It’s a drizzly day on a London Bank Holiday, and I am tucked
up in bed, wondering why it is that I have to drag my butt out of bed on a work
day, but on a holiday I am wide awake? I
am spending it messaging a friend who is abroad but happens to be awake at the
same time – a rare occurrence, and I am having a wee giggle to myself at the
ridiculousness that we are writing.
I have thought long and hard about writing this blog. I try to keep my blogs light and a bit of
fun, just how I like my life to be, and that is one of the reasons I have not
written for so long, some quite serious and upsetting things have been going
on. But then this is a subject that is
quite raw and close to my heart, so here goes.
Over the past few months, people have called me fat or
overweight to my face. And it really
hurts. Imagine if the thing that you
disliked the most about yourself was pointed out to you. By people that you hardly know. Actually, I am not sure if that makes it
better or worse. I would be fairly hurt
if someone who knew my struggles with this pointed it out too.
My weight has always fluctuated. When I was a teenager, I was really fit,
healthy, still curvy but quite small. I
had a strong and active body. When I hit
uni I put on a bit of weight and was introduced to the fun that is Weight
Watchers. I kept at a healthy weight for
most of my 20’s and was still really active.
I gymed five days a week and watched what I ate.
Then, I was very unlucky and developed endometriosis and
then the fun really began. After a
couple of operations, I was given a hormone implant, that was apparently the
cure. For a while it was ok, I was still
recovering from surgery, not really able to eat or drink too much alcohol. Then I was working out again and I could kind
of keep a healthy weight by flogging myself at the gym on a regular basis, but
slowly and surely the weight crept on.
My lifestyle of going out for dinner and drinking with friends, was a
key factor, but I reasoned that I would rather be with them, than home on my
own with a salad. And it was not like I
was lonely, I was still able to pick up men and even date a few of them. And not once did they express that they did
not like my body, far from it.
Last year, it all went a bit wrong. I was working out five times a week again,
bootcamp was my drug of choice and it was getting fitter, healthier and
slimmer. I had confidence again and was
feeling pretty good about myself. I was
able to fit into my old clothes and I was eating healthy as well. I felt great.
Then I had a comedy injury, slipping on a banana skin, damaging my knee
quite badly. It would be six months before
I could work out again. In that time,
the cure stopped working and I spent a considerable amount of time begging my
doctor to send me back to hospital.
And here we are – back to square one. I am due for more surgery in the next three
to four months, am working out like a demon, when I am not working like a
madwoman, and trying to eat as healthy as possible. I know that I have packed on weight, but I am
at a bit of a loss what to do about it.
And I have literally worked my ass off in the last month – losing a
dress size and feeling much better about myself. I want to be as healthy as possible for when I do have surgery, as I want to recover as fast as possible. But its quite hard to work out when you are in pretty much constant pain that sees you spending a lot of time in bed.
So, that brings me to the incidents. I was lucky enough to head to Romania earlier
this year to go skiing with my close friend.
Bless, he was so excited about getting back out on the slopes, but we
were both worried about how my knee was going to stand up to a few days
skiing. We headed down to the ski hire
place in our resort on the first morning there, and met a lovely old man called
George. He had previously sent a very
awful onesie up with my friend for me and I had taken one look at it and said
that is not going to fit. He took one look
at me and said, it’s too small. Now
that was not my issue, it was clear that was not going to fit me. I was fitted for an equally hideous onesie,
whilst my friend was given lovely baby blue ski pants. George fitted me for my skis, and mine were
shorter on me, than what my friends were on him. He asked about this and the answer was, yes
but she is fat. I was standing right
there. I think that George, who was
speaking rather good English, saw my face and quickly said, I mean solid. I thanked him and got out of there quickly before
I had a total meltdown. I decided
quickly that now was not the time to lose it.
My friend was really excited and I did not want to ruin his day. But I was really hurt, and so I messaged my
friend in London and we dealt with it.
Later that day, (after I had skied! Yay!) after I had iced a
tender knee, we headed out for the town, and decided to drink vodka and redbull
on the bus there. My friend wondered why
he was drunker than me, I simply said, that there was less of him than me and he
replied, I knew that you were upset about that.
He then proceeded to tell me about how it was a compliment in Eastern
block countries and how the man had limited English and that I should not be
worried about it. I brushed it off, as
again, there was no point having a meltdown as we were about to meet our ski
instructor in town. But I will admit to
choosing cocktails with no cream and wondering how I could get back to exercise
with my knee in the state that it was.
The second incident happened just last week. I was back at the hospital having my pre-op
assessment, where they take blood, assess you for MRSA and check out your
general health. The male nurse there
remembered me from three years ago and was joking with me about being back
there again. My scales are currently out
of batteries, so when I got on the scales, I was pleased to see that I had lost
weight from the last time I had weighed myself.
I didn’t congratulate myself for long though, when as I was on my way to
have my blood tests, he mentioned that I had put on a lot of weight. This time it got to me, I was already on edge
from finding out that I needed to go through surgery again. On the edge of tears, I looked at him and
said, what do you expect when I have been given a hormone implant, and he just
looked unconvinced and said, I suppose so.
Later that night, I was out for a distraction dinner with my
friend and told him the story, and was trying to laugh it off. He told me that he did not find it funny at
all and just did not see me that way.
Well that is because he is just lovely.
And some days, that is all I see of myself.
The reasons that I thought that it was important to share
this are – firstly, don’t ever think that when you point out to someone that
they need to lose a few, that they are not already aware. They will rarely look down at their body and
gasp in shock in the realisation that they have a curvy figure. Believe me, they know. Secondly, fat might keep you warm, but it
does not stop words from hurting. There
are 1001 reasons why people have different body sizes, unless you know about
that persons struggle, you really have no right to comment on their size. The reason I have shared a rather large chunk
of my very personal struggle is to illustrate that. I hate talking about my health, it’s a really
unhappy story and there are much happier topics to discuss, it does not mean
that it is not at the back of my mind constantly.
So next time you think its helpful to point out that someone
is fat, don’t. Back the hell off and
leave them alone. Right, rant over, next
blog will be some happy holiday pics or video’s of cats….
