sometimes you just need a break

I haven’t posted in about two weeks, which is the longest break i’ve taken since perhaps November of last year. And this past week is certainly the first this year that I didn’t meet my new years intention of posting once a week in 2011. And you know? I’m totally ok with it. I was gettin’ pretty bummed there for a little while, what with the constant shit-storm being lobbed at low income folks, women of color, fatties, etc. And while my instinct is generally to dive into the FA movement head first, spending glorious hours online in this community of awesomeness, I felt myself pulling away a little bit. I’m still not exactly sure why, but my first thought is that i was simply tired. This shit takes work. It takes work to care, and it takes work to fight a system set up to frankly push anyone who may be on the margins away, so far away that they don’t have a voice. I don’t mean to pretend like I’m a martyr and that my problems even come close to the struggles others face on a daily basis, and I am privileged in all sorts of areas of my life, but it does just become really heavy on your soul after a while.

Last Friday, my office had a retreat and for the afternoon we had a training on how oppression shows up in the body. Essentially (truly, this is a 30 second breakdown of what took the instructor over 30 minutes to explain to us, so please know that I’m sure I’m leaving out some pretty important stuff, but I’m trying to nail the basics), our bodies are conditioned, through hundreds of years on this earth, to do one of five things when we come into contact with oppression, in whatever form: fight, flight, freeze, appease, dissociate. Apparently our bodies deal with oppression (racial, class, gender, ability, size, etc) in much the same way that they deal with trauma, as oppression is a form of social trauma. How we react has almost nothing to do with our “thinking” brain and almost everything to do with our “animal” brain. It’s our gut reaction, one that has worked for our ancestors for years and years. In order to start to dismantle that animal reaction (if one chooses to do that), a hell of a lot of work must be done such that we can choose which of the five reactions to use at any given time, depending on the circumstances.

Up until recently, whenever I dealt with oppression because of my size, my animal instinct was to dissociate from my body. I’m fairly certain this is common among the fats. If you can remove yourself from your physical body – the body that is being oppressed when it tries to fit into a seat and can’t, the body that is being yelled at on the street for being “unattractive” – you can protect yourself. You can protect your heart and your soul from just getting crushed. But this, for me, was dangerous, because it allowed me to talk SO much shit about my body because, you see, it really wasn’t even my body. It was just…something else. Not even someONE else. Just a thing. And it’s easy to say awful and mean things to a thing, isn’t it?

So I think this is what I was doing when everything just started to feel like a bit much. I went back to my historical animal instinct and dissociated, I can’t point to any one particular incident, I think it was just an aggregation of a bunch of little things. And it must be said that our animal instincts aren’t ever really wrong. They’re what has worked for us a thousand times over, otherwise we likely wouldn’t do them! We’re smart creatures. Our ancestors were smart creatures. We want to survive. So we do what allows us to survive. For me, it was pulling away from examining my body in the world, from engaging in the FA community and movement for a couple weeks.

Fortunately, I have another tool in my toolkit when it comes to dealing with oppression, and that tool is to fight. So I’m back to fighting, and I think it’s because of my dissociation for a little while that I am able to say the following. Bring it.

do friends set fat friends up?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately.

I was at a wedding a while back and the bride put me at a table with this rather cute single guy, but told me when she and I were going through the table listings (I was getting the low down on all of her friends, all of her fiance’s friends, the family drama, and such) that she was hoping to set him up with one of her friends from college, despite the fact that she knows I am single and “looking,” whatever that means. so, yeah. she mentioned it, we moved on, and ordered another round of drinks.

then, the wedding. it was so lovely and i had a great time. chatted with this dude for a while, danced my ass off, ate good food, and just generally rocked it. my necklace received a lot of compliments. as well it should, it’s a fantastic necklace.

A couple of days ago the same friend wanted to set that same dude up with another person we both know (good christ, I sound like I’m in middle school). so anyway, this nagging feeling has been hanging around me for a while and i’ve figured out where it’s coming from. i’ve had this happen before – my best friends set up another friend of mine with this single guy they knew. turns out it was just about the most delightful and perfect match ever, as they are gloriously happy and i love to see their partnership and love for each other. the fact that i wasn’t set up with him isn’t the point. and the fact that the bride tried to set up her single friend with two other people isn’t technically the point either. the point is that it makes me feel invisible. in a very stark and raw and and hit-me-over-the-head kind of way. I have never been set up with someone through a friend. I actually asked those friends (the non-bride friends) why they never set me up with anyone in all the years that I had known them, and the short answer I got back was that no one was “good enough” for me. Which of course is coming from a place of total love and adoration, but it certainly doesn’t allow me to decide who is and isn’t “good enough.” I hear time and time again from my friends how awesome i am, how much i make them laugh, how caring i am, how great blah blah (i know, rough life that i’m just FORCED to listen to people tell me all the things they love about me, bear with me).

I’m not sure, however, that my friends see me as a partner/lover/girlfriend to anyone they know.

And it’s not their fault. We live in a world where the fat girl isn’t seen as a suitable partner/lover/girlfriend most of the time. Shit, sometimes I don’t see myself that way.

Before I go further, I feel I should state unequivocally what this post is NOT saying:
1. I am not saying that any of this is done with intention.
2. I am not saying my friends are responsible for finding me a man.

What am I wondering is…do people set their fat friends up with other people? I realize this is an incredibly general statement, and that there are individual experiences that vary a great deal from mine. So, I’d love to hear them! Is this your experience as well? And if you aren’t single, how did you meet your person? Maybe people just don’t set people up anymore, skinny, fat, or otherwise? maybe that is an antiquated way of doing things and I just don’t have a barometer for these kinds of things? Totally possible. School me!

the fat body and running

I’ve had a bit of a relationship with running. We’ve been on and off (ok, mostly off) for a long time. I think, “running seems so fabulous. so…effortless, so…just me and the road, so tranquil” and then i do it and think, “what the ever loving fresh hell?! this hurts! i quit.” And then I go, “but it’s free! and so many of your friends do it! maybe if you just kept at it a little longer you would find the runner inside yourself!” So i do it some more. But then I get frustrated because if you’re fat and want to run, your choices for running clothes are, um, zero. It’s cotton for all fatties! We want you to lose weight and stop being a burden on society, what with all your health and your obesity and your OMGDEATHZ, but we’ll be damned if we’re going to make it easier on you by offering, I don’t know, cute yet functional and breathable running clothes in your size? please. (athleta, I’m looking at YOU)

So, yes, that is the relationship in a nutshell. Of course it’s more complicated than that, but those are the cliffs notes. I started running (and I should say by “running” i mean jogging and sometimes walking/jogging, not, like, sprinting with the speed of the wind or anything) after I graduated from college a little over 12 years ago. The purpose was losing weight. And I actually enjoyed it for the most part. I had no idea what I was doing (other than putting one foot in front of the other in a speedy manner and propelling myself forward, I mean), but it was a nice way to see and learn the neighborhood a few times a week. But then I stopped, for whatever reason I don’t remember, and I gained all the weight I had lost back (apparently that’s how diets work? /sarcasm). So the next time I picked up running, it was really really hard. It hurt because I didn’t have the proper gear and because, newsflash, when you have jiggly bouncy parts they tend to both jiggle and bounce more when you’re running. But I pushed myself because I was raised with the old “no pain, no gain” adage. This, of course, made me hate running because it came to represent yet another way I was failing – failing to lose weight, failing to have the better body, failing to enjoy a sport that so many do, etc etc. So I didn’t start running again for a long time.

Fast forward to grad school and I’m surrounded by, like, tons of wonderful friends who love to run! They do marathons, even! So I think “ok, this can’t be that bad.” In the Northwestern United States it’s like a damn rule that you run and love it and exclaim it to the world. I didn’t stop much to think about what I felt about running, and that was because I hadn’t yet started the mental heavy lifting and FA work that I did toward the end of grad school. So I started running again, doing the Couch to 5K training program that I had heard such wonderful things about. I quit that after about a month, not necessarily because I didn’t like the program, but because it’s hard to stay motivated when you’re running by yourself and I always felt awful running with other people because I, inevitably, would be much slower than anyone else and dragging people down to my level felt like shit. I had one friend I would run with that was awesome – she repeatedly told me that it didn’t matter the pace I ran, she just liked hanging out and she could always run ahead and then come back. And I believed her, but it didn’t matter. I still felt like a slow fatty mc slowpoke and I hated being that.

Now we’re here at this evening, where I just finished my second run under the Couch to 5K program with my sister. And I feel awesome. And this is the heaviest I’ve been in my whole life (i think, i don’t own a scale). This is certainly the “worst” shape I’ve been in in my life, but I feel pretty good! Part of that is because I finally get to look the part and however silly that sounds, it’s huge (pun intended). Nike carries extended sizes (granted, only up to a 3X, so I know that leaves out a big ‘ol portion of folks) and I purchased my first ever pair of dri-fit pants (hah, i wrote that as “dry-fat” pants at first). Anyway, dri-fit! That shit is magic! Does the rest of the world know about this? Anyway, yes, I get to wear cute clothes that are performance driven, which means that it makes it more comfortable to run. Which is awesome. The other awesome piece in all of this? I’ve decided to be nicer to myself and just go with the flow in terms of pacing. My sister runs ahead of me and I just plod along, not really giving a shit. And? There’s less pain associated with the jiggly bouncy parts because I’m not running super fast! genius! Last night when we went for our first run, I was really struggling with those old thoughts, “man, if you hadn’t let yourself get this bad, this wouldn’t be as hard right now” and “look how slow you’re going, does this even count as running?” and on and on. And I imagine I’ll still struggle with those thoughts now and then. But in the in-between moments, I’ve decided to be kind to my body. And look around and enjoy the actual ACT of running. It’s been kind of rainy the last couple nights, and running with a little mist blowing around, and twinkly lights around the lake, and the smell of bbq and weed and fresh cut grass? Not too shabby. And this time around, I’m not running to lose weight. I’m running to move my body more and enjoy the fresh air and spend more time with my sister. I also realize that i have a body that allows me to do this, so this is an ableist post. There are others that can’t do what I’m doing and I want to recognize that, while also celebrating this new piece of FA for me.

an ode to self-care. and, happy blogiversary!

I started this blog exactly one year ago today (hooray!) so I’ve been reflecting a lot lately. I’ve also been feeling a bit sad and down the last few days, for a variety of reasons. My work is controversial – reproductive justice is, unfortunately, a contentious issue. For those of in the States, we’ve been dealing with some incredibly oppressive and patriarchal proposed legislation that would make it virtually impossible for low income women and women of color to access reproductive health care, including abortion. I don’t work on the front lines – I’m not a provider, i don’t do policy work, and i’m not on capitol hill. I am, however, steeped in this movement and there are some days when I just want to scream “ENOUGH!!!!” at the top of my lungs. STOP trying to exert control over women’s bodies, STOP trying to pretend that you’re “pro-life” when you don’t actually give a shit about what happens to low income families and children once they’re born and instead choose to slash public benefits and health care, STOP acting as though the decisions you would make are the decisions we ALL should make. So many of these threads run through my work in fat acceptance as well. We receive messages every single day about our bodies, our food choices, the way we present ourselves to the world. It gets tiring! And it fills me with this huge, profound sense of sadness.

Going online and into the wonderful, fabulous FA community is an incredible way for me to combat the negative messages/images/legislation because I’m welcomed into a place that “loves, without judgment”, but i’ve started to leave other forms of self-care by the wayside and that’s not good. So this is me, committing to practicing more self-care. Baths, a ‘lil facial now and then, getting outside more, reading, taking photos.

Speaking of, when I turn my head to the left and look out my window, this is what I see. little slice of happiness right there! welcome spring!