The Deep End

133.4kg, 294.1lbs


I'm afraid of dying.

I stepped on my scale this morning, absolutely terrified of what it was going to tell me, but fully aware that I needed to hear it.

In essence, I put on approximately 20 pounds in six weeks.

The excuses are pounding on the doors of my brain to be let out - today is literally the day before my period, 5 pounds of that MUST be water; September is the first month back at school/working full time, it's been too stressful to keep up a healthy lifestyle; I can probably safely assume that half of that is phantom weight from bloating and a lack of fiber....

Yeah, right, whatever.

The honest truth is that I've been locked in a cycle of self-sabotage. I almost hit 275 over the summer and as exciting as that was, it was also terrifying.

Losing weight is a kind of suicide. Just as much as being fat is a form of incredibly slow, but sure, death by my own hand, so is losing weight.

Fat is who I am. It is what I am. It is who I have been since I was a wee lass with a bad bowl cut, missing teeth under my pillow for the tooth fairy, and purple corduroy overalls.

I have no idea who I am if I'm not fat.

A lot of people I know GOT fat when they got old (ok, 28 isn't OLD, but... it totally is). They know what they look like when they aren't fat. They know how people treat them when they aren't fat. They know how life acts... when they aren't fat.

I don't.

Change is scary. Change is terrifying.

I am quite afraid of Fat Me dying. Even if it comes with the promise of rebirth as Skinny Me.

Who the fuck is that? NO ONE KNOWS.

I'm almost certain that I dove head first into butter bread with jam and entire bags of mini Kit-Kats because it was reaching a point where it was obvious that what I was doing to lose weight was succeeding. People would notice. Sometimes they would comment.

How is a person supposed to deal with that?

How am I supposed to handle the new attention, the continued (neverending) ridicule, the fear of becoming someone I have never met, and the exhaustion I mentioned in the previous post?

How does one person handle that?

I wish I had a support system here. The internet is great, but outside of these bits and bytes, where the problems are real - even the ones that are just in my head... they are real - I have little in the way of support.

Other (smaller) people tend to foist their leftovers off onto my plate: "Oh, I couldn't possibly finish this, will you?"

They influence my supermarket purchases: "This cake is on sale, want one?"

They whine in restaurants: "Am I the only one getting dessert? Come on, get something, I don't want to eat alone."

Once more, I fish for excuses in the sea of fat and easily catch my limit.

It's time to stop getting drunk by myself (because I am always by myself) on the fishing boat and get back to training for crew.