Fat and Happy

I have never been this happy. Also, I have never been this fat.

Okay, for about a year after my daughter was born and I smoked a lot of pot and ate everything that wasn’t nailed down. I had an ass the size of a small couch and tipped the scales on the other side of the 200 pound mark for awhile. I looked like I was bending over when I wasn’t. Seriously. But the upside to my inebriated state is that I don’t remember much about that time in life. I lived in a haze and once the smoke cleared the weight fell off.

I was only truly “skinny” for a brief period in my late 20’s. The Ex-H had deployed to Iraq for the first time and I was insane. Before that I had been on a crazy work out kick doing kick boxing aerobics 5 days a week, followed by a run on the treadmill. I ate the same high protein meals every day and was a solid, lean 5’4” 140 lbs. I still thought I was “fat” because I was in a size 10. I could kick myself for not keeping that body.

Sadly, it was all the exercise that did me in. At 24 years old I started having excruciating pain in my hips. Most days I’d be fine, but then out of the blue the pain would hit me and I would be rendered immobile for up to three days at a time. I would lay there and cry from the pain and all the crazy that was flowing through me. 

Without exercise, I plummeted down to 120 lbs in January of 2005. Of course, that was the month that I didn’t get out of bed. At all. My roommate would bring me food and books from our library downstairs and occasionally pry me out from under the covers to shower. Did I mention I had also just bought my boobs and was unknowingly withdrawing from the narcotics and barbiturates they had refilled for me after one of the Magic Water Balloons needed a repair?

Point being—for me, skinny = CRAZY. 

It didn’t get much better after I moved to Texas. I gained enough weight that my amazing size 6 red pants didn’t fit any longer. I stayed at a crazy, blonde size 8 for the rest of my 20’s. And then the divorce happened and I had to get a job. The first year wasn’t bad. I waited tables and worked in a psyche facility. Wrestling small children was quite a work out. Then all at once, it all went ka-boom and since then I have not seen the inside of single digit sized pants. My divorce was finalized the same week that my father passed away. Adding insult to injury, a close friend who had been staying on my couch due to her own divorce was outed for screwing an ex-boyfriend of mine. I didn’t care that she nailed him a couple times, I cared that she had lied to me. I was devastated and overwhelmed by it all. 

That was March of 2010...

Looking back I have no idea how I was paying my bills or functioning on any real level. Most of that month was spent getting drunk and making pancakes. We aren’t talking just simple Bisquick here. I made banana pancakes with cream cheese filling, pecans and butter pecan syrup. I made Baileys and chocolate chip pancakes and topped them with Cool Whip and chocolate syrup. I made blueberry pancakes with strawberry puree and sweet cream cheese icing. That was the month I also perfected my Baileys and cream ice cream recipe. Yum.

I stayed crazy and miserable for another two years and the weight just hung on. I bounced between 165 and 180 lbs while in a bad relationship that involved a toddler. No joke. When I was asked about that ex and why I was with him my answer is simple: He had a big dick and a small child.

Also he was fond of fluffy girls. Like the Ex-H, he preferred women of size and complained that his stripper Ex-W was too thin. Ex-H was dating a girl that was half my age and twice my size at that point- a testament to his true nature as a “Chubby Chaser” as well.

You would think that by this point in my life I would have learned to accept the fluff that slowly, then all at once encased my frame. I remember writing about the first time I discovered I had back fat and how odd it felt to have the extra rolls of flesh meet up when I would lay down and cock my hip up towards my rib like I prefer to sleep. Since then I’ve purchased new sneakers, ordered my favorite old Tammy Lee Web Buns of Steel videos online, and amassed a collection of yoga DVDs. This year I even went so far as to go back to Jazzercise.  I dubbed it “The Land of the Geriatric Woo Girls” for the way the little old ladies would jazz circles around me and still have enough breath to go “Woo!” at unpredictable intervals.

I liked it, but it took me six weeks before I could get through a session without seeing stars. I missed class for a little over a week in February and when I came back I fell out so fast that the instructor offered me her inhaler. I haven’t been back since, partly out of the fear I will pass out for real next time, and mostly from the embarrassment of being the youngest chick in the room, leaving in tears after 20 minutes due to the pain. Sadly, I did the stupid thing and signed a one-year contract. So there’s $45 per month wasted.

At the urging of My Mr. I finally went to the doctor about the pain in my hips. She prescribed physical therapy and diagnosed me as “OBESE.” Only a week earlier I had done a nude photo shoot and the night before got an offer for a paid shoot. But there it was in medical print: OBESE.

I cried, ate some ice cream and made my appointment for evaluation with the physical therapist. The short version of that story is: after 2 sessions my therapist dumped me because the exercises she wanted me to do made me cry. A lot. 

The cycle is this: I need to exercise to lose weight because the weight is making the pain worse but exercise is so painful that I can’t function. 

And don’t get me started on all the “other” reasons I “should” lose a few pounds. There are a dozen or more hanging in the back of my closet in the form of pants I used to wear when I worked in an office. These days my wardrobe consists of two decent pairs of yoga pants, two pairs of sweats I stole from the Mr. and lots of fuzzy socks. When we go out, I have the same two pairs of jeans that work still and have begun to acquire dresses that show off my curves. And by curves, I mean the Magic Water Balloons. 

The cycle sucks and it is only made worse by this ridiculous guilt I harbor for being this size. I am a size 14 and weigh around 180 lbs. My tummy isn’t flat, but it is defined enough that you know where my boobs end and my belly begins. There is no doubt that my ass is round in a manner that has always caused a disproportionate amount of black men to admire me from behind. Even in my smaller days I was often asked, despite my fair skin and red hair, “Are you mixed?” 

In today’s media there seems to be a backlash against the traditionally appealing body type. Facebook pages like “I like my women like I like my milkshakes, thick” praise the fuller figured women as the Goddesses we all are in our own right. The Mr. was known to remark how odd it felt (in a good way) to be able to wrap his arms all the way around me. The women before me were larger and even now he admires women that are more round than I am. 

I am still in the middle on this front, though. I think that’s where my issue comes in. I am not “fat” enough to be fetishized for being fat, but I am not thin enough to fit the other side of the spectrum. As always, I find myself called “Cake” and living here in The Middle Layer.