Occupying Space

The other night, I watched this video and by the end of it, I found myself in tears. This young woman was able to articulate one of the many problems I have with losing weight, one of the many, but not the only, aspects of this process that angers me and scares me on a fundamental level.

At one point, the girl on the video describes how her mother will sneak downstairs in the middle of the night to sneak bites of plain yogurt, 'a fugitive stealing calories she feels she doesn't deserve.' It's a sad idea and a horrible one, to be in that place where you feel like you most monitor and limit everything you take in. As the speaker says, it's as if women are taught to shrink and shrink, to take up no more space than necessary.

I want to be healthy. I want to be able to go where I want and wear what I want. I want to be able to use the the world around me and not worry about if I can fit into the booth or if the chair can hold me. I'm tired, so tired, of worrying about all of these things and I want to be in a place where that worry can end.

At the same time, I do not wish to take up less space than what I do. At least in a metaphorical sense, I want to retain my aura of DAMN BIG because I have grown accustomed to the benefits of it. My noncompliance to standards of beauty has been my badge of honor. My noncompliance to standards of beauty has been my loud, abrasive, off-key song of "FUCK YOU!" to the world around me, a world that splashes out of its container every time I jump in.

I don't want to feel guilty about food. I don't want to have to measure and worry and decide if I deserve nourishment. And, again, this isn't to say that I plan on stopping the weight loss . . . I guess it's just to say that as much as I enjoy my progress, as much as I love watching my body change and alter . . . I also hate it.

I hate it.

I hate conforming. I hate moving in the direction of social acceptance. I hate moving in the direction of conventional attractiveness. I hate occupying less space.