For the last week or so I have been dwelling on something that happened to me recently. It wasn't a new experience. In fact it has happened so many times in my life that I've lost count. It shouldn't have been that shocking, but it still bothers me. Someone told me I was fat.
It's not like it was something I didn't already know, as has always been the case whenever someone has said it, nor was it meant in a malicious or hurtful way, though that is how I'm used to it being said. I know that the person who said it didn't mean to hurt me, and didn't know that it would hurt me, partially because I had just met them but also because they were a child. A young boy, maybe 6 or 7 years old. It was merely his observation of me. A realization. So why did it feel like I was slapped? All I could do was chuckle nervously and say "I know."
The odd thing is that until he said that, I had almost talked myself into not feeling like the fat girl anymore. The fat girl that I've been for almost 20 years. The fat girl who has been a fat girl since the first time someone told me I was. Since 4th grade when I started to get a little bigger than all my peers and John S. wrote in my grade school autograph book: "I never did like you anyway." I wasn't always a fat girl. In fact, up until about the 4th or 5th grade I was usually one of the smallest kids in the class. At some point I was even labeled by a pediatrician as a "failure to thrive" child. I clearly proved him wrong.
Even from a child I barely knew, "you're fat" stung just as much as it had from the kids that tormented me all through middle and high school. Just as much as when the boys in gym class called me "Big Ginny." I can't explain it and I can't rationalize it. It just hurt. And it made me feel like no matter how old I get or how much weight I lose, that fat girl is still there and she's still hurting. Though it shouldn't matter so much what other people think of me, I don't want to be the fat girl anymore. I don't want to have to feel the shame of overhearing a class of 4 year-olds say "We have a fat teacher this year." Or have a 5 year old ask me if I ate too much candy and cake because she was trying to figure out how I got so fat. I don't want to ever be described as "the heavy-set girl in the striped sweater" like I was when a customer called the store where I worked and tried to describe the cashier (me) who had helped him. Why was I not the girl with brown hair? Or the girl with the nice smile? Or even the girl at the first register? I don't want to feel like the DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) when in a group of girls that are much smaller than I am.
I'm doing the best I can to not be that girl on the outside anymore, but I'm afraid that she'll still be in my head, no matter what I look like. I've already seen that even 80 pounds and several sizes smaller, I still gravitate towards clothes that end up being too big for me. I look at something and think, "there's no way that will fit me." I still cringe when people sit next to me and feel like I'm taking up way too much space. I still get wary of sitting in a booth because I don't want to look ridiculous trying to squeeze into it, even though I've proven to myself that I can fit. I still worry about breaking chairs. I know that I'm a long way from being fit or being thin. According to all weight tables and charts, I'm still obese and I'm not under any delusions that I'm not. It won't matter what the scale says or what I look like if I can't fix the inside as well.
Growing up I was told that things get better. Just get out of high school and college will be so much better. It was, to some degree, and I'm finding that, for the most part, adulthood is better still. If I've learned nothing else from CrossFit it's that people are amazing and surprising. I was terrified to start CrossFit when I saw the kind of people that were members of my box. The guys in the box initially struck me as grown-up versions of the people who teased me in high school. I was afraid that I would be looked down on or made fun of as the fat girl trying to workout. For the first few months I tried my best to stay at the back of the room, behind everyone else, so that as few people as possible would see me, thus lessening the chances that they would have something to make fun of me for. In every case I found myself proved wrong and was shown nothing but love and respect and support from everyone I met in the CrossFit world. That alone has helped to renew my faith in mankind and change the way I view myself. I am so thankful that people like them exist in the world.
In the spirit of change, I've decided to lose some weight on my heart and in my head as well. I'm going to start with forgiving the people that have hurt me in the past. For every instance of cruelty that I remember with blistering clarity, there are certainly 10 more that have faded into insignificance. There are countless people that I have considered enemies for many years, but I struggle to remember exactly why. I can't give the past the power anymore. For every way it weakened me, moving forward I have to make my past the thing that makes me strong.
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