Macho--or fun with Self Analysis Part I

I really do think sometimes I would have made a better guy. I think in a past lifetime, or several of them, I was...and more than likely one of "those" guys. I can compartmentalize things in my life with amazing ease, I tend to be insensitive, my spatial abilities outstrip most guys I know, as do my mechanical abilities. On the flip side, I notice things that a lot of people don't. If I tell you I didn't notice, I'm either disinterested or lying because I'm disinterested.

Also, as I age, I find myself attracted more and more to women...freaky, I know. And this is the part where L might want to stop reading and pick up in the next paragraph. If I picture myself as being...well, intimate with a woman, the first thing that comes to mind is having sex with her as a guy, not as two women would...which tells me there's some kind of residual memory there.

I say all of this because my insensitivity struck a chord with me today. I'm particularly, like my dad was, insensitive when it comes to fat people...although I at least do not make the snarky comments, especially where they can hear me, like Daddy did. I do understand that being fat is not the real issue. Deep, underlying pain usually is (barring the relatively rare cases where hormone- and/or thyroid-imbalances are the culprit). If the underlying issues can be faced and "handled" then the idea is that the overweight person can then love themselves enough to pursue losing weight, or more correctly, getting healthy.

You might think I'm one of those skinny bitches who don't understand...you'd be wrong. I'm 100 lbs over where I was when I was 20. It's taken me 35 years to get there, but today I weighed in at 219. I'm fat. I'm fat and no amount of rationalizing will soften that. The real bitch is that when I was 118 lbs, or 124, or even 130, 140...I thought I was fat. 145 was like the end of the world for me...and now here I'm facing size 20s if I don't stop the upward spiral. So, why, you ask, am I not sympathetic to the fatgirls? I am. But not to the point of saying it's okay to be fat. It's not. It's okay to love yourself enough to take care of yourself. I think that's at the bottom of my fat issues, really. I hate myself, I hate my body for the treachery over the years and this is some sort of mental time bomb I've planted. It’s a vicious cycle, though. You hate yourself, so you’re mean to yourself, which makes you uglier, so you hate yourself even more, because now, instead of just being a loser, you’re a fat loser, ad infinitum.

Sylvan posted this today and I wanted to cry, I wanted to reach out and hold her, to make the hurt go away. My overly vivid imagination can come up with any number of scenarios as to why she was adopted at 2. Car wreck killed both parents, one parent was an abuser, the other was in jail, single mom just couldn’t cut it anymore…the possibilities are endless. She has let go of that…or at least it seems that way, only someone delving more deeply than she’d really want them to could find out for sure. Does it matter, in the end? Probably not. She was adopted by a loving family who raised her and made her their own. The reason this is relevant is the whole Inner Child vs needs vs wants and why are we fat. She’s had her weight issues, I understand, since she was a girl. I thought I had weight issues 30 years before I really did. And now I have serious ones.

I had a therapist who is convinced all weight issues (save the aforementioned biochemical ones) have emotional roots. And that includes the under-weight issues as well as the over-weight ones. Whether you’re anorexic, bulimic, or tipping the freight scales at 400 pounds, you have an emotional problem that needs to be discovered and dealt with before the weight issues can be addressed. The “dealing with” part is the hard part. How does one “deal” with something like that. Not to mention knowing what it is might even make it worse, might make you so depressed that you drown yourself in whipped cream-covered jelly donuts. I have no such past. I was not only wanted by my parents, I was, according to them, planned. Essentially they said they wanted a blue-eyed, blonde-haired little girl and they got one. (And you see…right there I was tempted to write: and what they got was me; thereby devaluing myself yet again. I’ll give in to the temptation by merely saying: Well, at least I stayed blonde for a few years.)

So, back to this Inner Child-needs-wants-and body issues thing. Yes, I know I wander and ramble, but hell, this is a blog, not RHE 306.

I have at least four different facets to my personality, and over the years I’ve identified them and even named them. Nan is just me, Katie is the party girl, the flirt, the joker, the funster (haven’t seen a whole lot of her lately), David is the logical, reasonable one, and Roxanne is the complete and total bitch; if I have an inner child, it is she. I’m thinking I probably have another male personality, too…one who is not as well-defined, but is the sex-crazed prick…?

I do have a number of theories as to why I’ve tanked out. The whole process began with turning 30 and not realizing that I *had* been like my mother and father, in that I was actually rather thin in high school (my mother did not get curves until she was 17, when she went through puberty, so when I curved out earlier, going through menarche at 12—like a normal girl :P—she thought I was overweight.* I can remember it being intimated that I was carrying too much weight when I was still in high school…and I was 115 at 5’5”!!!!) Here’s 18, 5’5” and 118. On top of that, my first husband (who dated the ultimate skinny mini in high school) called me chubby at 120 lbs. Now granted, he was young, but so was I, so I didn’t have the experience to tell him to shove it…as a result of those two histories, I went into my late 20s, early 30s thinking anything over 125 was utter disaster. So, when I approached 128, 130 (had a bf at that time telling me I was fat, too), I think I started beating myself up at that point. Even at 28, 128, I had a fabulous body, but in my own mind, I was over the hill.

This is what my father hated on TV…a two-parter (invariably, he’d get wrapped up in some TV show and discover at the end that it was …to be continued…and he knew he’d be on the road. Well…hope you’re not on the road when I finish this, but I’ve made a commitment to myself to work out and that’s where I’m off to…

*In talking to her now, 40 years later, she says I was the one worried about my weight and she used to tell me I was fine. Not how I remember it...but...