My apologies
for not having written sooner. This summer has proved to be an adventure to say
the least. My life consists of a full-time job working with the underprivileged
at a hospital, a sometimes full-time job working as a Realtor and the
ever-pressing grad school studies which seem to get shoved away until the last
minute… As you can probably tell, I survived the Reds game. I also survived the
wedding. Neither was nearly as bad as I had imagined.
Regarding
the wedding, I had come to the conclusion there was absolutely nothing I could
do with my body. The part of my body that was in the dress looked great, but
the part of my body that went uncovered was not going to suddenly shrink, nor
was a sleeve going to appear on the dress. I sucked it up and decided that I’d
better rock my hair and make-up. And rock
I did. My make-up looked flawless; my hair was exactly what I wanted. It
was all very glamorous and luckily for me, the compliments were flowing all
night long.
It’s weird
to say this, but I felt pretty. I actually felt pretty; so pretty it didn’t
matter that my flabby arms were uncovered or that the skin on my legs was
sagging. In my life I have had moments of feeling pretty. There is the glimpse
in the mirror, a reflection in a window, a vague snapshot of myself while
walking past a car… but just at that moment when you think you’re looking good,
WHAM! You catch a glimpse of yourself in the… oh, I don’t know… mirror, window,
car door… and you think, “Do I really look
like this? Good Lord! Why didn’t someone tell me?! Is this what other people have
to look at all day? To think I actually liked
this shirt!” We build ourselves up just to tear ourselves back down. This is a
terribly difficult cycle to break.
And of
course, I can’t talk about body image and not mention the good ‘ole dating
scene… the fat people dating scene, that is… As if I didn’t always have the
world stacked against me growing up as an overweight adolescent/teen/adult, my
own anxieties made my dating life even worse. I was so ashamed of my weight
that I began to become ashamed of myself as a person in general. I put on a
good show, often coming off as the bossy one, the bitch, the girl who could’ve
cared less what others thought about her… but that couldn’t be farther from the
truth. The truth is, I cared too much. And I still do. I cared so much and had
so much fear of rejection, that putting myself out there was and still is
potentially the scariest thing I could ever do.
My defense
mechanism (or lack thereof) was to control the situation. I was going to be coy
and act like I didn’t care if he liked me, even though I spent every minute
thinking about him and over-analyzing every little detail of our conversation.
If we got past the initial conversations, I was careful not to get too close. I
kept an appropriate distance and purposefully ended the pseudo relationship
before he could end it. I often made things too sexual too quickly because I
thought surely my charm, personality and good looks were not enough to keep a
guy around... And if he still kept coming around even after all of that, I was
eventually such a mean and emasculating bitch that he really didn’t want anything to do with me!
Now 31,
single and childless (need I remind you?), I know myself better than ever
before. I know my ways. I know how to stop them. So I’m trying to stop them.
Trying to reroute myself down the path of healthy dating. But that still brings
rejection (or potential for rejection). It’s inevitable… So what does a girl
do? Try dating websites? Yes, great idea! Go to the singles pond, where all the
fish are inherently superficial, including you. Yes, my friend, I am just as
superficial as the next person…
This
shouldn’t surprise you; I say it all the time and I’ll say it again…
Nobody—NOBODY—sets out wanting to date a fat person. Plenty of people want to
date a skinny person. In my past, I’ve even gone so far as to avoid overweight
men so people didn’t think, “Oh, how typical, two fat people together.” I also
avoid super tall and thin men… I don’t want to look like the odd couple! So you
get the point—nobody sets out wanting to date a fat person. But what if… what
if I meet a man who is not the picture of thin by any means. What if he has a
great personality—he makes me laugh, is generous, seems intelligent enough to
carry on a conversation with yours truly… what if? Of course I will give him a
try… This is why I’m convinced that dating websites truly work against us. I
know, I know—your cousin’s girlfriend’s brother found true love on a dating
website and now he is married and has three kids… Sorry. I’m just not willing
(at the moment) to try online dating. Ever. Again.
I am happy.
I am certainly not going to settle. For now, I sit here, single and looking…
playing the broken ABBA record over and over again, hoping it’s loud enough for
some man to hear “Take a chance on me!”
