The Elephant in the Room

Sometimes, I feel so small, so infinitesimally tiny, where once I was usually the largest person in the room. It makes me vulnerable, since I am so much more approachable now. I no longer have a physical barrier around me, keeping strangers at bay. Other times, I am insecure, because my body has outpaced my mind and emotions in its rapid and myriad changes. I sometimes don’t recognize myself in my reflections, and often act and react inappropriately to comments or compliments.

One of the things I had to do in therapy was write a letter to and from my fat self. The letter to myself was awkward, stilted, and tentative. I didn’t know how to relate, I fumbled for things to say that wouldn’t give offense. Trying to convey how different, and sometimes how much better, my life is now without denigrating or abnegating the life I led before was so difficult. Full of wide-eyed, head-nodding hesitancy, I was dancing around the prickly person that I used to be, hoping not to get slammed by a vituperative diatribe. And I didn’t have to wait long for it, either.

Disgusted with that letter and my own inability to communicate in this new language – the lexicon of thin – I relied on my native tongue – sassy fat broad – to solve my dilemma. I blasted, nay, excoriated that dizzy Stepford bitch that dared tell me that my life was going to be better. Better how? Was it going to be so much more relevant? How could my life be any more relevant than it already was? Was I going to be more acceptable, somehow? And if, by some chance I was more acceptable or relevant, was that state really going to be achieved through my body? Did the size of my frickin’ hips make the difference? And if it did, is that something that I really wanted to validate? If the world couldn’t accept me on the basis of my intelligence and accomplishments, then fuck them! I wasn’t playing for pulchritude – my life was on the line.

That crappy first letter, full of clichés and joy-joy hope, encapsulated my experience a year ago – feeling my life out, figuring out what I can say, and how to act without denying the person I was. The schism that still exists in my personality is so uncomfortable. When I’m authentic, or I speak in the language that I spoke for so long, I run into trouble, because people aren’t used to fat words and attitude coming from a thin body. They are taken aback, stutter, and wonder who does this woman think she is? Their discomfort, which once fueled my righteous indignation, rebounds as the burden of explanation now falls on me. Worse, when I get figuratively smacked down by a currently fat chick who figures she’s gonna call this skinny bitch on her bullshit – how dare she speak for us? It’s only happened twice, but twice is more than enough.

A new friend of mine paid me the sweetest compliment the other day. She said that she doesn’t think of me as a thin woman, but as a fat woman who happened to fall on a scalpel. I can’t describe how secure that compliment made me feel. It made me feel like I hadn’t lost myself totally – that the sassy fat chick I once was still remains part of me and hasn’t split for parts unknown.

Still, 20 months after I walked down that cold sterile hallway to lay myself down on the surgeon’s table, I am figuring myself out, finding my authentic voice, and hoping to preserve a balance between who I was naturally and who I made myself. Sometimes I tiptoe around the balance like it’s the elephant in the room, and sometimes, like the sassy fat chick I once was, I trumpet my truth to all within earshot.

I think I’ll get there. Wherever the fuck there is!