What it feels like

You feel it all the time. Feel it everywhere. It never stops unless you’re asleep. The constant awareness of it is just ALWAYS there. Like a half-drunk cup of coffee; you are always aware that you still have coffee left, even if you’re not specifically thinking of it. The awareness just sits deep in my stomach like a stationary bumblebee; humming and buzzing in the back of my bundle of organs, reverberating my lower body in anxiety and distaste.

I guess that’s why I daydream so much. That’s why I fall asleep experiencing life as I really want to: only through my dreams of being thin again, and not reality. When I have those daydreams and fantasies, I think about what I would wear mostly. I think about how very different my wardrobe would be if I was thin again. I think about how much easier my life would be. Never having to be followed round by that VOICE telling you that this isn’t OK. To be able to sit down and be comfortable, instead of sitting in a way I hope doesn’t make me look concertinaed. Being able to do ANYTHING and not have to worry and fret and feel so ashamed of the fat greasy layer all over me. Let me give and example:

What it’s like to sit down as a fat person:
First: Pull up pants at the back so when you sit your bum crack doesn’t spill out. Also pull up at the front so that your belly doesn’t spill over the front like a water-filled balloon. If you don’t, you’ll get a hideous muffin-top.

Second: Sit down very carefully so your body stays straight. Keep your chin up so you don’t get a fat roll of the jaw. Chest upright so people don’t see your fat-stuffed breasts. back straight so you don’t look like a hunchback, even though you are hunched 24/7.

Third: Hold the chair in place in case your bum overbalances over the side. Start to sit lightly at first, in case the chair collapses under your weight. If you’re not down far enough, you can still save yourself from falling over on your bum if it does collapse. Not being able to save yourself will mean people will see that you have a double chin, your belly, enormous breasts and probably bum crack.

Fourth: Always sit, and I mean always, one of two ways.

1: leaned back in the chair, cross your left knee over your right (for some reason it’s easier to cross to the right). Notice how your legs don’t cross easily. They don’t feel very comfortable crossed, but you have to do it. Even though your leg sticks out at a funny angle, it has to be done. Notice all of the thin people around you with their legs crossed with such ease, the one leg just flopping over the other and hanging next to it like the chimes in a windchime. Hands must always be across your lap, or sometimes hugging yourself to hide fat rolls, which feel as if they’re about to brush the floor. Keep pushing yourself up the chair continously, as your heavy torso pushes down continuously and makes you slide slowly down the chair until you’re almost horizontal.

2: You sit with your bum towards the closest end of the chair so that your legs perch off the seat and they almost feel slightly thinner, as they are hanging and not squished next to eachother. Your back must be completely straight, thus taking out the hunchback look but also helping the double chin and lifting your breasts off your chest. Arms must rest on the table at the elbows, after which they cross in an attempt to hide your enormous sacks of mammary fat. Always keep your arms not touching your body anywhere as it squashes them and makes them look twice the size they are.

Five: Feel uncomfortable. Feel so aware of every single centimetre on your body. How your clothes feel unpleasant against your skin. How you wish so much of your skin didn’t touch other parts of your skin. We’re masters of fooling everyone that we’re not as bad as we look.

These are the best ways to sit. Not comfortable at all, but if you do what is comfortable, you will look like an amoeba, flowing out of the seat. Now, when a person sits down, it takes about five seconds. Imagine what the other 23 hours, 59 minutes and fifty five seconds feel like to a fat person. That type of set up is going through our heads, every second of the day, unless we’re sleeping or daydreaming about a place where our minds can be quiet.

Never the subject

I’m always behind the camera lens, not in front of it. It’s not usually by choice either. I use my weight as an handy excuse that no one will ever question when people ask me “shame, why are there no photos of you?” It’s easier to just mumble “Oh I hate being in photos,” as if it were my decision to be excluded.

Parties, gatherings, get-togethers – I’m always flung a camera and asked to take pictures because “I’m so good with a camera” and in all honestly, I don’t think I am all that great.

Even my family hasn’t really bothered to take many pictures of me lately, despite going on about what a photogenic person I am. Or maybe they just meant that when I was 65kgs. Looking through the photos that were taken in August, I was in one picture on my own. One photo of me, out of hundreds. I don’t fit in at home, I know that, but I thought they would have at least taken a couple of pictures of me. Every time I’m in a picture, it is a family photo and I have to be included in it, although I’m missing from some of those too.

At NA parties, conventions and gatherings, they would take pictures. Lots and lots of them. I was never in them. A friend’s party for her daughter – I wasn’t in one picture. Not one. Well, one where you can see my sleeve, and my head is obscured by a baby.

I’m just continually… not in photos. I wondered if it was co-incidence, but after about the 10th time when I looked excitedly through a friend’s album of an event I was at and realised with a sinking feeling that I didn’t make the cut (again), I’ve stopped finding it a co-incidence.

I’m invisible. I don’t think I’m that hideous. But I don’t think people really see me at all either.

There are no pictures of me tagged as a “sexy driver” or a “naughty schoolgirl who’s going to show everyone how it’s done” or playing games of fucking chess on the train. There’s no intimate photos of me lying with a lover in a post orgasmic glow.

There’s  no pictures of me doing “epic” shit like driving while hodling a bottle of beer, playing guitar with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. No pictures of just my legs, just my breasts or just my bare back. None. No pictures of me lying in the sun. And no pictures of me and my lover together, taken by us. None. And if I was to put my lover’s clothes on, I’d rip them, and mine would drown him.

But I’ll do it. I’ll get there again. I’ll be the one everyone wants in their photos again. I’ll be the one whose boyfriend never stops taking pictures of me because he thinks I am so beautiful. And then I’ll put up loads of old photos of myself – as my fat self. And I’ll tag myself in them, and I will tell every fucking person that has passed on me because of my weight that I am the same person, whether I look good in pictures or not. And I’ll tell them they are so ugly on the inside that I can’t bear to look at them.