Fat Chance (6 page)

C
hildhood years are supposed to be innocent, carefree and fun. And yet these certainly are not the themes that I’d say marked the first
decade and a half of my life. Just before I started kindergarten, my par-ents’ wildly flawed marriage dissolved into divorce. I don’t remember them ever being married. I don’t remember them ever living under the same roof. All I remember is the day that my dad left. My father had borrowed his buddy’s green El Camino and had backed up the car to the front door of our house, right onto the grass. I stood there watching as he loaded the car, emerging from the house with arms full of possessions each time. When he had finished reclaiming his belongings, he turned toward me and asked, “Jules, who would you like to go with?” Instinctively, I inched toward my mother, who looked down at my confused countenance and whispered, “Sweetie, if you pick me, I’ll give you a roll of Life Savers.”

My dad, overhearing Mom’s offer, eyed me and said, “Honey, you come with me, and I’ll give you all the Life Savers you want.”

Although Dad moved out that day, things wouldn’t really explode between them until a few years later, when a series of custody battles rocked the first few months of my third-grade year. They played me against each other, and when that didn’t work, they included my grandparents in the fight. I must have been a fairly resilient kid because despite the wobbly world in which I lived, I somehow maintained a fair degree of steadiness and even chose to develop a sense of humor about things. Little did I know how much I would rely on it through the years. “If I can get people to laugh
with
me,” I thought, “then maybe they won’t laugh
at
me.”

In addition to handing me the shards of my undeniably broken family, the third grade also provided my first official realization that I was fat. For the entire school year, I obsessed about cresting one hundred pounds. A girl who had been in my class ever since the pumpkin-shorts fiasco three years prior was visibly, morbidly obese, and
she
, I had found out, weighed just over one hundred pounds. I compared myself to her daily, wondering if I was as fat as that.

Finally I made it to the fourth grade, but unfortunately my inner anguish made it there too. In the evenings before bedtime, the nine-year-old version of me would squat over the too-hot water of my bath and, having nothing better to do while I waited for the water to cool, I would fixate on my chubby thighs and puffy, peaking breasts that were developing
well
in advance of my peers’.

A healthy sense of self—self-worth, self-confidence, self-esteem—had been taken from me in a flash. Another victory I had unwittingly handed to that terrible thief who answered to the name “Fat.”

L
ater, junior high brought with it a torment all its own. By that time I had ballooned to the point that I remember being afraid of not fitting into the yellow phys ed uniforms that were issued at the start of each grade. If the school
did
make one my size, I just knew it would come only by special order, and with an “XXXL” sneeringly printed on the tag. Still, that had to be better than the alternative: outsizing even their special-order offerings and being forced to drag my rail-thin mother to the local large-person clothing store to buy a plain yellow tee-shirt that we’d pay to have embroidered with the school’s name. The obvious distinction of that attire would clearly have been the end of me.

It was during those same days that a boy in my eighth-grade class—I’ll call him Jimmy, because his name
was
Jimmy—bestowed upon me my latest nickname. Chicago Bears defensive lineman William “The Refrigerator” Perry was receiving a lot of press as a fan favorite at the time, and Jimmy thought it would be funny to dub me “The Freezer.” Sort of The Fridge’s equally enormous sidekick, I guess. Every single day I entered the class I shared with Jimmy, I heard him mockingly shout, “Hey, Freezer!”

There was no comeback swift enough, no rebuttal fitting enough to match the depth of his crushing words. And so the funny fat girl would slip into her seat, silenced and rebuffed once more.

I didn’t deal with Jimmy much after that, but I have bumped into a few other schoolmates over the past several years. When we were kids, I was the devastated recipient of their disdain. “Why are you so fat?” one had asked me. “What gives?” another probed. “Your
parents
aren’t that fat.” And then there was the girl who shooed me from her lunchroom table with four words that made her position abundantly clear: “Fat girls not allowed.”

Interestingly, after my experience on
The Biggest Loser
, several of them tried to befriend me. I have a feeling they’d stand by their story that we were great friends in school, that of course they’d never done anything to harm me. But something in me simply stayed away, probably that same something that felt scraped out all those years ago, when cutting comments etched their way onto my soul.

F
or many kids, high school days are the glory days, the last great hoorah, the lovely, melodic tune that sings them right into adulthood. But for me, those days were just the constant refrain of an all-too depressing dirge.

To make matters worse, I spent that time living in a humid, ocean-side community in Florida, which meant that every birthday party was yet one more reason to convene at the pool or the beach. If only granny-style skirted one-piece bathing suits and oversize men’s T-shirts had been in vogue for a sixteen-year-old! Not only did I not
own
a bikini, but had I ever chosen to show up in one, I felt sure everyone in the immediate vicinity would have cleared out in a heartbeat as my pasty-white lumps of flesh and I rolled and strolled our way by. Why hand over more ammunition, I figured, when I’d already been shot down so many times?

It was for that same reason that I never, ever ate lunch at school. Instead, I would use my buck-forty’s worth of lunch money to purchase a doughnut or two before class started, and use the remaining thirty-five cents on a midday milkshake I’d sip all alone. Of course, I’d return home from school and devour everything in sight, but at least in my mind I hadn’t given people an obvious explanation as to why I was “that unbelievably fat.”

I wanted to be thinner. I really did. Actually, I wanted to be “skinny”—that one word summed up my complete definition of all that it meant to be likeable, healthy and cool. But I was handed that goal from others in my life. “You could get any boy you want,” well-meaning family members would say, “if you’d just lose that weight.” (Translation: You’ll mean a lot more to this world when there’s a
whole
lot less of you.)

Eventually, I did lose a few pounds. Needing a way to look acceptable for the prom I would never attend, I fad-dieted and deprived my way to a “me” two dress sizes down. Sadly, though, my also-fat friends and I would always fall back into the trap of using food as our comforter. Which is how I know that even at the bargain price of four boxes for a dollar, mac-and-cheese can’t satiate a starving soul.

These days, I look back and realize that my upbringing wasn’t
all
bad. There were youth-group trips and dances and Christmas parties. But when I catch sight of photos of those “fond memories” and see a big, fat cow in the frame, the fondness somehow fades a bit. What’s more, now that I have hindsight on my side, I see more clearly the reason I became fat in the first place. I’m sure that psychotherapists would have a heyday analyzing my background and linking every major event to the cause of my obesity, but in my heart of hearts, the only theme I know to be true throughout my childhood and beyond is this: I was fat because I did not believe that I was worth the effort it would take to be fit.

Sadly, it would take me until age thirty-five to adjust my views on that.

W
hen I was in my early twenties, I got my five-foot-two frame all the way down to one hundred and forty pounds and tried my
hand at pageants. Admittedly, it was a lark. I had thick legs, as you’ll recall. And by this point, I also had quite a robust bust—some of which was natural and some of which was due to the extra padding I added in an effort to bring my wide hips into proportion. In fact, on the heels of one especially disappointing swimsuit competition, the strongest “affirmation” I received came from a female judge who said, “I see how those breasts balance out that backside, Hon, but my
word
…” This was uttered mere moments before I learned that while everyone else had received eights and nines in that part of the competition, I had been granted a three. Lovely.

The evening-gown portion was no better, really. I couldn’t fit into traditional, beaded gowns, and so I opted instead to debut the A-line dress. This was before anyone knew about A-line dresses, so I got points for trendsetting. But that was about it.

“You could be Miss America! If only you’d lose some weight.” “You have such a pretty face! It’s just that you’ve got all that weight.” “What a lovely dress! It covers your flaws nicely.” I’d heard a version of the judges’ comments throughout my entire life. Would “fat” be my reality forever?