Designated Fat Girl

I was poking around Value Village last week looking for something to read.  I found this memoir titled "Fat Girl."  It was sitting on the coloring table next to the shelf, seeming to be meant for me to find.  I contemplated buying it, but I'm cheap, and Value Village charges too much for their used paperbacks (4 bucks?  Who do they think they are, a real bookstore?  lol.)  So I wrote down the title and then headed to the library in Burien.  And while they didn't have this specific memoir I was looking for, I did find a similar one, titled "Designated Fat Girl" by Jennifer Joyner.

From the second I picked this book up during one of my lunch breaks at work, I've never had a book speak to me more.  While some of her struggles are way beyond anything I've ever experienced in my physical AND mental struggles with food, it seems there is something on every page that jumps out.  I just finished reading a part that I can't get out of my head, and I figured out why.  Because nearly 2 years, I wrote nearly the same words here in my own journal.


"In the bathtub earlier that day, I'd noticed my first stretch mark.  It was an angry crimson color, and it streaked its way down my abdomen, gnarling my skin with ragged bumps, toward my navel.  It was a bright ugly reminder of what was happening to my body.  I was never a fan of my naked image, and now I felt even more ashamed.  I could get rid of the extra pounds, but would the scars ever go away?  I felt marked for live."
-Jennifer Joyner; Designated Fat Girl

And from this very blog, titled "Fat Scars," on July 31st, 2009
"I find myself standing in front of the mirror a lot lately, just starring at my body. No, I haven't become a narcissist, I'm just looking for the changes. A majority of the time I'm doing this, its usually in the morning after a shower. While I am noticing my belly slowly shrinking, and the creases in my stomach becoming less, I can't help but wonder if I will ever be okay with my body.

I know that sounds weird...let me explain. If you look at my stomach, I have stretch marks all around my belly button, kind of like a woman who has given birth. To me they are ugly, a reminder that I let myself get so out of control and so fat that my skin couldn't contain all the fat. They start close to my belly button, and kind of fan out a little way. I remember the first time one popped up, it was just a little one, no bigger than the length of my pinky fingernail, right next to my belly button. It was probably a year and a half ago, or maybe a little more than that. I was lingerie shopping with Jes, and saw it in the dressing room. I was devastated, seeing it there, because I knew they were permanent. From there, I don't remember seeing anymore until a couple of days before our Hawaii trip, I looked and they were all over my stomach. I felt helpless, and knew that no matter how much weight I had lost, I could never wear a bikini and fell good naked, because even if I was skinny, I would still have these...scars."

 I'll admit I've been struggling a lot lately, emotionally.  Some days, I'm disgusted with myself.  I look at my stomach and wonder how many situps I have to do to make it flat, or if my skin has the ability to even do that anymore?  Did I stay fat too long?  What happens when I have kids?  This all sounds so vain, but I find it really hard to love myself sometimes, love my own body.

I'm in a new place, and most people don't know how far I've come.  So do they look at me and just assume that I'm still just a fat girl?  The one girl at work that I told about my journey replied with, "I hate people like you" when she found out that I had lost 60 pounds.  While she was (at least partially) joking, it still hurt.  But at the same time, why should she care?  And should I really be patted on the back for losing weight when it was my fault that I gained it in the first place?  I guess its kind of the same thing as being happy when an alcoholic or a drug addict tells you that they've been clean for x amount of months.  You're happy for them, but should you be?  Tons of people everyday function just fine without drugs or alcohol...or excessive amounts of food.  What makes them (or me) so special?


It sucks being inside my head sometimes.