Last year I lost approximately 28 kilograms. So basically I
lost the equivalent of an Olsen Twin…. Or Donald Trump’s head. At first it was
great, I liked being more active and limber, I liked feeling healthy, I liked
clothes again and getting dressed wasn’t this torturous exercise of choosing
between one frumpy black outfit or another frumpy black outfit. I liked a lot
of things about losing weight but I didn’t like how important my weight loss
seemed to be to everyone else. I hadn’t heard so many backhanded compliments
since high school. “You look great! It’s like you’re a completely different
person!” a ‘friend’ once said to me. I thought “Really? That can’t be right.”
Because I am not a different person, I’m still me. I’m still a little anxious
around new people. I still get too passionate about the injustices I see in the
world and rant a little too loudly at times. I still write every day and
re-read my favourite books more than I should. I still have the same friends
and look for the same things in my potential partners. I still love my parents
and spend more time with them than someone my age generally would. I still cry
when I watch or even think about the movie ‘the Land Before Time’. I still
worry about not achieving my goals. I still fear a life of regret. I still see
sisterhood as gospel. In fact nothing about me has really changed except the
size of my body, the clothes I wear and admittedly the slight boost in my
confidence. But as a person, I am the same. And it hurts to have my defining
characteristic be my size. Because I am more than how I look, we all are.
The other thing that I really don’t like about losing weight
is the attention I’m receiving from men now compared to the attention I was
receiving before. I get yelled at from cars, I get unwanted advances from
customers at work, I get leered at and I get groped and I get touched by
strangers who think I should feel flattered by their molestations and I quite
often feel uncomfortable and unsafe. The other day I was thinking that if I put
the weight back on then I’d be left alone. A stupid fleeting thought that
ultimately inspired me to think deeper about this whole business. When I
thought back over my life I realised that size only alters the frequency of the
occurrences but not the act of them occurring. I have been a big girl from the
age of 16 through to last year. That’s over a decade of being ‘fat’. Was I left
alone during this time? Heck no. On closer inspection I actually endured some
of the worst treatment from men I have ever experienced during that period.
Turns out size plays so small a part in being objectified and degraded. How
lovely to know (insert sarcastic eye roll here).
This issue has come to ahead because of a combination of
things. Of course Hurricane Hate (AKA Donald Trump) plays a part in this
because how can he not? Right now, there are millions of women all over the
world who are still trying to make sense of this ordeal. Most of the things
Trump says make me so goddam angry that I want to stomp around the place smashing
things up. I don’t, because I’m a woman and I’m able to control my urges. But
when he was boasting about assaulting women with such self-satisfaction it
didn’t make me angry, it made me sad and it made me very scared. This is
because the lack of shame associated with reducing women to commodities speaks
to a larger more universal perception that I thought was mostly eradicated or
at the very least on its way out. In light of this and the fact that Trump won
the election it would appear that a lot of people still think you can do what
you want to women when you want because we aren’t really people, at least not
in the same way men are. And the other reason this issue is seemingly
controlling my brain space right now is that I am experiencing this in real
life too on a very unsettling level.
Recently I was put to work as a concierge for a short period
of time. The whole idea was that I just greet and farewell customers, and
occasionally help them find things they can’t locate. It wasn’t the most
stimulating of roles and I found myself finally understanding the term ‘bored
to tears’ in a way I never have before. The only relief was when someone would
actually speak to me, engage with me or acknowledge how tedious my job was.
These things happened rarely. Day two of my wearisome role however, saw me meet
a new ‘friend’. I won’t say his name because I fear saying it even once will
produce a Beetlejuice type result where he just appears, and I’m certainly not
dressed to receive (molestation) right now. But at first I just thought he was
an overly friendly, perhaps too lonely, slightly simple man. Maybe he got too
close to me and maybe he looked at me a little too intensely and maybe he tried
to touch me more than I was comfortable with but he was ‘harmless’ I thought,
and it had been hours since someone spoke to me so I was happy for the
distraction. He hovered and asked me a lot of questions about myself and seemed
very resistant to leave but when he finally did I felt relieved. And then I
immediately felt guilty because how cruel of me to relish the departure of the
one person who had shown me kindness. I resolved to be nicer and more open to
people from then on. And when he came back a couple of hours later with a card
he had made for me I thought “oh how sweet, he’s such a kind man” and chatted
to him for a bit longer.
I won’t go into too much detail because this thing went on
for weeks, and because I feel nauseous and anxious whenever I think about it.
But he came in to see me almost every night. You’d think it progressed slowly,
but it didn’t. It was only the third time I saw him that I started to feel
overwhelmingly unsettled and vulnerable. It then moved quickly to repulsed and
terrified. He brought me laminated poems he’d written about me. It was like he
predicted how gross these things would make me feel and knew my first instinct
would be to tear it up and throw it away so he made sure I couldn’t. He kept
asking for my number, he kept asking to see me outside of work, he kept trying
(and despite my best efforts, quite often succeeding) to touch me, he refused
to listen when I told him he was making me uncomfortable and he didn’t care
that I had a boyfriend. In the end I felt so at risk around him that I would
keep a keen eye out for his car and would run and hide in the office whenever
he came in. I’d watch him on the cameras searching the building for me before
approaching my coworkers to ask where I was. He’d memorised my schedule and was
angry when told I wasn’t there because in his words “I KNOW she works on
Thursdays from 8 til 4 so WHERE IS SHE?” In short, it got scary.
I consider myself a strong woman even if my strength isn’t
of the obvious, in your face variety. I believe in standing up for yourself and
making your voice heard. I don’t take shit from people anymore. Due to a long
stint of always being the target for bullies I resolved to never again be a
victim and worked hard to be more assertive and self-respectful. But during
this tribulation it became quite apparent to me how limited I actually am and
how vulnerable too. Even saying that makes me feel like a traitor to my
sisters, because we are so often made to feel weak and inferior because of our
gender. But I’m not talking about strength of character or strength of mind or
any of those things. I’m just talking facts. This man is in his late fifties
and has a good fourty kilograms on me. He’s also unhinged. If I were to go up
against this man, just me and him, it wouldn’t matter how strong my will is, or
how much of a fight I would put up… he would win. That thought was a very
sobering one. I am at risk no matter what I do. Because I am a woman.
Living with fear is not a new concept to me. My dalliance
with anxiety began in my teens and because anxiety was ever so fond of me it
flat out refused to leave my brain space. After a couple years it was all like
“Dude, I’ve been living here for ages now. And I don’t know if you’ve heard of
this thing called squatters rights? But basically I own this house, bitch!” Now
we have the sort of relationship an elderly couple who grew to despise each
other might have. We coexist, we do our own thing but we never ever allow an
opportunity to regain the power in the relationship pass by. After years of
attempting to manage my situation, I feel like I’ve got to a good place now, or
at least a better place. Mostly I’m the one in control and anxiety is just
tagging along complaining the whole goddam way, but then at times the roles
will flip and I’ll be completely at its mercy. Especially if there is a real,
honest to god threat out there, then my anxiety will stand up and say “I got
this one”. Right now it’s all anxiety all the time.
What is going to happen to us all now that the leader of the
‘free world’ is someone who believes the only people that matter are rich,
white men and the rest of us are just here to be played with or discarded or
used as pawns in some grander, more evil scheme? What about all those other
people out there who are angry, jaded and maybe a little mentally unstable? The
ones who want to do and say bad things but don’t because society, the law, and
our leaders tell them that it’s wrong and there are ramifications. What are
they all going to do now that they have a solid excuse for doing terrible
things? Are they going to do them and say something like “Well the president of
the United States said it’s okay so it MUST be”? Should I be worried that
instead of just being grabbed on the ass by strangers when I go out on the town
at night, that there is now a bigger risk of being full on raped by strangers?
I mean, this all probably seems a little crazy. And yeah, I guess I am a little
crazy. But isn’t what’s happening in the world right now WAY more crazy than
these anxiety driven fears visiting me? I wonder a lot if the reason Trump was
elected is as simple as this; too many people still think that a woman simply cannot
do the same job as well as a man. There has to be good people out there who
know Trump is evil and that he is not the right person for the job, but voted
for him anyway because “Well, you know…. Hilary is probably better but what
happens when she gets her period or someone calls her fat or her favourite
contestant on The Bachelor is
eliminated? Emotions, you guys! There’s just too many messy emotions with these
broads.” Or maybe I’m wrong about this whole thing and I’m just bitter and
angry now like the rest of them. That’s probably the biggest crime in this
whole ordeal, they’ve both been so mean and nasty that it now doesn’t seem weird
or out of place to say hurtful things to people. Slowly I’ve noticed a change
in the people around me, and within myself too. I feel like there’s this toxic
bath bomb in my stomach and it’s just sitting there spreading and dousing
everything else with its hatred and deep fear. So I’m getting it all out of me,
putting it here and hoping that some of the weight upon my shoulders is
lessened. I’m hoping tomorrow I’ll wake up and not immediately think “why
bother being a good person. No one likes the good people anymore. And the good
people never get ahead.” Because that is an incredibly morbid thought for five
in the fucking morning. And because through it all, through the depression and
anxiety, through the heart breaks and the tragedy, I have always managed to
pick myself up, dust myself off and believe that tomorrow will be a better day.
Deep beneath my dark sense of humour and my inability to suffer fools, way down
underneath my occasional superiority complex and my flirting with narcissism is
an optimistic sweetheart who has always been there and hopefully always will.
But then, she’s never had to deal with a blow quite this big before so…. Let’s
wish her luck.
