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Dear Loved One, I’m Sorry for My Fatness
I thought it was just me. It’s never just me.
A friend of mine sent me a message last night saying that she has gained weight and is larger than the last time we saw her. It was a warning, an apology of sorts, getting ahead of the shock we might feel. We “might not even recognize her” when we see her this weekend for the first time in several years.
I KNOW THIS WARNING. I have drafted and deleted this warning so many times over the past year. Every time someone visits me or I travel to see friends and family I haven’t seen for a long while, I feel the need to apologize for how I look. To get ahead of their judgement. To establish, yes, I know, my body is not the same and I’m so sorry you have to witness it. Then I get furious at myself for feeling that way, for being so body-negative, vain, simple…and I HATE how much harder this is for people who are bigger, who lose out on elements of life because of anti-fat bias. I HATE IT. Here I sit at the crossroad of intellectual/unlearning, and the feeling/conditioning. Always the conflict.
I told my friend that I feel her, I’m right there with her, and we wrote the following together. These shitty feelings are a little less desolate when shared. Also, objectively, I know that her smile, style, grace, and sarcasm are what will stand out most when I see her, which gives me hope that…
