If I saw a therapist today, I could only imagine what she’d think about my still-hot anger for a person I have only seen maybe four times (in passing) in the last twenty years. But I could very well tell you right now what that therapist will try to sell me in terms of my fat girl life: that if I let go of the resentment, I’ll let go of the weight.

There are so many–SOOOooooo many–bullshit lines us fat girls get fed on a regular basis that skinny girls don’t get. From diet programs and books to therapists who’ve never been fat a day in their life to well-meaning health care people to average people who want to “give advice”, everyone has a saying to offer to the fat girl. Curious? Here’s a smattering:

“Nothing tastes better than skinny feels.”
“You’re hiding behind the fat because it feels safe.”
“Do something with your hands, like knitting or sewing, and you’ll eat less.”

Can you imagine telling a skinny girl who wants to put on weight that she’s hiding behind her skinniness because it feels safe? How ridiculous is that? People think they’re helping with their free advice and commentary, but what they’re doing is proving just how stupid they really are. Weight loss comes down to two simple steps that anyone can comprehend: eat less, exercise more. Period.

Back to this thought that if I could “release” my anger, I’d “release” my extra weight. I know you fat girls have heard something similar over the years, and, like me, you’d rather just watch the offender/bully slathered in honey and tied to a red ant hill. Sure, I may still have some lingering self-image problems because of the bully but I’m not lugging around 60+ pounds of an extra ass because I won’t forgive the bitch.

If that were the truth–if losing weight was as easy as forgiving all the transgressions of others against us over the course of our years, don’t you think we’d have done it already? No, thanks. I’d rather have that bitterness somewhere inside so when I do my Wii Boxing, I have someone’s face to imagine on the targets.

This isn’t a self-loathing kind of thing. I don’t sit around thinking of myself as “the fat girl” and cry Kleenex boxes dry, all the while munching a can of Pringles and sipping away on soda. I won’t lie, though–comparing myself to others, noting my extra fleshy bits compared to their wafer-thin profiles does, at times, send me into fits of self-hatred and spits of bad words directed at my reflection–most often, when I’m unfortunate enough to have to try on something new in a fitting room. The grip of being a fat girl has lost its power to make me drop into a sobbing heap and compare my life to nothing for days at a time, but it’s still there, lurking.

And I want to know where it came from.

I’ve been pondering this and, as a result, have come up with a startling revelation: I am the originator of seeing myself as a fat girl but not by myself. (Dad’s nickname didn’t start until well into high school, maybe even college. By then, the damage was done.) Even though I was in a 6X at age six, I didn’t see the X as a negative. I wore a bigger size only because Patti and Alice commented that I wore a bigger size. I didn’t have any idea of what size girls wore in kindergarten and first grade. I was more worried about getting picked for the freeze tag team at recess and in making sure I had enough fat pencils to write on my fat-lined green flecked paper during handwriting time. (The theme of elementary writing does not escape my observation) I didn’t lament the issue that Dina, Cathy and Darla were probably wearing 4T jeans to my 6X: as a first grader, size didn’t mattter.

I don’t think that size ever mattered throughout elementary. Sure, there are bits and pieces of random comments I recall from Patti and Alice about jean sizes while shopping, or a reminder that I didn’t need to eat “all of that”, or that I should go out and play instead of watching Tom & Jerry some days after school. Those are the suggestions all moms and grandmas make to their kids. I wasn’t a lazy kid; I was active. I liked to veg out on occasion just as much as others, but I had a great group of neighborhood (if you could call the houses my friends lived in that bordered the edge of my parents’ field as a ‘neighborhood’) friends, and we were always doing something, into something, getting in trouble for something.

I know that there were times in 4th and 5th grade that brought my taller size (in looking back, I still don’t consider myself “fat” at those ages. I was one of the two tallest girls in 1981′s class photo, and there were other, more qualified entrants in the fat contest for that picture, name and initials withheld because graduating with a class of 54 kinda makes it easy to single folks out) made me self-conscious, made me wish my legs were only made of bones and skin like the other girls’, not bones, skin and a layer of blubber and that my chub rub would magically disappear, but overall I don’t remember feeling (or being made to feel like) a fat freak of nature incapable of being considered a normal human.

No, those thoughts didn’t arise until 6th grade and the period of time I’ve consider the 180 Days of Howard to Bladensburg Hell, aka The Daily 28 Mile (round trip) Bullying Session. As luck had it, my friend Michaela and I managed to snag the next-to-last-seat on the right side of the bus that first day, the day that determined our bus seating arrangement for the remaining 179 days. As unluck had it, the 8th graders behind us wanted their friends to sit in the seat, not a couple of snot-nosed 6th graders. Instead of being intrepid youths, we were bullheads and refused to move, thereby cementing the name-calling and bullying for ourselves, twice a day for the rest of the year.

The two bullies, let’s call them Deidre and Kathryn, took it upon themselves to never let us forget that we had stolen the seats their friends evidently earned as a birthright. The 2 bullies were a little more lenient toward Michaela, for one reason: her brother was in 8th grade and a friend of both girls. Me, on the other hand, had no such luck. In fact, Deidre had haunted and taunted me for years–as we had been in the same Girl Scout troop, the same 4-H Club and lived within half a mile of each other. She despised me from the start, for whatever reason I never knew, and appointed herself the Queen of Mean when it came to me. You think I’d have had the smarts to steer away from her but the seat was just too good and we hit numerous bouncy spots on the ride every day–jolts that couldn’t be felt in the front seats.

I think back and wonder if I’d have developed such a strong dislike for myself in those (and subsequent) years if I’d have had the smarts to move to a seat away from her, but…who knows at this point.

From almost the first day, I remember her comments. She started low and quiet, almost as if she might convince me that I was hearing things, or that if questioned, neither of her two seat mates (another friend of theirs, Dora, sat in the single last seat on the right side and was also an 8th grader–but she was nice to me) would be able to swear they heard her. Deidre’s first comments were about not my body but my trumpet. Yes, my trumpet. My parents didn’t have the money to fork over for a new piece of shiny brass like hers had, but I still wanted to be in band. Grandma R. remedied this by digging out the coronet my dad had played in the high school band. Deidre’s case was shiny, hard, gray plastic. Mine was circa 1964, fake leather covered veneer with a very becoming red velvet interior and the scent of valve oil from years gone by. The case was formed almost exactly in the shape of the coronet (hers was smooth, rounded and had flip-snaps) and the bell of the case was worn and shaggy. I didn’t mind–I thought it was kind of cool that I’d be playing the same trumpet dad did.But it was a carved invitation to Deidre to start picking apart what little self-confidence I had.

“Where’d you get that trumpet? A junkyard?” she’d whisper against the window from the seat behind me, mean spite dripping from her words. “It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.” I’d scootch away from the window, more toward the middle and get Holly into a conversation to avoid being near Deidre’s mouth.

My proximity from her mouth increased but she’d successfully bored into my brain. In the world of 6th grade, I didn’t know the rules–that to be popular, you had to wear the right thing, dress the right way, have the right hairstyle and makeup (which I wasn’t allowed to use until 8th grade), hang out with the right people, and have the right parents. As I discovered over the course of the school year, I had none of those. Each day it was a stomach-sinking adventure to discover which of those elements I lacked any certain day.

Her snarls ranged from my clothing (“Are those hand-me downs? Don’t you own a pair of Jordache jeans? Wrangler jeans are ugly. Nobody wears a sweater vest. Don’t you have any Nikes? Nikes are just the best. A sweater with a horse is totally ugly. Who wears purple penny loafers besides geeks?”) to my appearance (“Hey, buck teeth–here’s a carrot. If you walk so pigeon-toed all the time, you’re going to trip yourself. Your perm is so ugly/frizzy/curly/short. Your nose is so ugly it looks like a bird beak. You better not ask anyone for crackers or they’ll think you’re a parrot.” (This one she took all the way to high school. When I was a freshman in band class, she had the upperclassman nickname me “Polly”, as in “Polly want a cracker?” She was the reason I left the trumpet section to pursue a career in the percussion section on the marimba. And by upperclassmen, I actually mean everyone in the band from the lowest to the highest members.)) to my social status (“You have loser friends. Your boyfriend is a loser because he isn’t on the football team. Who has boyfriends not on the football team? No boys will dance with you at the dance if you wear that. If you were as popular as me, all the boys would like you.”)

She commented about my parents, my sister, my grades and my friends. If there was a subject she could degrade me about, she didn’t save it for later. She made it known. As the year progressed, she even got her seatmates to make comments about me.

The most unique facet to Deidre’s raging meanness toward me was that she never (as much as I can recall–remember, this is coming from age 11) called me fat. She was my first experience with a mean girl (and by far, the worst I’ve ever encountered in life) and I had so little awareness of what to do and so little actual self-confidence at 11, I had no choice but to believe her. She never called me a fat girl but did make it known what girls she considered fat. One of the nicest 8th graders, and one who became my friend in high school when she joined me in the percussion section from the trumpet section (interesting correlation there), T.A., was a taller, bigger girl too. Not in my wildest dreams would I have considered her fat. She was beautiful, with her Charlie’s Angel flipped hair and bright smile. But Deidre commented nearly daily when T.A. got on the bus at her stop about T.A.’s “thunder thighs” and “wide hips”–a comment I remember Deidre making out loud in high school band.

No, Deidre and The Evilettes never called me fat or really brought my weight into question. But with her/their constant, continual barrage of insults and bitch-rants (I was such a threat in my Wranglers, plaid-snap shirts, purple penny loafers and bad Toni-home permed hair), I soon became aware that one way to stem the tide of tears I’d cry about three times a week into my Care Bear pillow case was to be a step ahead of the hatred. I would lie in bed in the mornings before boarding the bus and dream up what new, fresh hell these meanies would greet me with. It was easier to take their hatred if I hated myself first–and hated myself worse than they did. I ran through every possible disgusting, mean, ugly, uncouth truth about me that I could muster, feeling slightly triumphant as I clomped down the bus steps each day in my uncool Converses if I had come up with a way to rag on myself that they hadn’t realized. It was a game, a challenge, a puzzle: hate yourself worse than others then they can’t hurt you. That became the lesson of the 6th grade, more so than learning how to read novels and pre-algebra equations.

It worked like a charm. I don’t remember when I first came up with the belief that I was a fat girl–no doubt a subliminal creation aided by their commentary on T.A. and other innocent bus-riders–but it was my go-to answer. I could start with that one and work my way down, hoping against hope that they didn’t call me fat because I’d have to really do some searching that night in addition to my science homework. Reflecting back, it really was a sick state of mind to think that I took pleasure in “knowing” I was fat but not having them call me fat. Like I was hiding a secret in my size 10 Wranglers while they sat perfectly unaware in their size 6 Jordaches. I had something on them and they weren’t going to get it.

Even if they didn’t call me fat, the thought started me thinking of myself that way. Boys didn’t dance with me at the Jr. High dance–not because I was a shy wallflower afraid to talk to them but because I was fat. I got a tiny role in the school play not because I didn’t try out for the lead, but because I was fat. No one tried to kiss me behind the baseball dugout because I was fat–not because the boys always went for the easy girls and I wasn’t one.

The name-calling began early and it began hard and continued unrelenting, not from someone outside myself, as I’d like to think. It came from me. Indirectly I can blame the bullies, for without their chiding, I wouldn’t have had the need to scrounge up the worst parts of myself and highlight them for future reference. But directly, the advent of viewing myself as a fat girl and living life as such has but one sole point of reference…myself.

There seems to have been a golden age of Beth that began circa 1986 and ended sometime around 1989, where, even with a higher weight than the circle of most of my friends (there are a few bigger girls in my circle, though we never really compared notes. Everyone in my high school class–for the most part–was friends, period. Of course there were exceptions. But we were, as a majority, an exception), super-puffy 80s hair helped by hideous home perms and eyebrows that I lovingly referred to as “the caterpillars” (thank God, never the “Unibrow”), I didn’t let my weight issues stop me from doing anything. Almost anything, I’m sure, because there were probably times I didn’t do something I wanted to because I felt too ugly or fat to do them, but the majority of my high school social career was rarely influenced by my weight.

The major way my weight impacted me then was that I just didn’t even dream of talking to guys as potential boyfriends. I didn’t flirt whatsoever because I had an unnatural fear of inducing laughter. I was the best- friend-girl every guy had. If guys wanted to ask a girl out, or wanted to know what a girl thought of them, I was the girl to do that. I’d work it into casual conversations (you must know that the only girls guys wanted in high school were the athletic types or the cheerleaders, and going to a school so small where you knew everyone did have its advantages. I talked to almost every girl on a somewhat regular basis). I was the matchmaker of the year–in fact, to this day, a few of my most successful projects still exist in marriage form.

But I wasn’t the girl who asked guys out, and I was the girl only asked out by default. So I don’t really have many tales to tell of being at all the high school drinking parties held by the jocks when their parents went out of town because I wasn’t a cheerleader dating one of them. I don’t have the memories of romantic love in high school (insomuch as that’s actually possible) because that happened only rarely. (Three times. One ended up being a mistake because the guy and I were better suited to being friends, the second because the guy had such guilt issues over a former girlfriend that he dumped me to run back to her, and the third was probably the worst mistake of my high school life because he dumped me (and lied about it) because his father didn’t think my parents made enough money, that I wasn’t smart enough and I was not pretty enough for him to date. But that’s another topic for another post.) I don’t have memories of sneaking out to meet boyfriends (but I do have memories of sneaking out, so let’s clear that up now) because I didn’t have that kind of boyfriend. I didn’t have the courage to. I didn’t fit into a cheerleading skirt and I didn’t parade myself around in tight jeans, so I don’t have the memories of ever being that kind of girl.

If I have few memories of being the desired girl in high school (rest assured, I have tons upon tons of high school memories–that was a good time in my life–just not of being all I wanted to be because of the fat), I have but a rare handful from college. It’s one of the laments of my life, that I don’t have the memories of college that others have. When we went to my sorority reunion last month, the girls (I sat at the table with the founders because I was in the first class–but that was my first and only year at that college because I got married that summer and we moved away) jabbered about a million memories they had of college. Of pulling crazy all-nighters, of bar-hopping in different cities, of socials and dances and silly things they did that made them the silly, wonderful people they are today.

Those are hard to listen to because I don’t have them. Partly a combination of being afraid of myself because of my fat (it became painfully obvious, even as a freshman in college, that I was never meant to be one of “those girls”) and because I spent my college years as a wife, then soon after, a mother going to school, I get a little melancholy when my friends start reminiscing about college memories. Aside from my first year and the sorority girls, and the last year, when a core of us student taught together, there aren’t any memories for me of fun in college. It’s like a blank, black canvas where I desperately wish to see something but nothing comes up.

Part of that is due to my marriage and the kid coming along. It’s hard to justify qualifying for beer bong nationals in a toga when your husband is coaching until ten p.m. and your kid will need a diaper change between now and then. I don’t lament the parties I missed, though–I wasn’t a partier or big drinker. What I lament are college friendships and goofy memories of road trips, study sessions and social stuff.

When I start thinking in this line, it gets to be a circular vortex of blame and dislike. Of myself, of course. If I’d have had more confidence (believe me, the baby weight didn’t help. In fact, it was the beginning of my weight hatred for the last two decades), maybe I would have branched out and made friends. It isn’t a case of the hubby keeping me home. We could have hired a babysitter and he wouldn’t have cared if I’d have gone out with friends.

I just hated myself, so deeply to the core of myself because of my weight, that I figured no one else would like me, either. I didn’t know any of my college colleagues with baby weight, didn’t know any who had kids, didn’t fit in. It was a lonely, hollow place to be. A busy husband without time, a kid to take care of, college to work on, a household to run and a self-loathing that made me cry most mornings. Not too many good recollections can be built upon those memories, eh?

Studying and learning became my world. Thank god a large portion of me is a nerd and loves being consumed by a textbook on Mesoamerican History or a research project on linguistic differences, because if I hadn’t had that, I might have ended up at the funny farm. At least when I studied or researched or wrote, the outside world dissolved and I could pull strength from knowing I was going to be smarter than half the people on Jeopardy someday soon. I read voraciously, wrote constantly and ignored the fact that I’d never really have the kind of friends I’d had in high school and that no one really wanted to do anything with me.

Maybe it was my attitude, maybe postpartum depression, maybe being in a still-new marriage and not knowing my role, maybe living in a new city where people didn’t like you if you didn’t have old money and would tell you that, maybe it was driving to a college where I didn’t have a single friend and never really fit in, or maybe it was because I was a commuter and not on campus to grow myself as a college girl that kept me from creating all the tales my college-finished friends tell now–but what I do know is that I blamed most (if not all) of my pain during those years on being a fat girl. In a strange way, realizing that I didn’t have any strong friendships from my college years was much, much easier to tolerate and stomach if I just blamed it on being fat. Nevermind the fact that I could have gotten out and done something (though god knows what because I had no idea even where I’d have begun) to make friends–blaming my fat for all my problems was easier than admitting how horrible every single facet of my life was at that time. The world around me was alive, vibrant and dynamic. I was closed in the shell of a person who used to be that way but had made some life choices and had such a poor image of myself as a valuable person that I didn’t know how–I didn’t believe–I was worthy to participate.

Not until my late 20s, after I left my first teaching job to take a new teaching job in a new district–the greatest single decision of my career–did I ever feel I had the right to participate in life. Those are some dark days when I reflect back, and I don’t think they’re completely behind me. I still feel myself occasionally slip back into the horrible confines of that glass-walled box when my self-confidence starts to wane and I feel myself put up a barrier based on my weight rather than an acknowledgment of the reality of the situation I’m facing, but I work hard not to. I’ve missed so many life memories already because it’s easier to blame the fat rather than attack whatever insecurity is causing it…I want to have more tales to tell.

Last night around 3am, I realized that the cruise hubby booked us for will be here in exactly 60 days from today. I also realized this morning that while I lost another pound in the last two weeks (thanks, Wii Fit), I really should kick this weight loss thing into a high-gear mode for the hell of it, to head into the cruise without a bulging gut. Mind you, it’s much less bulgy than two months ago, but wouldn’t a smaller gut just be fabulous?

There are 9 weeks between now and D-Day (departure day) and what are the chances that I can snap off another 10 pounds like I did between January and now? Granted, I won’t have the appetite-suppressing power of discovering shocking truths about my life to keep me from eating, but I do have a new-found awareness of how to eat smaller and add exercise to be successful. The problem is that I have a hard time sustaining anything for that long of a period. I know this about myself.

But the cruise is the light at the end of the tunnel to work toward. Don’t get your hopes up and think I might actually pack a swimsuit because I won’t. But I wouldn’t mind looking a little more slim in my capris. The question is…if I create a new plan, can I follow it without giving up? I really have nothing to lose, do I? Plus the days are guaranteed to be a little nicer, meaning a little more walking will be possible…and technically, March 13th is the end of my original ten week goal. So just add another goal on top of that one, right?

I hope I’m not getting too carried away here. But I think I’m gonna try…

One of the questions all of those books ask to some degree is a question I hate passionately–

“When you lose all the weight you want, what will you do with your life that you don’t do now?”

I pass this off as an underhanded way for the shrinks behind the books (none of which are EVER sporting a spare roll in their impeccably-presented back-cover publicity head shot) to get a dig in on us fat girls to make us think that our weight isn’t really a problem and that we can do anything we want.

I get the gist, the intended empowerment behind the question, but I also get pissed off because there isn’t anything I *don’t* do with my life that I want to do because of my weight. I’m not afraid of public speaking (my nerves aren’t from my fatness, they’re from my shaky voice), I don’t sit on the sidelines if I want to do something, I don’t use my fat EVER as an excuse not to participate with friends or doing anything I want to do. I just do it. I hate excuses so I avoid them for myself at all costs, and fat or no fat, there isn’t anything I’m not going to do if I want to do it.

Ummm, sorta. The one thing I physically can’t bring myself to do yet is skydive. Now, mind you, this isn’t going to be an everyday thing. I just want to do it. And yes, the weight tables say I can be up to 250 pounds. I’m under that but I am still slightly scared that if I’m not on the lower side of 200 first, I might get a faulty line. So, OK, I’ve put off skydiving. For now.

For some reason, the other day I applied this thought to the whole of my life, not just the really big things and discovered something alarming: I might live parts of my life differently if (when) I hit that skinny target. My list is only four details long at the moment but now that I’m on this line of thought, it may grow.

Curious? Of course you are or you wouldn’t have read this far. In no particular order:

1. Shorts: I’d wear ‘em. In public. Right now, my thunder thighs combine with the cellulite of family genetics to produce two horribly dimpled legs where I’d like nice legs to be. I can hack the chub rub (we’re like sisters now) but the cellulite I hate.

2. Nakie Time: (that’s pronounced “na-key” time in case this is new to you). A term coined years ago during a wonderfully wild post-summer camp skinnydipping session (wait til I tell you about that one…), nakie time in my own life doesn’t happen. By nakie time, I mean walking around naked without reservation. Mind you, this isn’t coming into play during family Christmas gatherings or the 4th of July pool party. It’s with the hubby. Yeah. Rounding the curve of 20 years of marriage and I am still, to this moment in time, petrified to let him see me completely naked. It just doesn’t happen. And if it does, by accident, I practically hyperventilate. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that mental issue gone? I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be naked anywhere but between the sheets. I just can’t. That’s pretty sad.

3. Fashion: It’s not that I’m not moderately fashionable now. I’m hip in a middle-school English teacher/mom/coach’s wife sort of way. I’m not floppy and frumpy and baggy. I’m somewhat trendy, depending on the day and the mood. But I’d like to be able to wear some of the really pretty stuff out there that my brain chides me for even looking at. The real secret is that I want to be a Kardashian sister but don’t tell my brain. It may explode. Actually, they’re gorgeous and that’s an extreme. Mildly fashionable in a refined woman sort of way will be my angle. When I get there.

4. Clothes: On the same note, I want to wake up some splendid morning and head straight to my closet without hesitation or fear and pick out the outfit that I *WANT* to wear that day, not the outfit I *FEEL* like I should wear, based on my a)bloating b)mindset c) self-hatred and loathing d) what I think I will look OK in. I buy clothes because I like them, so doesn’t it make sense that I should like wearing them? I have a couple of pieces I love but don’t have the courage to wear. We’re not talking thigh-high boots (though they would hide the cellulite…) or mini dresses, but sweaters that show a tiny bit of cleavage or a skirt that hits just above the knees. If I wear any of those things now, I have to talk myself into it for a period of no less than two weeks prior. And even then, I chicken out.

What’s really disappointing is that I think I would feel safer jumping from a plane with a parachute strapped to my back than walking around in shorts during the summer. Wonder if they have naked skydiving…..