July 27, 2011
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It Hurts So Much To Be Big
I’m sitting here at my desk and, like I have been the last few days, I’m feeling horrible about myself. I’ve honestly been thinking I hate myself and want to die – because of my weight. It’s awful, awful, awful. I think if I try to write too much, I’ll never stop crying, and it would be hard to do my job with perma-tears and giant, wracking sobs.
I just missed a call from the accessibility center at school. I got in touch because the teeny desks with attached chairs in the classrooms are too small for me to fit into without discomfort. Yes, I’m too fat for a chair. I spend my time worrying about whether the restaurant’s booths are going to be too small for me to fit into, or whether that person on the street is going to call me fat, or if my coworker is looking at my shirt because it’s cute or because my belly makes it stick out like I’m pregnant. Almost every moment of every day is filled with this consciousness of my weight. Someone is walking by, suck your stomach in. Don’t make that facial expression, it shows your millionth chin too much. Breathe quietly, even if you are out of breath, so you don’t sound like the asthmatic fat person people make fun of in movies. You can’t do cartwheels, run through the sprinklers, make it to the top of that hill. You can’t be successful or beautiful. You can’t wear that. You can’t feel that. Your friends are disgusted by you. Your family is embarrassed of you. Nobody would ever want you. And on and on and on.
Every day I try to change and every day I fail at it.
This hurts too much to even talk about. I’ll try later, maybe.
[Note: This is not a "cry for help," and nobody needs to worry about me being suicidal or doing anything like that. I'm just ranting / freewriting. It pisses me off that I have to put a disclaimer on my own thoughts, but better safe than sorry.]
Comments (16)
I can’t tell you how sad this post makes me. It pisses me off that society makes you (a beautiful, smart woman, in fact probably smarter than half the planet!) feel this way. My daughter is a big girl and while growing up I saw her go thru so much crap because of other peoples attitudes, it broke my heart. All I can say is, your family is NOT embarrassed by you, your friends are NOT disgusted by you and f*ck everyone else. I think you’re awesome.
I identify with this. The booth thing is fucking embarrassing.
@comet555 - Love this.
everyone is so fad on being like skinny like models and dieting and being “beautiful,” even when you may not see it yourself.
issues with booths, etc….my boyfriend eric is overweight and i sense his tension when we are in these type of situations. he is very insecure and always makes remarks about how i don’t want to be with him, that i want someone new, etc. i do not judge by other people’s weight. people who judge are complete assholes. my best friend’s father makes remarks about eric’s weight to me all the time and it almost brings me to tears. eric doesn’t know this too. have a fucking soul people and quit being such dicknoses.
regardless, you are beautiful inside and out. you are a lovely person to me and it would be an honor to know you in person rather than our computer relationship. xo
I agree with comet555, and i KNOW how you feel. *hugs*
Well *I* think you’re fantastic, Shelly. Honest. I;ve loved you since I first joined Xanga in 2002. I know I’m not around much anymore, but I still think you’re radder than rad.
Anyone in your life who doesn’t see the beauty and strength in you is an asshole and doesn’t deserve your company. I have witnessed some ugly behavior aimed at people for their weight and makes me really sad. Don’t let the shallowness of some negate the depth of others. The people who matter love you. We all love you. <3
Your feelings are legitimate; feeling are *always* legitimate, even when they are feelings of sadness/anger directed inward towards ourselves.
You are worthy of love and respect. You have mine, and I suspect that many other people feel the same way. You are beautiful, intelligent, and caring. And big. Why does being big preclude you from being beautiful? Or intelligent? Or caring? It doesn’t. You are all of these things and *still* you are worthy of love and respect.
I know such comments might feel like hot air, especially when you’re down in the dumps. Why is it that it is so difficult to internalize someone else’s perception of us when s/he knows us well and is amazed, yet it is so easy to internalize the judgmental stares and hateful slurs of strangers? I hope that at least some of our love makes it out of fingertips and into your heart.
Finally, I don’t want to dismiss the challenges you face because of your body. I can imagine that it is embarrassing to ask for larger chairs in the classroom, and stressful to worry about fitting into a booth. I empathize. But in addition to empathy, I can offer you this: As an instructor, I promise to be sensitive to such issues. I will strive to create a space that accommodates a large range of body types, and I will treat all persons–skinny and fat alike–with dignity.
<3 I can completely empathize with this, feeling the same way myself lately. However, please know that you are one of the most gorgeous, intelligent, witty, vivacious, exuberant women I’ve ever known. You’re compassionate and lovely and opinionated. Fuck what the world thinks about size, they’re wrong anyway. Size does not a person make; rather, it’s what is in your heart, your personality, your humanity and Shel…you’re the best there is.
Shelly, I haven’t been on Xanga in so long – I feel I was meant to read this. I have been there… and still am in some ways. As beautiful as you are, intelligent, etc… the world is not cut out for those of us who are larger. Why? The world needs to catch up. Those fucking desks with the chairs attached are a disgrace; barely anyone can sit in them comfortably. I can honestly say I empathize and I wish I could give you a huge hug. Thank you for sharing this. It is very difficult to say “fuck it, who cares what others think” when it seems as if some moron designed everything to sit in.
you are beautiful. and i can say this from first hand, face to face experience. really. i know how hard it is to look in the mirror and genuinely believe that, because as women, we are told that nothing will ever be good enough and HOW DARE WE decide that we are beautiful, for ourselves. we have to sit and wait for outside validation to make that statement a fact. lies.
you, as a human being, inside and out, are gorgeous.
i hear ya, sister. I outweigh my boyfriend by over 100 lbs. I have a tough time in airplane seats, which I’m required to fly for work sometimes. My mom constantly takes me to little boutiques wanting to buy me clothes…which I will not fit in. So depressing. Call me and vent sometime. Plus, besides the superficial crap, I feel tired all the time. We gotta do something together. And I’m totally open to any suggestions.
Hey Lady
I listened to a really long interview with a bunch of people who hated how heavy they were on NPR a few weeks ago, I took an extra long lunch just to listen to it. I think the thing that really stuck with me, and that seemed to repeat in each person’s story, was that the burden of being heavy generally prevented these people from ever changing.
Like this one lady would talk all about how she used to be skinnier and that each day where she gained any pounds would be a new realization that she can’t be that skinny person anymore. She’d try to do diets and workout a lot but she couldn’t stick to any of them because of this overwhelming feeling that she was disgusted with how her body felt and looked and got reacted to. Like.. just having to put up with the idea that she ruined her body and that she might not ever get back how she used to look was enough to constantly push her off the path to ever improving how she looked. And having to deal with the ideas that she’ll have too much skin even if she loses weight, or that she has done serious unfixable damage to her body already, was so overwhelming that she’d be paralyzed.
She also talked about how she thinks she’s on the right track now. How before she used to torture herself for being so overweight by putting up skinny pictures of herself on the fridge, but now she’s just working on accepting exactly how she looks now so that she can work from there. She talked a lot about how working out and eating less is really difficult for anyone, but when you don’t feel like you have any hope of being attractive again the motivation completely dissolves. But now that she’s started to accept how she currently is, she feels like the burden of feeling disgusting is getting replaced with happiness which in turn gives her motivation to make steps to get in better shape.
I wish I could find it to send to you, but I guess my only advice would be to somehow find a way to find peace with your body the way it is, or at the very least make a truce, so that you can get rid of bad feelings and replace them with hope and motivation to make changes in your life that you want. It takes a lot of effort to change your body, and I don’t think that’s something you can do if you hate it.
Love you lady :*
- jeff
Op! I think this might be it?
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/25/138606501/one-womans-struggle-to-shed-weight-and-shame
I agree with Mr. Roboto. It takes a lot to change your body. Because before you can do that, you have to change the way you think first and we know how stubborn our brains are
You WILL find a kind of change that works for you.
Anytime, I feel like giving up on anything, I always turn to the words of Aleister Crowley:
“In the absence of willpower, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.”
It gets better