Shapeshifter

This isn’t a happy story; I don’t think it’s sad, but if you’re looking for a triump of the human spirit this ain’t it sis.

I have to start at the beginning but that’s a while back so I’ll rush through the early stuff. I was born premature. I was definitely a runt, and I stayed a runt for a while. I plumped up a bit as a tween, and I was a late bloomer, so as I gained more weight a lot of it was excused as “nature’s course.” I wasn’t perturbed — I grew up “happy and healthy” in a home with two overweight parents who seemed largely “happy and healthy”. I left high school having internalized my fatness with a sense of crazed loathing. I did hate others for being pretty and popular, but I didn’t want to admit that I was so upset because it felt beyond me.

Fat and happy. Enlightened, or something like that.

College went well, I lost a bit of weight but gained a ton of confidence in who I am. It felt like all of those times my parents had said was beginning to come to fruition — “just wait, you’re a spectacular person and people will eventually see all of that beyond the looks”.

“Fun Fact” — Humans ARE visual creatures (barring the blind). Despite all of our efforts, we do consume information with our eyes and almost no one is going to “see your personality shine” before they judge your appearance.

That little white lie, well intended, did a lot of damage to me over the years, and still does. But I just didn’t see it until I was actually staring at it.

I think I was 22. I was at home, and I’d found a picture of my parents in their early adult years. My parents, the round archons of my childhood, couldn’t have been these bean poles. It was really dissonant, and I immediately felt a sinking feeling. All at once I felt like I’d just been failing myself for years; that I’d been my obstacle and saboteur. I reeled on my own.

I was already depressed, and I’d made it worse adding more voices of doubt and failure to the cacophony that screamed me to sleep.

In another story, I talked about this depression, and what happened. The short is I lost about 100 pounds. Too quickly.

This image — a comparison of the volume five pounds of fat takes up compared with five pounds of muscle, was a huge wake-up call for me.

Worse yet, I first lost like 20 pounds and stagnated. So I bought a new wardrobe. Then I lost 80 pounds and didn’t have more weight to lose, so I “got” to buy a second new wardrobe. In eight months I went from wearing XL to XS and S. Perhaps expectedly, the more weight I lost, the fatter I felt.

“Fun Fact” — The less you weigh, the more impact a “pound of fat versus a pound of muscle” has on your frame.

Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt droopy and pudgy. I knew what I was working for, but again I felt like it was beyond me and that my physicality would only ever disappoint myself and others.

I got more advice, always unsolicited. “It’s just loose skin, it’ll snap back; you’re young!” “You’ve just got to build some muscle and tone.” So I waited, and I pushed myself. I built muscle, and I explored more diets.

Every day, the mirror looked back — dumpy and disappointed.

I tried to be as rational as possible about it. My inner monologue became riddled with the lines “you’re not fat, your waist is this size, you know it because your clothes say it and clothes don’t have any reason to lie.” I measured once, because I was certain clothes DID have a reason to lie. I knew what reality said, by my mind said something else.

I kept pushing.

I grew a lot of muscle. At some point, I went to the desert. The harsh environment and frequent physical activity scoured away my fat reserves and I saw a glimpse of my musculature. I still had loose skin. I still do. But for the first time, I had genuine proof that my mind could see what others saw.

These days, that feeling comes and goes. There are days where the mirror is a door to a universe where I’m literally Jabba the Hut.

My mirror is at least this shady.

“Fun Fact” — You’re perhaps the worst judge of your physical appearance. There’s research to show how our perception of our physical selves is incredibly flawed given its connection to our psyche.

I recently went three months without a mirror in my bathroom or room. It was surprisingly nice. Catching glimpses of myself in any reflective surface is so riveting though. I get caught in that web, and immediately plunge into the depths of this world where all my flaws light up like the sky on July 4th.

I can talk my way through and against those thoughts. But it’s definitely work.

I knew the problem by name, “body dysmorphia”. I know it is irrational, and that everyone has some of it. Body dysmorphia is a form of cognitive dissonance in which the self-perceived image of the body does not match the physical reality of the body. It’s jarring, and in my experience very hard to escape. The brain is very good at the childlike version of debate where it says “well nuh-unh, you’re just a gross fatso who can never be beautiful.”

I think that was the worst part of all of it. For context, this is around the time the ‘You Are Beautiful’ campaign began to gain a lot of traction. I grew up loved by and in love with fatness. That picture of my young, thin parents shattered that idea of love. I felt that white lie for everything it is, and now I was inundated with the word ‘beautiful’ on somehow every public mirror.

I “get it,” but like most things, I just wish it was better.

“Fun Fact” — Beauty is a single measure of worth for a world with thousands of facets to consider. Reductive campaigns, well intended or not, are short-sighted.

I hate that campaign. It doesn’t do anything to reclaim the word. It still forces value onto physicality. And once again, despite all my growth and change —

Despite every shape I’ve been,

Despite every time some stranger bombards me with that word.

It is not mine.

It’s beyond me.

This isn’t a happy story. It’s a human one. I’m working on it, for myself.

Sincerely Not Beautiful,

August