Armor or Big, Beautiful and Proud-Saturday, August 26, 2006- 9:02AM EST
Part 2 of 2
The other day I was watching the show 24 and the lead character said something that stopped me in my tracks. A character named Kate was upset that her sister was involved in some terror plot that might start World War III. She blamed herself for whatever, I don’t know. But then Kiefer Sutherland said that people blame themselves for things so that they can make sense of it. Like I said, Blossom and I stopped and looked at each other. I grabbed a pen and wrote it down but I can’t find the paper so I had to paraphrase it as best I could. I took from his comment that as a survivor I blamed myself for a lot of things because then the abuse made sense. Well, this happened because “I’m bad.” That is easier to accept than the explanation “it’s because Mama is bad.” That leaves too many questions like, “well, why is she bad?” on and on and on. But if I say, it’s because of my evil nature then there are few if any questions. It’s much easier to accept or understand that I’m bad than it is for me to accept or understand the behaviors of others.
When I thought about my fear of being small I thought the problem wasn’t the behavior of others but me, my small stature must have been the problem. When that schoolmate picked me up I attributed that to my size not to the real situation. And now that I think about it, being short and small wasn’t that pleasant at home because the mother constantly made fun of my short stature. She use to sing that stupid song that said something like, “short people have no reason to live.” She put the cups on the highest shelf so that I had to jump to get them. She thought it was funny. I inherited my grandfather’s genes when it came to height but the rest of the family stands 5’9 and higher with my mother at 5’11 and my grandmother at 6 feet even. I didn’t reach 5’5 until after high school and man did I constantly hear about it. So I guess I thought that my size was causing a huge problem when in fact it was the behavior of others that caused conflict and confusion but I had to internalize it to make sense of it.
Right now it makes sense on a purely intellectual level. I suppose that is a place to start. I have to admit that I still fear getting small. But when I compare the jeans I have on now to what I wore last week to therapy they are laughably large, clownishly large. Clownishly, is that a word? Somehow I didn’t notice the difference between pants that are 4 sizes smaller than what I normally wear to your office. I didn’t notice that my “safe pants” or my “therapy pants” were 6 sizes larger than the pants I have on right now. How on earth did my body image get so confused that I thought those clothes fit? When I put on these jeans yesterday I could also see how HUGE my shirt was. The shirt I have on now is 3 sizes smaller than the one I wore last week to see you. So I’m sitting here in clothes that fit, clothes that do not hide ME and that is a frightening feeling.
I understand on an intellectual level that being “smaller” isn’t what got me hurt and it’s not what will make me a target. I understand it on an intellectual level but in my heart I am afraid. That fear drove me to some old behaviors but fortunately the intellectual side kicked in again and I stopped. Of course that cessation was AFTER twenty minutes when I put down 2 chimichangas, 4 meatball hot pockets, two buns the size of a sub sandwich and one egg roll. I did not toss it up though. I didn’t toss it up but you know what? I can’t say that I’ll wear the right size clothing because I’m still scared. I still need to look bigger and make people think twice before messing with me.
I worry thought that I’ll go back to old behaviors and sabotage my physical health because of the need to have some tangible evidence that I’m not so small that I can’t protect myself. Even though a person is heavy or has a lot of extra weight they are still invisible, you know that? They still get looked over and maybe even passed up for sexual crimes. I have the advantage of ignorance on my side when it comes to my chances of someone choosing me to rob or attack. Even when I was a kid people said they didn’t want to fight me because black girls fight better than white girls. Then when I got heavy no one really messed with me much because I was big AND black. So their ignorance kind of protected me. My 32 year old neighbor said she never wanted to mess with me because I looked big enough to hurt her. I was secure with that though. I’d never just go off on someone physically but I was still secure with the knowledge that she would never lose her mind and start hitting me. What will happen when I’m smaller and no longer play into that ignorance? It just scares me.
I have to reason on that thought. (I hate it when I do that, all this thinking is exhausting.) When I was in high school what helped get my point across was not my size but my voice. I do realize that there is always someone bigger than me or stronger than me (or at least make themselves look that way.) I realize that crimes happen to larger people as well and that sometimes no matter how hard you fight you end up getting hurt anyway. But it is my belief that the best way for me to take power back would be to use my voice and report a crime and not find some way to understand why that particular low life chose me. So again, it’ll be my voice that makes the difference and not my height and weight.
Austin
I find what you said about being overweight and invisible is very true. In fact, one time when I was trying to list the “payoffs” of being overweight (as part of an exercise in determining why I didn’t want to go on a diet), I realized that “invisibility” was one of the things I liked about carrying extra pounds.
When I was young and slender, I got a lot of attention. Some of it I enjoyed, but much of it was unwanted because I’m such an introvert. After I gained some weight I noticed that the attention stopped, and I LOVED being able to go to the supermarket, etc., without being noticed.
Of course, now that I’m older, I could probably lose the weight and still go quite unnoticed, so maybe I need to take invisibility off my rationalization list.