I’m coming to you live from the living room floor. I have a relaxing, jazz video on the TV via Youtube, a recently completed white wash hung up in all directions, and a 4 foot Christmas tree standing sloppily on my coffee table. And I’ve just been crying for ten minutes about a picture that was just uploaded to Facebook. Please bear in mind this is not in offence to the person who uploaded this picture, but I’m shocked at how I look on it. Recently people have been saying pretty banal statements to me regarding my appearance. “You look really good lately”, “you’re looking well”, and, “I think you look fine.” Lies, lies and more lies. Well, I don’t know if they are actually lies, but they definitely do not feel like truths. I even have the photographic evidence to support my case. And if people were to say that those are good photographs of me, then I’m in deeper shit than I originally thought. Also, just a quick note, I understand that the photograph is not the problem, the problem is in my head, but I am absolutely going to deny this and continue to blame the photograph.
My whole life feels as though it has been one long and continuous battle with my body. It’s been bigger, smaller, rounder, leaner, plumper, and lumpier, and in recent years feels almost as if it is starting to settle towards the lumpier state. Now by no means am I trying to write something fatphobic, as I believe fat people are just as valid as non-fat people, and the hateful shame-inducing discourse surrounding fat bodies, is abhorrent and anti-human. However, growing up fat and experiencing a period of weight loss to return to fatness, has taught me plenty about how I view my body, and how everybody else views my body. I currently sit around 17 stone 9 lbs, I have not weighed myself in roughly three months, and the number when said aloud does not shame me, or even affect me. I mention it here for context; at my lightest, I weighed 13 stone 2 lbs. This number, though unimportant in the grand scheme of all things, is burned into my brain like a tramp stamp on the lower back. There were no diets, no long periods of arduous exercise and weight lifting. There were however, long nights of boozy dancing, 60 hour work weeks in a 6 floor cinema, and a somewhat silent but perhaps noticeable relationship with an ex boyfriend of mine, MDMA. I suppose these all contributed to a staggering weight loss of about 4.5 stone in a year period, along with several bouts of depression and a habit of drinking three bottles of white wine a night. Not the wisest of decisions I know, but decisions I made regardless of responsibility.
At first I didn’t even notice the weight loss, sure I could fit into smaller sized clothing, and was able to at least glance at myself in the mirror, but I don’t actually think I was aware at how much weight had gone. I still had a flattened potato shaped head, an overhanging stomach scorched with stretchmarks, and “moobs” as everybody so politely calls them, so I never truly felt any different. My head was filled with other things, like the alien-green fog of depression, and an obsession with portraying myself as a young homosexual Bette Davis type to everyone I sauntered past. Whenever anybody from high school would see me or notice my latest picture on Facebook, I would be baptized in comments about my newfound thin-ness, and how incredible I looked. I decided to lean into the praise, and along with my other addictions, became entwined with it. I never went periods without eating, but eating was the furthest thing on my mind. My half an hour breaks would be soaked up with cigarettes, or quick phone conversations with toxic friends, and I would feast on the scraps left behind by customers (Yes, this is not a proud moment, but one that must be mentioned). Other men noticed too, I would begin to get looks, and on some fantastical occasions, approached by said men who would even offer to buy me a drink. Or just grab me and kiss me without consent. My addiction to the praise and adoration helped me deny the lack of consent for all touching, and even led me down the path of regrettable sexual encounters; including a blowjob with an elderly man wearing nothing but a leather harness and thong, underneath the DJ booth in Sub-101. Yes, that happened.
Then a couple of years later, the weight I had lost had suddenly returned, and then some. It happened overnight, or that’s how it felt, and it felt as if the period before of my enviable slimness was all but a fever dream. A reverse body dysmorphia. When it happened, I didn’t seem to care as much – even when shopping for pants of a bigger waist size, I didn’t care. I always felt ugly in the face, and knew that I was losing my hair, so why would a few extra lbs matter? But I would be lying if I said I still felt this way. At one point, you could not tear my phone from my hands. The front-facing camera and I were closer than any family member, and we respected each other. I would open it up, and study all the angles the world could send, and how it morphed and changed my appearance. I filmed myself lip-synching in the mirror, popping snapchat bubbles with my opening-and-closing-mouth, I even took photos of my reflection in shop mirrors and supermarket fridge aisles. Hours were spent marveling at my new body shape, and sometimes I still find myself searching for those photos, and remembering those feelings. My sharp and masculine jawline, my full-headed blondeness, my medium sized shirt from ZARA. All of it a distant memory, obtained through poor decision making, and utterly, utterly, misery-inducing self-hatred.
My face is still my face, and yes it does look drastically different now that the lower side of each cheek seems to be hellbent on swelling, but why now have I lost the self-adoration of the thinner me all because it is bigger? My body is bigger, much bigger, and sometimes I feel as though leaving the house just gives everybody an opportunity to drive past and say, “fucking hell, wouldn’t be wearing that if I were him”. Also while I’m here, did supermarkets really need to include front-facing cameras at the self-service? I came to the self-service because I want to be isolated and not have to deal with anybody, least of all be confronted with the one person I absolutely do not want to see, my reflection. Considering how close the front-facing camera and I used to be, this is the ultimate Shakespearean betrayal. Fuck you, TESCO.
I truly, truly wish I could see a picture of myself and not have to move to the living room floor to cry about who I see. I said earlier that my whole life feels like one big battle against myself, my face and my weight. Perhaps that’s because the first thing I was taught about my body was how to hate it. Fuck everybody who says to forgive your childhood bullies, they deserve no respect, but little big me absolutely did. As I grew, I was fed internet garbage about the power of being thin, the power of beauty and the pain of fatness. I remember weighing in at 18 stone when I turned 17, the weight being read aloud by my assigned doctor during a health check up following the death of my mother, and had no idea why my dad was so disturbed by this. And then I would see photographs, and think, oh, that’s why.
With all of this said, and by the way this is purely a stream of consciousness, so I do apologize if it appears to make no sense at all, I’m tired of the self loathing. I don’t subscribe to new age shite about manifestations, or hugging my inner child, but I do want to be able to look in the mirror and not want to break it to pieces, or pose for a picture without asking the photographer to crop me out for an additional price. New Years resolutions don’t always work, and I’m too lazy for the gym, but I’m also too good to hate how I look this often, and this much. I want to be able to have a second helping of Christmas dinner without wanting to kill myself after. But I also want to raise a middle finger to anybody who thinks even having a second helping of Christmas dinner is a bad thing. I’m human, I’m full of contradictions and my mind is constantly changing; but maybe, in 2021, as everything (hopefully) starts to get better, I can try to love myself a little more each day. Oh, and fuck that picture. It’s a really bad angle.
David Writes Things 
Leave a comment