy, and that just reinforces my feelings of being a failure. Its a nasty downward spiral that usually ends with me in the bathroom tearing my clothes off and punching my own stomach repeatedly.

My spouse tries to help by telling me that I'm beautiful when I complain about feeling fat. While the sentiment is well-meaning, and I know zie truly finds me beautiful, the problem still remains of juxtaposing a truth about me, my fat, with hir perception of me as beautiful. It translates in my warped, self-hating mind to hir loving me despite my fat. My fat is still bad, zie just tolerates it. That probably is not the case at all, but that is what happens in my head. My sister-in-law also makes such well-meaning gaffes. I try to talk about my fat as a morally neutral fact, in order to counter my fantasy of being thin, and it can help to a point, at least on the surface. She can always be relied upon to rush to reassure me that I am not fat! Not at all! She doesn't realize that she is assuming fat is always a bad thing. Then again, she and I are both dancers and have been subjected to the same brainwashing, so I can understand to a point why she does this. Her intentions are sweet, but not helpful at all.

All I want is to get a point where I don't actively hate my body and myself for having it.
Why the fuck does it have to be this hard?

Notes from the Den of Iniquity

Last night, while going to bed, my spouse and I had a discussion about how my sister tends to stomp every time she goes up the stairs.

Me: "I don't get it. I take pride in being able to move incredibly quietly for my size. Unless I'm angry. Then I want my footfalls to be like a portent of doom."

Spouse: "Baby, you are a portent of doom."

XD