Archive for February 22nd, 2010
Part of the reason I decided to make my weight-loss diary public this time around, aside from the beautifully sadistic, self-induced public humiliation potential offered inherently through social media these days, is because I feel compelled to “think out loud” about why I’m here, at this point, in my life, at this time. And for what reason–but that might not come until I’m gone.
I’m tired of thinking all this stuff in the private of my own journals and diaries. Journals and diaries, yes, plural, meaning “more than one” (a grammatical fact my 6th graders have difficulty grasping no matter how often I reteach it). My first diary, a gold-edged beauty with “Diary” in elegant script right above the completely ineffective but cutesy key lock (rendered useless by the slide button to its left), a relic of the 3rd grade era, circa 1981, holds what may possibly be the earliest recorded self-hatred of my current body–the first in a sweeping saga of written accounts of how much I wanted to be (to the point of selling my soul for a can of Coke and a pouch of Pop Rocks) a skinny girl. I’ve written pages, more than enough for a series of novels, drawn illustrations, had dialogue, created “wish pages” with cutouts of girls I wanted to be when I “got skinny”. (Funny enough, I never dreamed much about “growing up”, just “getting skinny”). Looking over the Rubbermaid plastic tub full of these gems has taught me two lessons:
1. Writing in private is accomplishing nothing.
2. Fat girls are like onions
An explanation of number one isn’t necessary. All I do is write, rewrite, lament, cry, whine, hate and come back to writing about why I’m still shopping in the women’s and not the misses sections.
For number two, you may have a niggling voice in the back of your mind telling you you’ve heard that before, somewhere. You have–from Donkey. Remember when he and his best bud Shrek set out on their now-infamous trek across the Swamp and all Creation to reach Princess Fiona and Donkey wants to figure out his newfound companion? He offers Shrek the thought that ogres are like onions (and parfaits, a far tastier but much more calorie-dense comparison). Shrek might disagree where his ilk are concerned, but the more I think about my life as a fat girl at this time-and-place, the more I think Donkey meant to say that fat girls are like onions.
The biggest reason is that like onions, we have layers of hatred and disdain for ourselves all related to our weight issues. We didn’t wake up at age four and hate the chub rub under our Garanimal dresses, but at that point we knew we were slightly different than the girls who had twig legs that looked as if they’d snap under the weight of a heavy pair of tough kid corduroys. We’ve had life experiences skinny girls haven’t had that make us rethink ourselves, that create in our brain a sort of onion skin layer around a dark core capable of bringing us to tears. Some of those layers are created by things our families do or say, others by things we observe around us, life choices we have to make, comparisons we make to ourselves, society’s expectations and disappointments, hormones, genetic dispositions, minimal self-confidence, a media obsession equating waist size with the quality of the woman beneath. For each event or thought we subject ourselves to (or are subjected to) that undermines our love for ourselves, a thin layer of onion skin is created. Each time that thought is reinforced through actions or words–those of ourselves or others–the onion skin thickens.
Imagine almost 40 years of this onion-skin building…and the size of the onion I’m attempting to peel. Yikes. You’re gonna need a gas mask to cut into the heart of this baby. (And no, Martha Stewart, freezing the onion before cutting DOES NOT make you cry less. It just makes the onion slippery and slimy).
Now, for the good comparisons: we can be peeled. One tiny bit at a time, we can pull off one thickened onion petal and, through careful examination, discover the inherent and useful value of that bit of thought regarding ourselves. We can choose to toss it into the garbage disposal or set it aside. I remember one of my earliest experiences in science class with a microscope–examining cells in a sliver of onion. That’s the kind of introspection we’re talking here. Peeling off a layer and blaming it on someone (self or others) isn’t going to get to the core of who I really am, but trying to examine exactly why I’m here and why I’m the way I am is what’s going to get me motivated and going in the right direction.
It’s going to be hard work and it’s going to make me cry, like real onions. It will be dirty, smelly and scary. But the potential of discovering the real me–hidden by layers of journals, diaries and life experiences–is exciting to me. I want to know why I’m fighting this and why I put so much value into my weight determining how I feel about myself when I know damn well that lots of other areas of my life are really fabulous–so why does my pants size negate all that?
I’m really out of good, useful onion analogies, so I’ll leave you with this: you can either use them to bring out the flavor of whatever you’re making or keep burping them up–it’s your choice.