Fat and ok

The scale has to be lying. Sure, my clothes are a little tight, the size that I used to be isn’t anymore and I have developed 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th boobs, but I can’t have gained weight. Especially not that much weight. I can still walk place. I walk to work every day! I am constantly in the gym; I can’t have gained weight! But it’s true. I was 326.4 lbs., 148.05255 kg, 23.31428578228572 stone. Even in zero gravity the fact was undeniable. Morbidly obese one doctor said. From my smallest size I had more than doubled. I didn’t have anything that would make me gain so much weight; no thyroid problem, children, no real money. I was fat.

This was just another point of disappointing daughter that I had added to my resume; never graduated from college, wasted potential, incapable of being independent, no prospects, and now fat. If only I could just get my shit together. If only I was hit by a car. Or a train. I deserve to be dead. I don’t even have the guts to gut myself. If I don’t even have the willpower to stop eating, let alone make myself disappear. No one likes me fat. My own mother bemoans the fact that she has a fat daughter. How embarrassing! My father refuses to acknowledge my existence now. If he knew I gained weight? My sister, who has never been average weight (let alone overweight) had angry outburst about the fact that we do not address my weight properly, because I need to face the fact that I am fat.

I am a praying person. Not the person you see on bended knee for what seems like hours. But every time I get an angry thought about my body, I would pray to change it. Please make me skinny. If you make me a size 6, I will go to church every day. If I lose 10 lbs., I will never look at bread. I would deprive myself of everything, then binge on it later. I would meal prep and meal plan, eat things that I hated. I would absorb any negative thing said about me in the hopes that I would get some sort of inspiration to finally want to be skinny.

My mom has this photo of me at my sophomore year Homecoming. It’s a terrible picture, blurry and you can barely tell it is me. I am about 160 lbs., wearing this dress that I bought 2 hrs. before, super uncomfortable shoes. My shoulders are slumped; I have a pained smile on my face. My best friend’s mom took the photo. I remember afterwards I had to reapply the make-up that she put on me. I cried twice that night. Once when the guy I had a crush on rejected me. But the first time was because my mom and I had an argument. Not because of my grades or even because I dropped out of a prestigious private school. It was because I had gain 15 lbs. over the summer. The argument was basically my mother wondering where she went wrong, how she ended up with such a train wreck for a daughter. My mom now looks at that picture as what could have been she has it on the fridge to remind me that I can still get down to that size. I often think about that night. I also thing about the people who use me as a cautionary tale for their kids, the people who see me and think, “well, at least I am not that big”. It’s a thought that keeps me in bed on days that I don’t go to work. Every negative word I heard would carve out a piece of my being, which would be filled with food, as clichéd as it sounds. I would often sob as I ate whole cheesecakes, a burger and fries, and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s strawberry cheesecake. My mother hates my appearance; my father hates me. Food would never hurt me, except now I am the biggest I have ever been. How do I achieve my dreams now? What are my dreams? All I have even been focused on is losing weight, and I failed at that. If I couldn’t even do that, how was I ever going to do whatever it is I wanted out of life?

So now I am ready to admit that I am fat. I am now ready to admit that there is no shame in being fat. I am in perfect health, I can still exercise, I still try to eat as healthy as I see fit. I will do my best not to beat myself up (still a work in progress). I am going to go after what I want, because of what I look like. I am going to dedicate my life full tilt to being my authentic self, which is a fat black woman who is aware of the criticism and stigmatization that she will face and is ready to welcome it with open arms.