The shame of the Fat Guy
So far I have been pretty positive, and all of the rest, but the past week was sort of ugly, and as a result it was emotionally brutal. So tonight I am drinking a mountain dew Best Buddy from Kwik Trip, and am sort of filled iwth self loathing. I know no one likes this stuff, but this is part of the journey, and as a result we all must embrace the whole experience. And the crappy dark nights of the soul are part of that.
I think one of the worst things about being a fat guy, and a developed quickly fat guy, is the shame. I mean, I put on weight post college, but I really packed it on in the last 4 or 5 years. I mean it was a massive increase. It happened fast, and it happened in a way that I did not really expect. And it honestly happened when I was not thinking clearly. I had my fathers passing, change in careers to a very sedentary one, and it just happened.
I became aware of it one morning with my buddy Sullie. We had gone to play racquetball, and it had really been the first sort of activity I had taken on athletically in at least a year, and probably 50 pounds. I went to start running, and I fell. I did not trip, but my balance was so compromised that I fell down. It was a new body, and I was not ready for it. It was humbling. I had never been that guy before, and suddenly I was fat. In front of a friend. that was bad.
I think when I think about it, I get so upset. It has been a long time since real “companionship”. I think one of the things I do not want as a fat guy is to be touched. In anyway. This is also a departure for me. I spent my 20s with a massage therapist, and we existed in the touch arena (get your head out of the gutter). In my latee 20s I was a Pub guy, and that was a physical existence (its okay to go gutter there).
Now, I cannot imagine someone touching me. I feel my fleshy body, and it feels foreign and a bit wrong. It is hot and sweaty in the summer, and I would not want to be touched. I have always been vain, and I have always wanted to be attractive, and now I just know I am not. I dislike people telling me they like me as a person, especially when my self loathing is flaring, and I cannot hear anything other than, “You are nice, if you were not fat”.
My clothes are shit, they feel like drapes covering me. Because I know I am hiding. I am putting on blanket sized t shirts to hide the fact that I look like a pile of goo.
I think Fat Guys like me are hiding, and the hiding is a self fulfilling prophecy. The more we hide, the more we eat, the more we eat, the less healthy we are, and the less healthy we are, the more we hide.
Cheryl Mathis said:
Dark ugly nights are like that. For years, I never really thought of myself as fat. I knew what the scale said, but everything was packed tightly on and was still pretty proportional. I was overweight, but I still thought I was touchable. Then the kids came. Holy shit, did that change everything about my body. And there wasn’t a single “good” change in that whole spectacle.
The silver lining? We’re both working hard to change the situation, to rework our bodies into something we’re comfortable with. While that’s wonderful to think about, I still think about all that loose skin that will be hanging all over the place without the fat to plump it out. The loose skin won’t be that attractive either. Damn. I’m a downer, too.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:37 pm #
oldwoodchair said:
Hey, I feel for youse guys….but let me tell ya…try being the short fat menopausal old chick…that’s a real downer.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:37 pm #