The discussion was about weight issues and someone wrote "I think people make the choice to be morbidly obese just as people make the choice to be smokers" and that just cheesed me off in so many ways that I just sort of lost it and wrote my entire life story of living life as a fat kid growing up into a fat adult. I seriously sat and wrote for three hours straight. (If only I could find that focus again! It'll come back, someday, come back, come back...) I feel like the majority of you know these details in one way or another, but bear with me - it's better than no updates at all, right?

Here we go:

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I've been fat my whole life, at least as long as I can remember, and although at this point in my life, I find it very unfruitful to think about why, I can see that there are some people here who are asking about fat issues without being mean or judgmental. I can appreciate someone who's never lived my life having some legitimate curiosity, so I'll give you my take on living in a fat body - how I got here, maybe, and why I "choose" to stay here.

First off, a lot of my family is varying ranges of big, with the occasional skinny outliers - for example, my parents and I are all fat, but my brother's skinny as a rail (and has atrocious health habits- he smokes weed all day long (even on his work lunch breaks), keeps his pockets stocked with candy and eats that instead of meals, doesn't exercise - but no one has ever given him a hard time about it because he looks the part of healthy. Because, as we all know, skinny automatically equals healthy.) I'm not suggesting that being fat is on a simplistic genetic par with something like eye color, but you know, no amount of dieting is gonna turn my peasant-stock body into a waif. It just isn't gonna happen.

The funny thing is, is that when I look back at pictures of myself at the age of six, I see a tall and chubby kid, not the monster I thought I was. Who knows what my weight would have been if I had been left alone to grow into the weight that was right for me? I never had the chance to find out.

My parents meant well, I know that, but there's something about fat that makes sane people crazy. (The rest of my family, I don't think they even started out sane.) From about six on, there was nothing about me that could possibly override my identity as the fat girl. The one whose body was simply wrong. I don't think there's any woman who has emerged from childhood unscathed from unwarranted criticism of her body, but boy do we fat girls get a raw deal.

My entire life, every morsel of food I put in my mouth was scrutinized. Every ounce of ME was scrutinized. My uncle would walk past me and painfully grab at me, cackling, "betcha I can pinch more than an inch on you!" while everyone else uncomfortably chuckled along. When I was in second grade, my grandmother would buy me clothes a size too small and wave them at me during lunch - "if you stop eating and fit into this, then you can have pretty clothes!" When I was in third grade, my parents would chide me constantly - "you've got to lose weight!" My mother would give me diet books to read, and just sort of hope I would do what they said. (It doesn't help sometimes to be a precosciously smart kid either - everyone assumes you don't need guidance around anything.) Meanwhile, she made the same meals and snacks and cookies and cakes that she always did. The four of us all had the same lifestyle - relatively nutritious meals with lots of junk food and incredible amounts of watching TV. Until my parents hit middle age, I was the only one who gained weight with this lifestyle, so it was my fault.

The constant barrage of comments and criticisms and cruelties - SO often dressed in "but I'm just concerned about your health!" - never ceased, ever. I could write for days and just scratch the surface (with just the school yard teasing alone) but moments stand out. My orthodontist adjusting my braces and saying "so, when are you going to start dieting?" My father screaming at me in the middle of Sears during school clothes shopping, "why don't you just go to the fucking maternity department?" My gifted teacher telling us about her jury duty experience where she tried to get out of a civil case with a fat plaintiff by stating "I hate fat people, they're ugly and disgusting" - as I sat right across from her. I don't even think it occured to her that I might have wanted to fall into a hole in the earth and die of shame hearing her words. Or maybe she thought it would have been motivating.

(Don't you understand? All the pain that a lifetime of these intrusions caused me, it was a necessary evil, it was all for my own good?)

And is it any wonder that I did not develop the healthiest relationship to my body as I grew up? I hated it, hated my fat, hated myself. (And I have to ask, all these people concerned with fat people's health, how exactly is fomenting self-hatred healthy?) I ate in secret because it was the only time I wasn't being watched. Because it was forbidden. And I absolutely hated exercise. Why wouldn't I? Exercise was for one reason only - to make my ugly, disgusting, horrible body a little less ugly and disgusting and horrible. Tell me how motivating that is? Gym class was torture (and lets not mention the locker room!) My mother would get me to walk up and down the driveway (we had a very steep driveway) to try to get me to exercise, and it was humiliating, let alone boring.

And let's not mention wanting to go outside to exercise or play. I was guaranteed to be teased, and it's really hard at nine years old to have the fortitude to keep your chin up and unwavering when you're assaulted with taunts. Or even the threat of taunts. Even today, I have to be braced and defensive, knowing that a taunt or catcall or insult can be lobbied my way at absolutely any moment. How is that good for my health, to have to constantly wear armor, be on guard, never let it down, never let myself relax?

So here we go - me feeling like my body is some alien creature that's ruining my life, everyone else completely agreeing with me, here comes senior year of high school and the great magical crash diet! You know the story, the one that all the books and movies and magazine articles tell. Fat girl is miserable and lonely, fat girl finally cleans up her act and loses weight, and voila! She has friends, she's happy, everyone loves her finally, and all is well in the world. I certainly didn't question the "magic" of that story, and I did it. For months and months when I was seventeen, I ate about 700 calories a day. I obsessed. I wrote down every calorie I ate. I boiled everything. I didn't eat anything with flavor. I considered everyone who offered me a cookie a traitor. My father once brought home Subway sandwiches and when I found that they'd accidentally put oil on my sub, I lashed out and screamed at him and then burst into tears. When I came home from school, I would go for a 90-120 minute walk/run, then hit the treadmill, and then the free weights. (Ironically, months of this and I was down to a size 18, which so many people still consider "obese".)

Looking back at this, there is no way this was healthy, but everyone cheered me on. (Though my skinny brother once told me, "you know, if keep talking about fat grams, you're gonna become really boring and no one's going to want to talk to you." How I wish I'd listened then!) Because, you know, there's no worse sin than being fat, and hallelujia, I was saved! The weight poured off of me - as it is wont to do in times of starvation and endless hours of grueling exercise - and as the weight came off, the accolades came in. Oh, the elixir of approval! I was an exceptional honor student, but losing weight was the only accomplishment that ever mattered to my teachers. Classmates who ignored me for years finally noticed I had a personality and a sense of humor. I had friends! I had a boyfriend! Everyone told me I was beautiful! I finally mattered!

But you know what? Those young adult novels with the reformed fat girl heroines don't tell you about the whole story. They don't tell you how exhausting and grueling it is to monitor every bite you eat, to make dieting your life's work. They don't tell you about the anger when you realize that while now you finally matter to people, well, it means you didn't before. And you're still the same you when it comes down to it.

You can all see where this is going, I'm sure. I went to college, had classes, had a new life, and just couldn't diet any more. I just couldn't. All the weight came back, the approval went away, the reprieve from criticism went away. Here again, it was open season on my body from every walk of life, but this time throw men into the mix. My first boyfriend cried one night because he didn't understand why he couldn't have a girlfriend small enough to sit in his lap. And I didn't walk out on him. I stayed for another year. He broke up with me for a tiny girl that he fell in love with, who could sit in his lap, yet slept with me for four more years because the sex was so good.

Of course I took what I could get - I had already learned that no one will ever love a fat girl, so I'd better grab what crumbs were thrown my way - no matter the disdain or digust or cruelty they were laced with. Any guy who would fuck me was doing me a favor, right? I met men who would coerce me into blowjobs in the front seat of their cars and who was I to say no and when else was I going to get to feel a man's hand in my hair anyway? Just months after my first boyfriend left me, I met a man online who professed to love me before he met me; when we met in person, he told me he loved me, that I was beautiful - but only from the breasts up. That the rest of me was disgusting and he couldn't bear to touch me. I was crushed, but wasn't he only saying what the rest of the world thought of me anyway? Later that night he tied me up and hurt me and this time I tried to say no, finally, but since when was my body my own anyway? I could tell far too many of these stories as well. Is it any wonder that when my last boyfriend started beating me up that I stayed for that too?

The thing is, once I finally left my ex, once I finally hit the wall and finally could say no, no, no one can treat me like this anymore, somewhere on that long painful haul to finding something salvageble in myself, into daring to think that I deserved better, the fat stuff started to come along. I had to stop hating my body. I began to stop feeling like a disconnected head, began to live inside of me, all of me. Eating stopped being so loaded - for the most part, now I eat foods I enjoy that nourish me. I finally discovered, hey, I LIKE moving! I go swimming, I ride my bike, I take yoga, I walk all over the place, I dance, I move my body without shame. My blood pressure and cholesterol have always been normal, no matter what I weighed (which has never stopped just about every doctor who crossed my path from immediately starting with the diet lecture.) I have more and more friends that I ever imagined possible, I have a good job, my relationship with my family has become very loving (and I have two magnificent nieces who think their fat auntie is just fantastic), I'm in love with a wonderful man who loves me back, loves me in the body I'm in, revels in the body I'm in. I have a warm, wonderful, fulfilling life - this is healthy.

So, yeah, I guess you could say I "choose" to be fat. Because I choose a well-rounded life filled with a joyful variety of people and activities and food instead endless day after day of 700 calories and 3 hours of exercise and ceaseless self-loathing.

I have written so much more than I ever intended - it is all pouring out of me. But I want you to know (and know this is not intended for any one of you specifically, I mean a global you). I want you to know me. I want you to know my story. My story is just that - only my own - but I'm not the only fat person with a story like this. So few people look at me and see a person, a person with a life no one knows about until they ask. People look at me and think they know my life, they think it's simple. They think that just by the mere fact of my body, they know what I eat and how I move and how I live. Nobody asks, but some of you did, so I told.

I'm 5'8". I weigh between 280-300 pounds. Some of you may decide that that's all you need to know about me, that it defines who I am. I respectfully, even gently, challenge you to take a closer look. Can you look at ME

[and here's where I threw in the best two of my San Francisco pics ]

and see a full, complicated, real life?

I know I've written just an obscene amount here, but you know, in some ways I feel I've barely scratched the surface....I just hope that maybe my own story might illuminate why "why don't you just go on a diet?" or "but what about your health?" aren't always the simple, well-meant questions they're often intended to be

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And I have to say, a lot of the feedback was really positive. Some people still don't get it, but you know, maybe some seeds were planted. Overwhelmingly, I had a lot of people thank me for my story and tell them it moved them to tears, which, I've gotta say, just wowed me.

And I even started corresponding with a woman on the board who lives just one block from where I work - we're gonna meet up at the Fat Girl Fleamarket this weekend (where I hope to find all sorts of gorgeous frocks to replace the ones I donated!)

I guess it all just goes to show that there is unexpected power in speaking out. Now just to harness it beyond the page.