If I'm Not Fat, Then Who Am I?

November 23, 2007 @ 12:20 am

I wonder, sometimes, if I really want to be thin. I wonder if sometimes if there is some part of my subconscious that wants me to be fat. I wonder if I all the times - hundreds of times, maybe - that I've failed I've actually sabotaged myself. But if that's true, then why? Why do such a thing when it's something that would vastly improve every aspect of my life, from my social relationships to how I'm perceived at work to my health and even life expectancy? Why would some part of me not want to be thin?

Maybe it's because I don't know how to live as a thin man. Maybe even if I were thin, I would still be a fat man in a thin man's body. When I back that statement up a bit and think about who I am, how I process the world around me and how I choose to act, I think I realize that nearly everything about me has evolved from being overweight. I am who I am because I am fat - and always have been fat. Nearly everything about how I process the world comes from that preface to one degree or another. If I were no longer fat, who I would I be?

I'm an introvert. I gain energy from personal time, alone time, quiet time, introspective thinking about life time. I'm also a good listener, but not a big talker. I deeply appreciate people in my life, but have very few friends, only a couple of which are close, and apparently none that I trust knowing of this blog. I'm highly observant and readily capable of connecting the social dots between people - I notice a lot of stuff most don't, live outside the circle and am somewhat intuitive about the world and how people tick, and yet I have great difficulty in letting people into my thoughts, desires and dreams. There even more facets to my personality, btu I wonder - is our personality really wholly genetic or the way we're wired? Maybe not necessarily.

I learned at an early age what it meant to be fat in our Euro/Anglo/American society. I've been fat my whole life. And really, the attitude is reflected in a recent blog post by a friend of mine. In this post he talks about making fun of some fat woman and her stretch pants, and he just as easily could me making fun of me, and that hurts, a lot, actually. I don't wear stretch pants, mind you, but the principle is there - fat people are an object of mockery without guilt.

To couterbalance my inevitable fate as a target, I quickly learned how to not draw attention to myself. I sat in the back of the classroom. I didn't raise my hand, no matter if I knew the answer ... I kept my mouth shut. I was quiet, a good little boy. I did my work, I did it well, and no matter what, I avoided the spotlight. When I joined a touring concert group, I spent one year on stage only to be positioned behind the tallest people in the cast. Soon after I became an A/V tech where no one would see me (and a damed good one, too). I took up photography, where I would never have to be in front of a camera. I learned to make websites, where I could come home and work by myself, where my friends were online and my work could be judged for itself, not for the ugliness of the worker.

Even as an adult, I find myself hushing my parter in public from time to time. On the subway, walking down the street, I avoid anything that would draw attention to me, lest anyone say anything to me. In New York we deal with some some posse of young people who sell candy, and it's bad enough to have to dodge them just to get where I'm going, but when they start to insult me for being fat and of course I would want candy, it just twists that knife all the more.

Part of me - or at least part of the fat me - would be happy to never have to go anywhere. I'd be happy to never be seen and live in my own mind, life, and privacy. That is, of course, impossible and the sane, modern, well-adjusted majority of myself fights those urges. But that brings me back to why I consistently fail at losing weight.

Could it really be that I have no idea how to live thin, if I ever will be thin? Sure I have all these goals that I list here, but what of them? Will I even know how to enact them? What would life be if I were thin? Maybe a part of me fears that I would have to start over in my personality if I were thin, as if every comfort zone, defense mechanism and private place I've ever constructed for myself would be useless, torn to shatters or useless in a new, thin life.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a scary thing. As uncomfortable as I am in my own skin, I still find it comforting because its what I know. I don't know the thin me. I never have. I want to, I think. And, I would hope that my life as Fat Me would influence Thin Me. I'm sure it would, but first I have to show myself that Thin Me isn't scary, and that I'll be okay with whatever unintended consequences come as a result of losing over a hundred pounds.

But in the mean time, it's a day by day journey. I'm learning that no matter how thin I hope I will be one day, today I need only think about today. My subconscious will just have to deal.