Half-Assed (29 page)

Many thin people would be surprised that fat people could feel that way about themselves. A survey done by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity showed that nearly half of the people questioned would rather give up a year of their lives than be obese.
²
Between 15 and 30 percent would rather get divorced, become infertile, be depressed, or become alcoholic. People are scared of fat. Fear can sometimes be a good thing. Fear means the bad thing hasn’t happened yet. But sometimes, you experience the worst possible thing you can imagine and surprisingly discover it is survivable. All the panicking and freaking out over fat is worse than any love handle. Fearing that I could become fat again is a waste of time. I would never have consciously chosen to become morbidly obese, just as I would never fling myself into the path of a speeding Volkswagen. We don’t get to choose the obstacles life sets in our path, yet there is a lot to be learned from jumping those hurdles.

Obesity gave me a great sense of perspective. I don’t have any unrealistic expectations about how thin any woman should be. I look at magazine covers in the grocery store aisle and feel genuinely sad for the emaciated superstars who are picked on for being anorexic twigs or gluttonous pigs. I see women who probably wear size 12 jeans and think they look thin. I can appreciate being thinner more than someone who has never been fat ever could.

Obesity also made me understand that the package you come in affects the way people treat you. Being fat was like having a built-in asshole detector. People who were jerks didn’t go out of their way to be nice to me. It must be hard if you’ve always been thin and you’ve always seen the best sides of people at first. How can you determine who the jerks are if they come at you wearing disguises? I’ve certainly never had to wonder if I got anywhere because of my looks.

But when I talk to unhappy fat friends, I sometimes feel as though I have moved into a different class, like I’m a poor little match girl who now owns a lighter fluid company. I wish I could tell them how to get to the happy place where I am, but the route doesn’t seem to be found in any road atlas. If it did, I’d make photocopies for everyone
and circle the destination in a big, yellow highlighter and tie balloons to the mailbox so you could all join the party. But I can’t. You have to find it yourself without the aid of a global positioning device. You don’t necessarily have to be thin to come inside, either.

I do love being thin, though I still carry enough weight that some people might consider me chubby. When I’m walking through the mall I occasionally have to remind myself that I can shop in the normal stores. Sometimes I walk into the department store and try on dresses that cost more than my cable and electric bills combined just to see how cute I look in them. But I usually put those frocks back on the rack because I prefer to be able to continue using my hair dryer and checking my email. Every time I look in the mirror I still think, “I look so freaking hot.” Sometimes I think I would look even hotter if I lost ten more pounds.

One friend said I smile more now. Another said I was glowing. I
am
a lot happier. I think people assume it’s because I’m thin. That’s only part of it. At the beginning I saw weight loss as the ultimate goal, but once I started taking care of myself I started living a life that made me happier, which also happened to make me thinner. It’s easy to confuse the two. I’ve heard it said that people need to love themselves no matter what, but I think you have to earn your own love through the things you do for yourself. I had to shape myself into someone worth loving, someone worthy of my own respect.

I’ve changed so much through this experience that I wonder if I should add an upgrade number to my name to alert people to all my new features. Introducing Jennette 2.0, now with less fat and a more huggable interface. Last week I walked down the trail to an organic grocery store to buy pears and found myself wondering,
If I’ve been replaced by a pod person, would I know about it?
I’ve heard a rumor that every cell in your body replaces itself at least once in the course of seven
years. Sometimes I wonder if my data got slightly corrupted and now I’m a copy of someone I never was. I might just be growing up.

I probably don’t even notice some of the ways I’ve changed. I can’t stand outside of myself and observe my actions like both the rat and the laboratory scientist. I always liked who I was, but maybe people can just see that better now. When I hear my voice on an answering machine I think,
That cannot possibly be me. I do not sound like that.
But I do. Perhaps the image I am projecting now more closely matches the image I had of myself all along.

I cooked dinner for my mother when she visited my apartment a couple of months ago. I coated some chicken breasts in Italian dressing and sautéed them while green beans seasoned with garlic cooked in the microwave and I brought some water to boil on the back burner for couscous. She stared at me and shook her head.

“Who would have ever thought,” she murmured.

“What?” I said.

“My daughter, the culinary genius.”

“I could throw in a cartwheel to really impress you, but I have to flip the chicken now,” I replied.

When she left, she wrapped her arms far enough around me to grab her own elbows, squeezing me tight in her embrace.

When I began this journey, I thought I would get to the finish line and write a tirade about everyone who discriminated against me, saying I was the same person thin as I was fat. Only that isn’t true. I can cook. I can run for miles. I feel proud and powerful. I accomplished a huge task and took control of my life. I feel like I’m driving now, not just sitting in the back seat of a stinky taxicab with a questionable upholstery stain. I’m more myself. I have the amplifier turned up to eleven.

I live a life with less fear. I’m not afraid I’ll have to ask the stewardess for a seat belt extender on the plane. I’m not afraid to walk
into a clothing store and be able to buy only a pair of socks. I don’t fear looking at the photos from my brother’s wedding, when I proudly wore a sleeveless dress to show off my new arm muscles. I didn’t make it to goal by then as I planned, but I felt beautiful and alive, and I broke my dress strap as I kicked my heels up to “Shout.”

I don’t have to feel the pain of obesity anymore and not just in my aching knees. When I ride the bus, I’m not the fat lady whom everyone avoids sitting next to. I remember avoiding eye contact as people swiped their bus passes. I remember praying no one would be left on his or her feet because I was too fat to sit next to. But remembering a feeling isn’t the same as hearing your heart quicken in fear and feeling ashamed that your thighs are spilling into the next seat. I’ve gotten off that bus and all I have left is a ticket stub to remember the ride.

The world is a more hopeful place now, as though the magnetic poles switched and I’m living on the positive end of the planet instead of the negative end. Anything seems possible. I am, after all, the girl who lost more than two hundred pounds. I’m not entirely convinced that if I stepped out my second-story bedroom window and decided I could hang glide on my batwings of arm flesh, that I would land in the bushes and break my leg. And if I did end up in a full body cast, at least I tried to fly. There’s nothing to be ashamed of when you fail to do something great. When you go out on a limb, sometimes you fly and sometimes the limb breaks. Even if you end up lying on your back with branches poking your butt cheeks, at least you have a great view of the stars.

A lot of people have called me an inspiration. It’s odd being a success story, to be the girl who has something so many other people want. I always had a sweet tooth, but I was never a fan of the sugary, sweet stories about people overcoming adversity. They always seemed fake, built up by the author to tell a good story while quietly brushing the bad stuff under the carpet to be ignored. But I think I was just
afraid that they were true, that there were people who loved their lives and had sunshine coming out of their asses and that I would never be one of them. I suppose I’m one of those annoying bastards now. I don’t have any light shining out of my rectum, though. I’m bendy enough now that I checked. I’ve achieved something many people want to accomplish, but it doesn’t make me any more special or amazing than anyone else. I don’t think people give themselves enough credit. We’re all capable of a lot more than we think.

Sometimes I feel I need to apologize for being so happy, to say I’m sorry to all the people who want to be thin but are stuck being fat. When I shine so bright, I’m bound to deepen the shadows in their lives. But my life isn’t perfect either. Being thin hasn’t solved all my problems, and the problems I do have can no longer be blamed on my obesity. Overweight women who read my blog frequently ask if people treat me better now, as if no one would ever be mean to me again because I’m thin. I get cut off in traffic by insecure men driving SUVs even though I’m thin. I had to wait in line at the DMV to finally renew my driver’s license and replace my fat photo even though I’m thin. I have not been seduced by a hot Latino lover over a latte at the bookstore even though I’m thin. The grass always looks greener where the thin people live, but there are patches of crabgrass and poison ivy here too. I haven’t been invited to any secret glamorous thin parties where we stand around not eating hors d’oeuvres.

In all the preceding chapters in this book you’ll notice I never did meet the perfect man and run off into the sunset. There aren’t any wacky dating stories either because I don’t have many to tell. The longest relationship I’ve had with a male is with my cat, and he doesn’t even have balls. But any intimacy issues I have are because of me, not because of my fat. They always were. I might be able to pick up more guys in bars now, but I have to go to the bars for that to happen. I can’t
expect to find new friends and lovers hiding under my couch. I got LASIK and I lost the weight, so I’m no longer a blind, fat homebody, just a seeing, thin homebody. The house of me is in a lot better shape, but it could still use some work. Construction will never be completely finished, but I could start inviting more people over.

Sometimes I joke about my old fat self and wonder if that’s okay. If I were still almost four hundred pounds, I’d have to sit on someone who insulted me. I get a pass to make fun of myself, but if anyone else makes fun of the old fat girl, I feel my fists curling at my sides. She might no longer physically exist, but she’s rented a back room in my mind. I don’t know if I can ever evict her.

It’s possible I’ve forgotten exactly how painful it was being fat or how hard it was to transition into a healthier lifestyle. Time might scrub my memories like steel wool scraping against a dirty pan until only the shiny spots remain. I don’t know what percentage of my life I actually remember. All the time I’ve spent driving to and from work or brushing my teeth and showering has most likely been saved and overwritten a million times. I’m definitely grateful for all I can do now. Sometimes I squat down to pick up cat toys simply because I’m amazed that I can do so. Then I pop back up without the aid of a coffee table. I can put my foot on the bathroom counter and cut my toenails with ease. I didn’t know my body was capable of such things. It’s like when I discovered my cell phone could not only make calls but also play pinball games and keep a date book. I now come with extra features.

Maybe joking around is the only way I’m able to acknowledge how bad my situation was, something I couldn’t do when I was living it. Distance brings perspective. I don’t want to treat the old fat girl too harshly, though. My humor is self-deprecating because I don’t take myself that seriously, not because I want to rip myself down.

There
is
a temptation to kill the fat girl I once was, to stab her in the neck and bury her in the azaleas. But I think she’s immortal. I can run her over with my car, drown her in the toilet, asphyxiate her with a yoga strap, but she can’t ever really die. She may give out a death rattle, lie limp on the floor, but she’s just faking for my benefit. The fat girl will always be a part of who I am. I can’t unmake myself by becoming thin.

I used to think weight loss was retroactive. If I became thin I could erase the time in my life when I was fat. All my old photos would morph to show a skinny girl smiling proud. If she didn’t exist in the present, all the pain of the past would disappear. All the opportunities she missed would be lined up in front of me, so now I could go to the prom or wear a bathing suit to birthday pool parties. But it doesn’t work like that. I don’t get a do-over. I can have plastic surgery to remove this loose skin and sell all my fat clothes on eBay. I can move to an apartment complex where no one knows I was obese, but I will always have been the fat girl.

And that’s okay. The fat girl had her issues, but she was pretty awesome too.

As I write this, I’m still about ten pounds away from my goal weight. I might have reached goal by the time you read this. Maybe not. Somewhat anticlimactic, eh? That’s not how the story usually ends. There’s a template for weight-loss stories: Girl gets fat, girl loses weight, girl reaches goal and rides into the sunset on a horse without breaking its back. It’s like a game of Mad Libs: [Name] lost [huge number] pounds by eating [tasteless health food] and doing [painful exercise]. You could write that book yourself.

When I began this trip, my goal was a number, three digits that I hoped would appear on the digital box on my scale without having to switch the unit of weight from pounds to kilograms. But my real goal didn’t have anything to do with numbers. I wanted to be happy.
I wanted to like my body. I wanted to feel comfortable in the world. All those things are true now. As long as that continues to be true, the numbers on the scale don’t matter as much. They matter, just not as much.

The numbers on my scale haven’t yet aligned in the manner I aimed for, but I have reached my goal. It didn’t happen suddenly but sneaked up on me like my cat, sitting quietly at my feet until the moment I looked down and saw him staring into my eyes. It was like waking up from a long car trip as a child after being nestled in the back seat and wrapped in the white noise of the highway, awakening to turn my sleepy eyes out the car window and seeing our back door reflecting the porch light, wondering,
When did we get home?