April 24, 2011

I'm fat. So?

A subject that is very close to my heart as a fat woman is the body/fat acceptance movement. I wouldn't say that I am politically involved in the movement, and nor would I say that I am hugely read on the subject, but I absolutely support the acceptance of ourselves and each other. I am strongly opposed to fat shaming and believe in the HAES principle. 

In fact, I have ended friendships if people have shown venom towards fat people, because quite frankly I don't buy that "I hate all ______ people, except you, of course!" bullshit. If you hate fat people, then you feel the same thing for me, you're just too chicken shit to tell me to my face.

So imagine my annoyance when someone makes the comment that they find it "disturbing". Oh, I'm sorry you find my body type disturbing. You know what I find disturbing? I find it disturbing that we encourage people to hate themselves, and we shame them for their appearance - often resorting to nasty comments, abuse and scare tactics. I find it much more disturbing to see people hating themselves, not accepting and loving themselves.

I find it disturbing that it is absolutely unacceptable in society to make fun of or shame someone because of their appearance... except if they're fat. If they're fat then it is absolutely acceptable because fat people are disgusting and a drain on society! Except, you know, they aren't. 

I'm not going to write a whole blog post about my hatred of assholes who think it is okay to tell fat people to starve themselves, or tell me I must eat McDonald's every meal time (except, you know, I don't), or any number of things I could talk about when it comes to people who should remove their heads from their rectums. If you want to talk about that, go check out #thingsfatpeoplearetold on Twitter. Some of the posts may astound, shock and horrify you. 

What I do want to talk about is love. I absolutely believe we should all love and accept ourselves, because we are all different and unique. We all have different size and shaped noses. We have different lips, eyebrows, hair colour/thickness/length. We all have different heights, and we all have different weights. That is it, the end. We have different weights. Naturally. There is no "healthy weight all human beings should fit into". That is bullshit. BMI is bullshit. The sooner you realise that, the happier you'll be.

So once we get our head around that, I want you to go look in the mirror. Look at that flab on your tummy, or maybe you have none at all. Maybe your ass is big and orange peel-y. Maybe it is flat and small. Maybe you have big boobs that pop out of every shirt you wear, no matter what. Maybe you have small breasts. No matter how tall or short you are, how fat or thin or somewhere in the middle you are. No matter if you have big boobs, no boobs, man boobs or wonky boobs. There is nothing wrong with the way you look. At all. Nothing. 

It is a hard concept to get your mind around. Sometimes I look in the mirror, particularly those mirrors in department store dressing rooms where I can see every inch of my body in all its steatopygian fatty glory, and I despise what I look. I scrutinise my gigantic ass which has no real separation from my thighs, the stomach that hangs over a bit, and I hate what I look like. Sometimes I think of really bad things to do to my body because of those horrible thoughts. It took me a really long time to realise it wasn't me looking through my eyes and hating what I saw... it was everyone else. When I looked at myself with those eyes I was hearing every nasty word hurled at me about my appearance and applied them to myself. I don't have a problem with me, everyone else does

Everyone else seems to be offended by my body, and that isn't my fucking problem, frankly. If you think I am disgusting and so seriously offensive, I'd advise you seek therapy instead of projecting onto me. After all, I'm not the one with the problem here. You think my fat is giving me massive health problems? I have no health problems stemming from my weight. I do, however, have self-esteem problems, and developed an eating disorder after being screamed at about my body for 17 years. My fat will kill me? Unlikely, though my former pack-a-day cigarette habit might. However, even if I develop some freak health problems related to my weight, it won't affect you in the slightest. I'll be the one that is sick, and no doubt the huge amount of tax I pay to the government will cover my medical bills. My weight, and my health, is none of your business, so you can kindly keep your nose out of my business, and everyone else's.

Accept and love your body for what it is, because it belongs to you and because of that it is special.

The Impossible

I often have moments of concern about whether or not I should view this as a blog where I can talk in a very similar way, or if I should keep an emotional distance. The hard part is finding the acceptable balance, since this is not after all my personal blog, but a very specialised one for an aspect of myself. This following blog post may step over that line, but the things I want to talk about are familiar and emotional.

I learned today that someone close to me is pregnant, which led to me feeling concerned about my own future. I worried I'd never achieve the things I want to achieve - a house on a few acres of land, enough money to even take time off work for pregnancy and such, etc - and it gets to me at times. I look ahead of me and it seems like a giant clock is ticking away. Not in a "my biological clock is ticking" way, but in a "there are only so many years until I'm 30, and then until I'm 40, and how can I achieve x, y and z by this time?" way.

It seems amazing to me that in my lifetime, maybe in not too many years, I could possibly achieve the goals I wish, and my greatest fear is getting to an old age without achieving any of them. At times it seems impossible, but then I look back at my last 5 years.

5 years ago I was in a dead end job at a fast food place, but I was so ill I pretty much never showed up. Thinking about work would drive me into a state - I was crying all the time, having panic attacks, and I was physically ill - and I made hardly any money. I ate food at work and then spent $20 on groceries every week - a dozen eggs, bread, some English muffins, pasta and ramen. I thought I had no future, nothing. I had no money, I was seriously ill, and paranoid about the people around me.

I ended up in a hospital with the choice to either live or die.That was 4 years ago.

Over the next year I went to therapy, and generally changed my perceptions on things. I got a part time job with a friend, that became a full time job. I had money coming in, and I moved out and in with a friend. My boyfriend moved in and then we moved out together as a couple. I stopped working for my friend and opened my own business. Now I earn more than I have ever earned in my life. My disorder is controlled, my relationship is going better than I ever expected to have as a Borderline.

So, the point is, how can I believe anything is impossible? How can I believe that someday I might not have the home I want, kids, a future, when I have already achieved the impossible?

I guess the one good thing my Borderline has taught me is that nothing is impossible.

April 21, 2011

Jesus is not at the wheel!

I don't know about you guys, but a common trend I have gone through with my disorder is the concept of it being a "personality" disorder, and that somehow the very fabric of my personality was disordered, that everything I was stemmed from the disorder. It was a while before I realised the name was flawed, imperfect, and my personality was not entirely ruled by my disorder.

So when someone commented they felt like a different person when their disorder took control, I flashed back to every disordered situation I'd ever been through, and absolutely agreed with the statement.

Before we get too involved in the tangent I am no doubt going to embark on, let me just clarify that I do not have dissociative identities (to my knowledge) and when I talk about being a different person, watching myself speak, etc it is not in the same sense as a person with DID would experience (I imagine). 

Anyway, continuing with the tangent... There are situations in my every day life, though rarer and rarer these days, where something will flip a switch and I will go from Dimmie to Borderline in 0.23 seconds flat. I, Dimmie, will be inside my brain, clutching at my hair and clawing at my face in horror as Borderline screams, shouts, abuses, rants and otherwise makes a royal cunt of themselves (myself!).

I will be locked inside my head as Borderline says things with venom I would never dream of saying, and it makes me feel powerless that my disease can take control with so little warning. The number of friendships that have ended after Borderline has had a red hot go at them is astouding, and I have shrunk away from mending things out of shame. Shame for the things I have said, and a lot of fear of rejection (which I should talk about, but that can wait for another post).

I absolutely 100% believe that part of my personality is influenced and perhaps controlled by my disorder. Obviously some of my quirks are a direct result of my diagnosis - abandonment fears, 0-100 in a millisecond, and various other exciting things - but everything? Of course not. I think that to believe my entire personality is disordered, a casualty of my disease, is ignorant at best. 

Not for the first time I wish a more accurate and less misleading name could be found for my disease, but in the meantime I will have to live with not having my druthers!