My Fat Life Is Awesome #4: Walking

The other day, I referenced the way I exchanged e-mail with someone I loved about everything I ate and every bit of exercise I did. When we started, it was a simple matter of saying that I had taken my 30 minute up a hill with a grade so steep that it was almost a vertical climb. In two years, that hill never got easier because he encouraged me to keep my exercise at an intensity that caused me pain.

Each time the hill got bearable, it was time to add something else, more weight to my backpack, more exercise later in the day, more intensity to my climb, whatever it took to make me sweat hard and feel the pain in my muscles. By the end of the first year, I was exercising every free minute of my day and falling into bed with every muscle in my body singing with pain. By the end of the second year, I had found ways to keep my muscles sore every minute of the day whether it "counted" as exercise or not. Mostly, I employed a habit of contracting and releasing different muscle groups while I was riding the bus and sitting in class. A muscle that's moving is burning more calories than a muscle at rest.

Activities that had been enjoyable had become exercises in making my muscles hurt without making them hurt so badly that my doctor scolded me for not being smarter about how I was exercising. There were no days off. I could rest for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday, but it was better if I could be cleaning house with an intensity that made me ache and dancing while doing it. It was better if I could find an excuse to walk two miles to the gym and swim for an hour before walking home. Walking didn't count unless I was breathing hard and sweating.

I developed plantar fasciitis in my left foot, tendonitis in both elbows, and was icing my knees when I went to bed because they hurt so badly. None of that mattered because it would all vanish when I was thin. I just had to keep working hard and sooner or later, my body would have no choice about the weight. I built up so much muscle mass that I dropped six dress sizes without losing a single pound. When he left, he told me that he'd been disappointed in me for not trying harder because I would have lost weight if I had really cared. I had known him for six years and it was the first time I ever got angry with him. I hadn't spent two years suffering daily pain in every inch of my body to be told that I just didn't care.

After a couple of years of trauma-induced depression and not exercising, I went for a walk one day and discovered that muscle memory is a rather powerful force. Walking and swimming were not only devoid of joy, but I ended up hurting myself because my muscles wanted to work like they had never stopped. I've spent the last two years trying to figure out how to exercise without triggering my muscle memory and hurting myself.

Tonight, I had a rare victory.

The moon was full and reflecting off of the clouds in a ghostly fashion. The air was the perfect temperature, soothingly cool without a hint of the chill that makes my lungs lock up. I stepped outside and strolled around the block like I always used to before exercise consumed two years of my life. I remembered what it was like to look at the stars and dream about private things. I noticed the scents of the autumn foliage. I felt the breeze in my hair and remembered dreaming of meeting somebody kind.

I didn't count my steps or my minutes or my pulse. I didn't try to figure out how much of my dinner I was burning off. I simply walked and enjoyed doing so for the sake of simply being alive. I hope that I can make this a more regular part of my life. I miss how much I enjoyed walking before it was turned into a means instead of an end in itself.

Given how many pieces of my soul I reclaimed this year, I don't think that's going to be a problem.

Oh By The Way

The decision to write about rape is always a difficult one for me. I am not uncomfortable with the subject, but many people have reactions to it that are uncomfortable for me to deal with. It's challenging to have conversations with people who think that I am a liar or who wonder how much of what I say is because of what happened to me. Many people assume that it is impossible for me to be rational about anything just because I have survived something horrific. It's much easier to have conversations when my comments are not loaded with other people's perceptions of what a rape survivor is like.

Surviving rape is a lot like being fat in that way. Because I am fat, anything I say about food is loaded by other people's perceptions of my relationship with food. I do not mention food around most people because I don't want to get dragged into endless conversations about what I should or shouldn't be eating and how I should and shouldn't be thinking/feeling about food. I battle misinformation when I have the energy for it, but I don't have the energy for it when I'm sitting down to a nice meal with a friend. I would like to be able to enjoy my meal with my friend and talk about things not related to food.

Accepting and valuing my body as it is has been an important component in healing from the damage caused by rape. Valuing my body just the way it is has been essential to setting and enforcing healthy boundaries and learning to expect people to respect me and my boundaries. It was a revelation to me when I discovered that I have every right to be arbitrary about who I allow into my personal space. I get to make that decision based entirely on my wants and needs without having to explain any part of that process to another human being.

I get to make all of my personal decisions that way. That's why they are personal. I am the boss of me. Fat Acceptance is one of the ways in which I exercise the body autonomy that I learned in rape recovery.

Making my music video was part of exercising my autonomy. I chose how much of my body I was willing to show to the wide range of people that inhabit the internet. I made that choice based on reasons that don't have to mean anything to anybody but me. I feel comfortable with the choices I made and the outcome of those choices. I am intensely proud of that video.

I am intensely proud of the person I am becoming as I learn to exercise my autonomy and set healthy boundaries for myself and refuse to tolerate the company of people who tear me down, however well intentioned they think they are being about it. I haven't had to deal with any jerks for ages, so I have had the energy to do many things I never had the energy for when I was dealing exclusively with jerks. My writing has been improving. I have completed projects that seemed impossible. I have discovered that there are plenty of people who think I am awesome just because they think I'm awesome. I happen to think they are awesome too.

Since my rape recovery process has been such a large part of why I have embraced fat acceptance and become the confident person I am today, I want to tip my hat to the counselor who gave me the tools I have used to rebuild my sense of worth and personal boundaries. I want to be able to mention the process that taught me that loving myself is more important than pleasing others. Most of all, I want to be able to say that survival and recovery isn't a simple matter of trying to forget, but is a multi-layered process of relearning how to live when it seems pointless to try. It's hard and it sucks and it isn't fair, but getting to the other side is worth the fight.

Finding this space where I am valuable and loved is worth all of the trial and error and stumbling and failing that it took for me to get here. Fighting for yourself is never a losing battle, even if it seems like you haven't been winning for a long time.

So, screw worrying about awkward, challenging, and uncomfortable. If people have a problem with my fat acceptance or my rape survival, it's better to have it out in the open than wander around feeling like I have something hide. I am not the one who is doing something wrong because somebody hurt me and I am doing my best to deal with the aftermath of that. I am not broken or stupid or irrational or dishonest. I am simply the wonderful person that I am and somebody chose to hurt me once. Ok, more than one somebody chose to hurt me more than one time, but that wasn't something I invited or failed to protect myself from. That's something they chose to do.

If people are going to get mad about it, I'll tell them who they should be mad at because it certainly isn't me, unless I have done something directly mean or harmful. In that case be mad at me for what I did, not for what I experienced in the past. I don't use it as an excuse for my present behavior and I defy anybody who accuses me of doing so, especially considering that such people have no argument beyond, "Well, you were raped, so everything you do is because of that." Yeah, and the devil made me do it and I have no impulse control when Twinkies are involved. Give a girl a break.

My Fat Life Is Awesome #3: Flirting

When I went to see Mika in Seattle on October 26, I spent two nights in a hotel so that I could spend some time with my friends while I was in the city because I don't get over there more than once or twice each year.

While I was there, every attractive guy I ran into flirted with me. I suppose I started it with my unapologetic eye contact and genuine interest. I know that the attention I was getting was more positive than I have ever encountered before. I felt interesting, mysterious, and attractive. I found out that there's a lot more to me and my life than allergies, bad knees, and a background fit to make anybody cry.

I am a writer with a knack for making people laugh while I blush furiously because I really didn't mean it that way. Hills knock the wind out of me, but don't put a dent in my enthusiasm for having a good time. I love a good show and have more than a few geeky tendencies.

People enjoy my company and want to know more about me. People really enjoy hugging me.

Knowing all of this stuff makes my life very different. I used to enjoy attention from jerks because it was the only attention I thought I could get. I used to tolerate abuse because I thought it was the price I had to pay for that attention. I thought I had to pay it because I was ugly and gross and nobody wanted to touch me. The jerks who gave me positive attention made it clear they didn't want to touch me. They said they were doing me a favor, giving me a kindness nobody else would want to.

Now, I know that people think I'm awesome, fat and all. I flirt with people who are attractive to me and they flirt back. I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up flirting with someone and we fell in love with each other. I would just say, "Well, it's about time!"

How It Started

I spent two years writing down everything I ate and every bit of exercise I did. I e-mailed that with weekly weigh-ins and meal plans and monthly measurements to a man I loved because he told me that the size of my belly was a sign that I didn't care about myself or our relationship. If I really loved myself, I'd be thin.

He and I had many discussions in which he tried to tell me that I shouldn't even be allowed the 25 calorie chocolate truffle I had after lunch every day or that walking six miles and taking an hour long water aerobics class each day wasn't enough because I wasn't losing weight. I kept reminding him that the goal was health and happiness, not a specific number on a scale. He kept insisting that the number on the scale was the only quantifiable measure of my health and happiness and I should do whatever it took, short of putting myself in the hospital, to make that number a good one.

On a cold night in March of 2004, I was recovering from walking pneumonia and second degree burns on my belly and left hip, when a young man walked into my apartment and raped me. I called the man I loved for help. For the only time in the six years I knew him, he yelled at me and hung up on me without warning. He then took the phone off the hook so that I couldn't call back.

During my rape counseling sessions, I talked as much about that phone call as I did about the rape. It was the fourth time in my life I had been raped. It was the first that I had lost someone I loved. Most of my problems regarding both issues revolved around my belief that nobody would ever want to touch me because I was fat. It's what I had been told by everybody around me for my whole life. I didn't know any other reality.

Along with materials on cognitive behavioral therapy and homework assignments to practice the skills I would need to rebuild my personal boundaries and sense of value, my counselor gave me an article from the March/April 1996 issue of Ms. magazine. It was an article by Nomy Lamm titled Fat Is Your Problem.

I read about half the article before I thought, "Oh. My. GOD! Fat people can perform and have sex and exercise and it doesn't really matter what people think because people are going to think whatever they will think whether fat people do everything or nothing or some stuff and not other stuff. We can't win. We can only DO whatever it is that people do when they are alive. I should be living instead of worrying!"

Almost exactly 5 years later, I made a music video. I don't really care if anybody thinks I'm gross because I think it's a fabulous video. I even got to meet the popstar I made the video for, but that's another story. (He gave me the biggest smile and best hug I have ever received in my life.)

I didn't go straight from the article to fat acceptance. I improved enough that my counselor felt confident that I'd be ok when the insurance stopped paying for my counseling. Then, I spent two years struggling with depression without any form of help because my insurance dropped me and free help wasn't available in my area. When I did stumble across fat acceptance, I took to it like a fish to water because I had never forgotten that article and had always hoped I'd find more people who wrote about things that way.

Learning to love myself as I am and learning to expect respect from other people has been the best thing I've ever done for myself. I don't miss that guy who ended up telling me that I had disappointed him because I had never gotten thin. I still meet people like him. When I do, I just walk away.

My Fat Life Is Awesome #2: Backstage

On October 26, I was at The Moore Theatre in Seattle for a Mika concert. While standing in line before the show, I was asked to be one of the big girls who get into costume and dance on stage with him during the song Big Girl. There was a flurry of interest from other women in the line and some intensely emotional discussion. The person who had done the asking vanished for a little while and came back to let me know that there weren't enough spots, but since I was the one who got asked, would I like a backstage pass to get my picture taken with Mika after the show? Oh, yes, please!

The show was a transcendent experience for me. I am a very quiet person who has spent a lifetime holding everything back because people kept telling me that I was hypersensitive and overemotional. I was so used to holding things back that I didn't cry when I got second degree burns from my ankles to my knees or cheer when I got what I wanted for my birthday.

Despite the pain in my knees and my back, the entire time Mika was on stage, I was bouncing, dancing, singing, and screaming my heart out. There were only four people between me and the center of the stage, so every time he was center stage, my eyes were locked on his and I was singing as loudly as I could.

Meeting him after the show was something I'll never forget. He was genuinely kind and wrapped his arm around my shoulders for a picture as happily as my friends always do. Being the spaz that I am, I scampered away like a frightened bunny before he had time to thank me for the gift I had given him. I was worried about his sprained ankle and how much longer he would be standing on it in order to meet everybody that was waiting for him.

It was an amazing night during which I didn't once feel unwelcome or unwanted. I was surrounded by new friends and got a one armed hug from someone awesome. I screamed my fool head off and had the most fun I have ever had. I hope I get to do it again someday. I owe Mika a short conversation and a hug.

My Fat Life Is Awesome #1: Free Dance

When I was 15, I used to dance for 20 minutes every morning and for at least 2 hours each night of the weekend. Since I was doing all of my dancing alone in my bedroom, you would think that I danced like nobody was watching. On the contrary, I danced like the whole world could see every jiggle.

While I was dancing, if I felt a jiggle or saw a jiggle in the mirror, I would practice the move until I learned to do it without jiggling. As an extension of that, I figured out how to walk and do almost everything else without jiggling. As a child, I had been teased so badly for every jiggle that I just assumed that skinny people never jiggle. Imagine my shock the day I realized that skinny people jiggle too. Every bit of soft tissue from muscle to skin has a bit of jiggle to it.

Even after figuring that out, I still avoided jiggling like it was my sole mission in life. Several years ago, someone once told me that it was remarkable how I don't jiggle when I walk because women of my size usually jiggle like every step is an earthquake. I felt like it was the highest compliment he could have given me. I was so pleased that my efforts had been noticed.

The trick to avoiding jiggling is restrained movement and concentrated control. The more relaxed you are, the more you jiggle. The more unrestrained your movements, the more likely you are to jiggle. If you already know that the most fun dancing is relaxed and unrestrained, then you see where I'm heading with this. The less I jiggled, the less fun I had and the less interesting dancing was. My range of movement got so limited that I just got bored and stopped dancing.

Now that I'm not worried about the way I look and don't care if I jiggle, dancing is fun again.

When I was editing my video for the We Are Golden video competition, I started off with the goal of only using clips in which I didn't jiggle and my fat didn't bulge in certain ways that I didn't like. The result was a boring video with no energy and little movement.

I scrapped that boring bit of nonsense and started over with the goal of using the clips that had the most energy regardless of how I looked in them. The video starts with the earliest footage I shot and teaser clips of some of my later footage. Then, it builds up energy and finishes with the last minute footage I shot after I'd been editing for a full day and no longer cared how I looked. As a result, there are plenty of clips in my video that I would have considered completely unusable because of jiggles or bulges. Those happen to be my favorite clips because they have the most energy and I had the most fun shooting them.

That video is visual evidence of what happens when I let go of shame and fully embrace every bit of joy my life has to offer. I still watch it every day because I love every little detail of it, even the jiggles and bulges. I love every single bit of my body and my big fat life is awesome because of that.

My Life Is Awesome

The whole purpose of this blog is to illustrate that being fat does NOT mean that life sucks. My life is just as awesome and just as sucktastic as most people's lives. It's easier to post about the suck because tragedy sells, so we sell our tragedies. Victories don't mean anything unless they are preceded by adversity. Right now, I'm ailing with what might possibly be the flying bacon plague and I am in the mood for some awesome.

In 27 days, I will be attending my first ever major concert. Not only do I get to see my favorite pop star ever, but I got front row center seats. Not only is this amazing luck, but I have the self-confidence to actually ENJOY the idea of it. Two years ago, I would have been agonizing about the size of my hips and whether or not my fat was a vortex of suck that would drain the energy from the room. Now, I'm just looking forward to being there and all of the fun I'm going to have. Say it with me: FRONT ROW CENTER!

The family dog knocked my favorite mug off of my desk and it broke when it landed. When I went out to buy a new mug, I found one that is even better than the old one and found a second awesome mug on clearance for 1/4 of it's usual price. Every cup of peppermint or chamomile tea is a delight. The honey I add when my throat is sore is more effective than any lozenge I've ever tried.

For my birthday in November, I'm flying to Salt Lake City to visit my oldest friend. This will be the first time I've seen her since I was a bridesmaid in her wedding ten years ago. Not only will I actually get to have a conversation with her husband, but I'll be meeting the three kids they've had together since then. I don't generally enjoy the company of children, but I'm excited to meet the most important people in her life. If her children are anything like her, I'm going to love them.

My oldest friend always treated me like my weight wasn't any kind of an issue. She was physically affectionate with me and always found ways to include me in activities I never would have considered trying because I was fat. She taught me that I can do just about anything I put my mind to. She tried to teach me that people who love me don't treat me like dirt regardless of my size. I think that she'll be proud of me for finally figuring that out. I think that we are going to have the most fun we've ever had together because I'm not uncomfortable with my body anymore.

I'm still dancing when I'm not sick. Even when I am sick, I can't stop myself from doing some chair dancing because I'm just happy to be alive and enjoying the music so much.

It's difficult to list all of the mundane ways that being comfortable in my own body has improved my life. There is not an area of my life that wasn't affected by my shame about myself. Now, there isn't an area of my life that isn't affected by the lack of it. I'm applying for school and looking forward to being in a classroom setting and experiencing what it's like to participate in a class discussion without worrying about how my size is affecting what everybody sees when they look at me and what they hear when I speak. I am fully aware that my size does have an affect on such things, but I'm not crippled by shame about what that affect could possibly be anymore. That allows me to contribute far more than was ever possible when I felt I had no right to speak and no right to expect to be heard if I did speak.

I am finally making some progress with my writing because I am finding value in my voice and the stories I have to tell. When I'm not crippled by shame, I have a far wider range of emotions and ideas to express.

My life always been awesome, but now I get to fully enjoy how truly awesome it is because I don't have shame and doubt lingering in the back of my mind with each breath I take and every choice I make. Since illustrating that in one post is almost impossible, perhaps I should challenge myself to write a series of posts describing mundane ways that being free from shame makes my life awesome.

Being Visible

When I made this video, I made several decisions about what I was willing to show the world.

I chose to dance in my underwear because I am not ashamed to be seen even if "nobody wants to see that," as I have been told my whole life. I chose to dance in my underwear because the people who have raped me and the people who have verbally abused me have no power over me. I chose to "put myself out there like that" because I believe that it's powerful celebration of life that I can still dance with reckless abandon after all that I have experienced in this life.

My original concept for the video was to start with a depiction of how the world had made me feel about my body or a representation of how the world sees my body. I scrapped that concept when I decided that it was a waste of my precious time to show the obvious. I decided that completely ignoring the stereotypes and dancing like they had never existed was a much more powerful display of personal autonomy and joyful elation.

I watch my video every day because every single second of it reminds me of how much I love being alive in THIS body. Every frame makes me smile. Many frames make me laugh out loud every time I see them. I made this video to show the entire world how much value I know I have. In making this video, I discovered vast depths of value I hadn't yet realized I have.

Refusing to hide from the world doesn't simply show the world that I have value, it shows me that I have even more value than I usually see.

If you still haven't seen my video, check it out.

Rapid Unexplained Weight Loss

Two weeks ago, I went to the doctor with a some annoying symptoms that were written off as a minor inconvenience. Yesterday, I went back to the doctor because the symptoms had progressed from annoying to deeply painful and troubling. An unexplained weight loss of 22 pounds resulted in a battery of tests being ordered.

When I discovered fat acceptance, I realized that I had a choice about whether or not I ever stepped on a scale again. After weighing my options, I chose to continue allowing my doctor to weigh me in case my weight ever turned out to be the thing that raised a red flag.

This sudden weight loss may simply be the result of life without allergens. My allergist told me that some people tend to drop a significant amount of weight after they've avoided their allergens for large amount of time.

My symptoms suggest the possibility of illness or parasite-induced weight loss. I was feeling sick last week, so my body may simply have used up some stored energy to fight off the nasty bug that's been going around. Then, there are more troubling possibilities. Right now, it's best not to worry about them because worry would just make things worse at this point.

I'm young. I have strong vital signs. The doctor didn't waste any time ordering tests to make sure the weight loss isn't a sign of something serious. I have every reason to be optimistic and expect a healthy resolution of whatever is going on.

Still, none of that answers the question regarding my feelings towards the fact that I've just lost 22 pounds. I've been too busy collecting samples, applying for University, and simply living life to care about the number on the scale beyond wondering what it could be indicating about my health.

Video Contest Entry

I have finished production of my video for the contest to meet Mika on his next tour and it has been posted to the official site.

Click to see my video on the official site.

ENJOY!

Check out the official video and other contest entries here.