On Self Image, Weight, and Being Awesome.

I have recently decided I've spent enough time not being awesome.

This is a hard post to write, which means I should, but hang with me here while I sort my thoughts and push past my instincts to cover or twist the truth.

I'm fat.

I'm inclined to write something like, "big" or "heavy-set" or some other ridiculously cushy word designed to help me feel better about my weight. Calling something what it is strikes me as infinitely more effective, however. Thus, I'm fat. I am morbidly obese, in the most present and terrifying sense of morbid. If I do nothing, it will kill me.

It is difficult to be honest with myself about this, let alone the wide world of the internet. I know what happens when you put emotions online, or even out in the world. Even more terrifying, however, is the idea that I must face that I have failed myself so spectacularly, that it has not only cost me years of my life where I could have truly lived but could also cost me my life altogether.

Shortly after my family moved to Iowa, I found myself rather lacking in friends. I spent more time at home, playing games and reading. My mother was working and often I'd be left to myself. One day she came home and found that I had eaten an entire bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos. Not the small kind: the big bag. An entire bag, all by my little first-grade self. She was so upset, but looking back I realize she was actually scared. Looking back, I'm now sad and scared for little me. Little lonely me, who ate because she had nothing else to do and the chips tasted good.

I was never really conscious of what I was doing. I'd eat when I was hungry, or bored. I didn't eat when I was actively sad, but it's only looking back that I realize I'd eat to try and prevent the feelings of loneliness and boredom. The hardest part to face is really how much of it was my fault. I didn't have to be so lonely. I wasn't painfully shy, nor horribly socially awkward. Quite the contrary, I was a horribly arrogant and conceited person. I told myself I didn't want to be friends with my high school classmates because I felt smarter than all of them and that they weren't worth being close to.

But I remember wanting to go to a movie one night and the only two people I considered friends in town told me they'd rather be alone than be with me.

I should take a moment to thank Celia and Helena. The internet, and the people I've met here, saved my life many times over while I was in high school. I am indebted to them for both talking to me that night and listening to me cry.

I understand better now why I wasn't liked in high school. It was because I am weird; I don't exactly have the most normal interests. How could they possibly relate to someone who couldn't care less about the things they cared so much about? And why would they have wanted to be friends with me anyway? I poorly hid that I felt I was smarter than them all. I spent so much time acting above them that it's little wonder a few (and only a few to the great credit of my high school classmates) sought to drag me down from my high fucking horse.

I've placed so much value of myself in my supposed intelligence. My entire self-worth has been balanced on this trait that I've held to be singularly true: I am smart, probably smarter than most of the people around me. That simply isn't true, though. I am above average, perhaps, but I am not that intelligent, and certainly not in an all-encompassing sense. I lack knowledge in so many areas, and my wisdom about the world is so severely lacking as to be comical. Even as I write this, however, I can't quite bring myself to really believe it. A large, perhaps a fat, part of me clings to this idea that I'm worth something because of my brain.

Because that's the only part of me I feel is worth anything.

Just writing that is hard. Allow me to write it again.

I feel the only worth I have is based in my intelligence and without that, I'm worth nothing.

Telling myself that isn't true is beyond my scope right now.

I am starting to realize why so much of my self-hatred stems from appearance. I tell myself it doesn't matter to me. If they (they being them, the plebeians who are not me, the sad fools) don't like me despite my appearance, well, they don't deserve me and my precious mind and insight then.

That's just stupid though. The sentiment, minus some of the arrogance, isn't the worst; yes, who I am should mean more than just what I look like. But who I am includes what I look like, and even I don't like my appearance. Why in the world should I expect other people to look past that when I can't?

It's not a great day when you realize you wouldn't want to be your own friend. That you would look at yourself and go, "How'd she get to that size?"

I know exactly how I did. I ate and sat my way to it, refusing to believe it wasn't just self-loathing and depression.

I am not this body. I am not this person trapped in this mountain of fat. I have more worth than to let myself crush my body under my own weight.  I am not yet sure where that worth comes from, but I know I am better than the person I was five years ago.

I might not want to be my friend yet but I will. I will be awesome, and part of being awesome is being healthy.

I have lost twenty pounds already and I will lose the rest. I will be vicious to myself, and I will be celebrate my victories, and soon, I will meet the person that my family and friends all see in me.

I hear she's pretty damn cool.