Category Archives: Freeform thoughts

Love, Love Me Do

Biggest struggles, Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

love_myself

So, I was chatting to someone I used to work with over the weekend and catching up with all his news – well, he calls it news. Me, I’d call it gossip but he’d deny that of course on the basis that ‘boys don’t gossip’ (yeah right that’s what I thought too).  Anyway, during the conversation he referred to the girl he was talking about as being ‘a classic people pleaser’ and for some reason the phrase stayed with me way after the conversation finished.  It annoyed me.

It’s not so much what this guy said, it’s they way he said it, like being a people pleaser is a really bad thing. He threw it out like some kind of insult you know? I almost felt like calling him back but then I thought he’d probably think I was some kind of nut job getting my knickers in a twist about nothing. So I didn’t, because he’d probably have a point.

I think the reason it felt like he’d poked me with a big stick was because I’ve spent quite a large portion of my life putting the desire to please other people before my own needs, and to think that people might stick a label on me in such a dismissive way was what set my teeth on edge. How bloody dare he. I suppose if you’re blessed with the confidence and wisdom to lead a life where you balance the desire to be a good all round human being with taking care of your own needs, it might seem a bit pathetic when you see someone whose need for acceptance drives them to a place where their own wants and needs are utterly overlooked. And what’s worse, they’re okay with that. But hearing the scorn in his voice rattled me more than I like to admit.

As my blog has taken shape I’ve referred a few times to the fact that I’ve been fat-skinny-fat-skinny on an almost continuous loop since my late teens. You want to know what I’ve realised as I’ve chewed on this over the last couple of days? My desire to take care of everybody else but myself is way, WAY more obvious when I’m fat than it ever is when I’m skinny. Isn’t that an interesting thought.

It’s as if subconsciously as a skinny girl, I feel free enough to be selfish when the occasion demands. I make demands of my own that – surprisingly – people meet without thinking too hard about it and even though I can be a proper diva, I still manage to be a decent person. But when I’m fat I almost feel the need to compensate by trying to be all things to all people…like the most I could hope for in terms of anyone’s opinion of me is yeah she’s fat but she’s really really nice. Which is ridiculous, because I’m the same person.

Jim Carrey – not someone you immediately think of as one of the world’s great philosophers – once said “Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don’t let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory”

Wise words. Haven’t quite nailed it but I’m trying.

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Semi-Retired Disco Pants

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

dress

So today’s the day where I’m headed off to conference, complete with shirt that fits – yey. Before you all celebrate (I can hear sighs of relief and corks popping all around me) I’m here to tell you that in all honesty I think you could probably get the inhabitants of a small village into this shirt.  Clearly when the order form went off with my size on, the shirt maker erred on the side of caution having never needed a pattern so big, and used enough fabric to single-handedly power the Spanish Armada.

I’ve got to be honest, the starched collar doesn’t help the overall effect and I certainly won’t be winning any prizes for style. Still, I’d rather look like a ship in full sail than spend the day bursting out of something which is straining at the seams. I tell you what, I’m going to keep this shirt and when I’m skinny I’ll do one of those photos of me posing in one corner of it. But anyway, that’s day wear sorted out. I will also be required to host a table at the gala dinner, and the dress code requires me to wear a cocktail dress. Oh dear.

Now I’m here to tell you that’s not going to happen any time soon. No no no no no. For the avoidance of doubt, no. I’m not one of these busty-but-hour-glass shaped ladies who can look glorious with curves spilling out of artfully draped chiffon even if the serving size is a little too large. I’ve never been known for my glorious assets in the cleavage department and to be honest, after all these years going up and down the size spectrum, nowadays my boobs resemble a pair of old sports socks with a tennis ball in each end. Trying to hoist them up to look alluring in any kind of chiffon ensemble has disaster written all over it.

I shall choose instead to wear my trusty black palazzo pants which, whilst not exactly on point in terms of the dress code look as dressy as it’s ever going to get when teamed with a nice top. A nice black floaty shapeless hides-everything-displays-nothing kind of top. No dimpled flesh on display, nothing to offend the eye, nothing to make me stand out. Nothing to make the asshole in my head whisper you can put lipstick on a pig but… or you can cover a turd in glitter but… as I’m getting ready. He really earned his stripes over the years you know?  But I’m ready for him.

And as for the post-dinner dancing…I have to be honest and say my disco pants were put out to grass some time ago. I might have got a bit more mileage out of them had I been a skinny girl but as it stands, they’re currently buried somewhere in my skinny closet with nothing on their dance card. But activity is only suspended ’till I’m skinny, so they’re only semi-retired…even with my dodgy knee I still have moves like Jagger and can shake what my mama gave me with the best of ’em. Just for now, not in public 🙂

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Game Of Thongs

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, Reflections on past times,

holsI’m getting so excited about my forthcoming holiday – it’s going to be epic. Normally I’m a quiet vacationer – I have such a busy life full of work and other pulls on my time that my idea of holiday heaven amounts to utter relaxation when I’m away you know? On my last holiday I managed to read 8 books, get thoroughly pampered and I relaxed within an inch of my life. The plan is a little different this time – six giddy girlies heading off for a few days to celebrate my milestone birthday and looking at the itinerary, there won’t be much relaxing going on! There will however be lots of laughing, lots of shopping, and plenty of memories being made…I can’t wait.

There’s only one day in the four that we’re away where we’ve got time to chill around the pool – always makes me a bit wistful when I recall skinny trips where I didn’t need to worry about choosing a swimsuit with the type of engineering designed to contain and flatter quite so much body.  I use the word ‘flatter’ in it’s loosest possible term obviously – it’s black which is as good as it’s going to get. The asshole in my head is going to have a field day from the minute I put it on but you know what, he can stick it up his pipe…I’m totally going to style it out and give the impression that I’m one of those lucky people who don’t care what other people think.

There’s nowhere to hide in swimwear is there? I remember I took a trip a few years ago with a guy I’d been seeing for a few months – I was a big girl back then but not in the same way I am now. Even so, I’d spent the days and weeks leading up to the trip agonising over what I was going to look like on the beach. It didn’t even occur to me what he was going to look like – rookie mistake number one. Afterwards, when the trauma of seeing him in a thong for the first time had receded, I made a mental note to expand on the ‘no speedos’ rule which we’d discussed before the trip. He tried to justify it by insisting that we were in Brazil, and everybody in Brazil wears a thong.

I’m here to tell you that they don’t. And in any event, fifty-year-old butt cheeks flapping in the breeze like pillow cases on a washing line are N.E.V.E.R going to be a good look. It’s the one time I’ve felt confident that nobody was looking at my ass since the one next to me was the one putting people off their lunch. But kudos to him – he didn’t care. He was living his dream, and wearing a thong on Ipanema beach was it. Incidentally it was our first and last trip together, in case you were wondering…I’m all for live and let live, but I’ve got enough on worrying about what people will think about me without further complicating the equation.

With a bit of luck there might be a hairy-assed bloke in a mankini lounging around the pool at our hotel in a couple of weeks’  time to take the attention off this middle-aged fat girl in a swimsuit…I can live in hope 🙂

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Waiting to be Skinny

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

thin

Have you ever felt like your life is on hold, whilst you dream about all the things you’re going to do once you’re skinny? I have. There are places I really want to see, and experiences that I really want to have but somehow the prospect of doing them as a fat girl is nowhere near as appealing as the way I imagine they’d pan out if I experienced them as a skinny girl. And I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that way.

I can even articulate the reason why – being fat preoccupies me. With alarming regularity, the fact that I’m fat muscles in on everything I do. When I’m walking the dog and my ankles ache from the heroic effort they have to make with every step to transport all this timber, I nod and agree with the asshole in my head when he comments that if I were skinny they wouldn’t hurt. On holiday recently when I was reclining on my sun lounger reading my book and I fancied a drink, I decided to just stay thirsty because the thought of hauling myself off the sun lounger was just too much of an effort – it was low to the ground with arms at the mid point, and swinging my legs over the side and hopping up in an easy fluid movement would have been impossible. It would have been a ten point manoeuvre, and wholly inelegant, which people might have noticed and even laughed at…look at the moose, she could do with a hoist, has anyone got a crane hahaha…of course the asshole is front and centre of driving all these thoughts but still, they exist.

So I don’t want to experience the things that I’ve dreamed about, or the things that I aspire to as a fat girl – I want to experience them as a skinny girl and live in the moment, with nothing on my mind other than how much I’m wringing every ounce of enjoyment out of each and every one of those moments.  When I swim with the dolphins I don’t want to spend the run up to it worrying about what on God’s green earth I’m going to look like in a wetsuit. If I snorkel off the great barrier reef I don’t want to be preoccupied about what the person snorkelling behind me is thinking as my arse completely obliterates his view…imagine the postcards he might send, Shamu is alive and well and currently on holiday just off the coast of Australia. As I board the Orient Express in Paris or the Rocky Mountaineer train in Canada and realise a lifelong dream, I don’t want my experience ruined by a seat that’s too small, or feeling that I’m spilling over and spoiling someone else’s experience. And if I’m lucky enough to ever ride an elephant in Sri Lanka I’d like folk to be able to tell us apart 🙂

As a really fat person it’s so tempting to put your life on hold and just dream instead about the life you’ll live when you’re skinny. I know, I’ve done it…I’m not doing it any more and I’ll tell you what else, I’m not waiting till I’m skinny either. As soon as I have just one X in front of my L, I’ll be ticking things off my bucket list with gusto. So there!

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So How Full is Full?

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, , ,

sk dog

It’s occurred to me more than once that maybe there’s a fundamental design fault with the human body you know? At least for some of us.  Take your car…it runs low on fuel, the fuel gauge tells you, you fill it up and when the fuel pump clicks, you know it’s full. You can’t squeeze more in, because it just takes what it takes. It doesn’t matter if you’d hoped to squeeze more in, if it’s full it’s full. You wouldn’t stand there and keep giving it large with the nozzle would you? No, of course you wouldn’t.

Now I don’t know about you, but somehow, no matter how much my head recognises that my belly is full, if I’m that way out and want to eat, I’ll find a way to eat. Case in point, Christmas dinner…you know that way where it’s just soooo good and there’s leftovers on the table winking at you and trying everything possible to attract your attention…eat me eat me eat me… you’ve already eaten everything on your plate, you’re stuffed more royally than the turkey ever was and you already suspect you’re going to need a winch to help you up from your chair.

And yet. That minxy little pig nestled in that crispy little blanket seduces you over the brussels sprouts and before you know it your jaws are off again. Your belly is already bursting, you look like you swallowed a beach ball and you’re bordering on a food coma and yet still you can’t resist.

My problem has always been that it isn’t just at Christmas…lots of people walk away from that special once-a-year dinner groaning and pledging not to eat for a week. Me included (although to be fair I’d usually only make it from the dining table as far as the sofa before I was in to the chocolates just because you know, it’s Christmas.) Trouble is, having grown up eating portions that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the top of Jack’s beanstalk, walking away from the table feeling fit to burst was almost the norm in our house.

Having survived the war years on ration coupons and food shortages,  my mum showed love by providing a constant stream of food…she loved to cook, and bake, and although there was only our small little family sitting down to eat, she may as well have been feeding the five thousand. There’d probably have been leftovers even then.  So her love of feeding her family combined with my love of feeding my face kind of created the perfect storm. My full-filter is broken, and I have no concept of what a normal portion looks like. I look at a TV dinner or a ready meal which might be labelled as a meal for one and think “are you kidding me..? “

It’s down to me now though – I get that. Eating till I’m not hungry is different from eating till I’m full, and I get that too. Eating till I’m overfull …I shouldn’t go there at all. There have been times in my life where I’ve felt overpowered by the desire to eat but equally there have been times when I’ve felt like I’m the one calling the shots, and right now I feel strong. In control…it feels good you know?

Even if I still look at a regular sized portion and think ‘great but where’s the rest of it…?!‘

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