with Brianne Villano

Photo credit: National Geographic Magazine

I’ve been debating writing this post for a while now. It’s a big step and it allows both friends and acquaintances that may not know much about me to see into the inner workings of my life. For better or worse, I am of the mindset that sharing things about yourself is how you show what you are made of and how you find people who are similar.

If you’ve ever seen a fat person walking around and thought to yourself, “wow that person has no self control” or “that’s disgusting, how could anyone find that attractive?” then you might want to pay attention to this post. I promise to bare my soul to you but you have to respect the process.

I’m fat.

Fat is a physical description of a body type. It is not synonymous with stupid or lazy or ugly. Fat is adipose tissue. Fat is sweating in sweltering summers more than others. Fat is being ashamed to wear just about anything for fear of how it lays on you and how people will look at you. Fat is wearing jeans and a long-sleeve shirt in the summer because you are afraid to show any part of your body that wrinkles or bulges.

The thing you have to realize, whether you want to or not, is that anyone who is outwardly overweight or obese, that does not have an actual physical ailment responsible for the weight gain, has a raging internal dialogue that never shuts up. It’s as if a war is being waged inside our brains that goes back and forth from “I don’t need to eat anything else, I’m already too fat” to “the only thing that will make me feel better is food.”

You can’t just go cold-turkey. You have to have it to live. You have to know how to use it to work for you instead of against you. But I, like so many, don’t know how to do that. We do the dance and we wind up at extremes time and time again.

And thus begins an eating disorder. When you are anxious and nervous from a rough day or you have had to deal with something that you are unable to cope with, you (I) turn to food and it numbs the pain.

I started this when I was very young and for many years, it wasn’t a problem outwardly because my metabolism was enough to handle the excess. That’s not true anymore and it hasn’t been from about the time I left for college. That sudden and intense social interaction triggered something in me that caused an even further recession into myself involving food and a slight social anxiety that has plagued me ever since.

Now that I am older, it’s not easy to hide. I see it every day when I look in the mirror. I see it in my mind. I see it in the eyes of people I meet. Unfortunately, most people judge by what they see on the outside and some of them never get to know me at all. Many simply wave me off as “just another fat chick.”

Well, let me tell you something: I may be yet another fat person in the throngs of obese people that have become dependent on a society where convenience and the quest for physical perfection have won out over health and moderation, but if you’re lucky enough to know me, I mean really know me, you know that my heart is the biggest part of me. Not my arms or my thighs or my ass.

I have so many flaws, don’t get me wrong:

I laugh too loudly.

I have the attention span of a gnat.

I’m addicted to the internet.

I have a temper – I’m a native New Yorker, what do you expect?

I let others dictate my successes and failures instead of letting myself be in control.

I am a procrastinator who’s fallen victim to Paralysis by Analysis much more than once.

But all that notwithstanding, I will give you the shoes off my feet if you need them. I will make a complete ass out of myself to make someone I care about smile for even a second. I will make you snort your drink out of your nose and then I’ll laugh my ass off at you for doing it. I’ll go window shopping with you in the mall and if a song comes on that I like, I will dance and wiggle and sing and the mall security guards will follow us around wondering if we’re drunk or high or worse…and we will be stone-cold sober.

And then when I go home, I will put my pajamas on and eat way too much ice cream or pasta or whatever until the stress that I felt from the outing goes away and all I feel is nothing.

I won’t vomit it up, though. Compulsive over-eaters don’t purge, we just binge. We self-soothe so that things that may hurt us or make us uncomfortable will go away, if only for a little while. There are emotional reasons why I am the way I am, and if you have met me in passing you may never guess that I am not the sarcastic, goofy, borderline insane bitch that you met. Well, I mean, I AM. But there’s more. There are layers.

The layers aren’t going to stop me from living my life, though. I’m still going to squeeze my ass in a plane seat and go visit friends that mean the world to me. I’m still going to wear a tank top and shorts because it’s 95 degrees in North Carolina and the humidity is hallucination-inducing. I’m still going to buy ice cream and chocolate and what I want and need at the grocery store even if you look in my cart and judge me.

I just ask one thing: the next time you see someone who looks uncomfortable, fat or not, smile at them. Offer them kindness. Show them that their physical appearance isn’t the only thing that they are and maybe, eventually, they’ll begin to believe that themselves.