Archive for March 17th, 2010
Yeah, you’ve heard that line before. It’s the title of a great John Mayer song. It’s also the title of my post. Deal.
So as I decided, or am at least slowly coming to realize, maybe what*I* see in myself in regards to all this fatness and these weight issues is not what the rest of the world is seeing. (read up on I See You See Me…Or Do I?)
I teach middle school kids from different countries. Mostly Somalia, though I do have a smattering of kids from other locales. I’ve been working with these kids for almost 17 years now, and very rarely have I ever thought of a kid in terms of their culture. I’ve never been angry with a kid because they speak a different language, wear different clothes or have different religious customs. I’ve been angry because the kid behaves like a jerk. I also work with regular American kids and I don’t find myself mentally judging them on the basis of their clothes, their grasp on language or their family life. Now, I might look at a 250 pound 6th grader who waddles down the hallway and worry about how she’s going to get picked on and bullied when she’s older, or what kind of health issues she’s going to have before she even gets to high school, but I don’t judge the quality of her character based on her outward appearances. In my job, I can’t do that. I mean it when I say I love people, regardless of where they came from and what they look like. I see religion, ethnicity and language tear down people, cause wars and continue to create hatred all over the world, and I don’t want to be associated with that. People are people when you strip it down.
The problem comes in applying this fundamental belief–that people are people regardless of their external appearances–to myself. Thinking back to this post’s title, I don’t trust myself with loving (other people’s opinion of me). It’s like this: because I’m fat, I can’t let myself believe that other people are capable of seeing through the fat to see the real me. Why? Because, often times, I can’t–therefore who else can?
I’ll be honest here: I hate compliments. I always have. Secretly, I love them, because I don’t hear them often, so I tend to relish them and replay them over and over, like my first radio-created cassette tape back in the early 80s (Tainted Love, anyone?). What I hate about them is the shock they create to my system, the jarring impact they have upon my brain. My brain tells me that I’m not supposed to be good at anything, or look nice, or have anything worth positively commenting on because I’m overweight. I’m not a good wife, I’m not a good mother, I’m not a good person because my jeans are size 16 and they should be an 8. I can’t possibly look nice in this shirt/sweater/dress because fat people don’t “look good”–they are lazy, no good gluttons without self-control. And who’s gonna really like someone like that?
Then I get a compliment and it sends me all out of whack. Until about the last two years, my immediate–and I mean IMMEDIATE–response to a compliment was to degrade it. Say something nice about my clothes and the standard reply is “Oh, it was the only clean thing in my closet.” Give me kudos for a job I did and it’s “Oh, geez. Even a monkey could do that.” Don’t even think about noticing my hair or lipstick or anything even closely personal, because my reaction becomes personal. “Really? You need glasses.”
I’ve always been this way–unable to accept even the simplest compliment. I remember years ago, someone commenting something about me, my smart-ass retort and mom being horrified at my reply. “Why can’t you just say thanks,” she’d hissed in my ear, my comment obviously embarrassing her by virtue of being her ungrateful daughter. I’ve had friends tell me the same after commenting positively on something. One friend got snippy with me: “Why don’t you just say thanks and shut the hell up?” Another replied that since I didn’t take his compliment, I was commenting on his lack of taste, which he did not find funny.
I have learned, since then, to at least superficially accept the compliment. Now, most times, I just quietly mumble, “thanks” and move on with my day. I may be able to accept kind words more graciously but that doesn’t mean I must (or can, or will) believe them. And this is what’s bothering me most: why can I not trust my own friends to make the same type of unbiased observations–based on the real me, not just the fat me–about me that I make with them? I’m friends with them because they offer me something I need in my life: a sense of humor, a listening ear, unconditional love and friendship…yet I don’t trust them to make a sound decision when complimenting me?
Maybe this fat thing has me more screwed up than I originally thought…