she ain't heavy

I'm sick of the weight given to weight. Tired of the social psychosis. I don't even know where I'm going with this really, so I'm just going to spew. If you are grounded in who you are, what the fuck does it matter? I wish that it didn't matter. I wish that all it took was a steely resolve, but it's hard to escape this crap without a dent. I was overweight. I never really let that define who I was, but that disconnect between how I viewed myself and how others viewed me and treated me was so unsettling. It was maddening to question my own value because of comments from idiots because I knew better. Juggling the two perceptions is exhausting.

Then I lost weight. I was glad I lost weight, but not because I thought, "Excellent. Now the world will see that I'm worthwhile." Sure, I was happy with the change in my appearance, but this was only one of the pros. I physically felt better. My heartbeat didn't skip around. My knees didn't hurt. I wasn't so tired all the time.

Nothing about the change in my appearance changed the way many comments made me feel. Telling me repeatedly how thin I am still amounts to dwelling on my outward appearance—the least important part of who I am. For good measure, add in asinine comments about "cheating" with what I might be eating or questions about what I am or am not allowed to eat.

And then there's this insane camaraderie that some feel with me. I was at a club with a friend of a friend and she commented to me about a woman on the dance floor who she felt was overweight. "I just want to go up to her and tell her, 'It's ok,'" she said. There was no indication that the girl needed consoling. She was dancing. She was enjoying herself.

A friend of mine is going through the tug of war with her self image and how others view her. She's gotten comments and is very unhappy with how she looks, but at the same time she confesses, "But I don't feel fat." She knows better. And she's right. She is not fat. She is absolutely phenomenal.

It just makes me want to scream.

The best reaction I've gotten from people about my weight loss is disbelief. Those people never saw my weight. They saw me.