The Fat Lady Runs

Good (insert time of day here) Chickadees. :)

As the title of the blog suggests, I'm fat. I've tried denying it, I've got big bones, I'm short for my weight, that kind of thing..... but no, i'm actually fat.

For the record, the Fat Lady weighs in at around 95kg and is only 156cm tall. This puts me pretty close to the morbidly obese end of the scale. This is sad. Just think I could DIE at any moment. My fat rolls are just waiting, loitering suspiciously, lurking in the shadows, waiting to KILL ME when I least suspect it!  OMG I'm going to DIE!!

But then again, so is everyone else.

Me, you, the Partner in Crime, the beautiful children that we share our lives with. We are all, sooner or later, going to die. There is no getting around this. We might be hit by a bus tomorrow (hopefully while wearing clean underwear and thus making my mother feel better about this turn of events). We might live long and happy lives for the next 80 years. But sooner or later we are all dead. End of story.

This being the case, why do I receive more health warnings and expressions of concern and sometimes extremely rude comments about my weight than the Partner in Crime who is a naturally slender sort*?

Because I'm fat of course - duh! We are fed on the idea that thin is beautiful in every form of media, every day. The idea bombards us from all sides. And alongside that is the idea that fat is unhealthy. Fat people don't exercise, they must be lazy and unfit and lack willpower otherwise they wouldn't have gotten fat - right? Maybe, maybe not.......maybe there is a genetic component to this, maybe they were obese children who grew into obese adults. There are all kinds of factors involved in causing obesity. Who knows which of them contributed to the size of my arse. Maybe all of them, I don't mind, the result is the same in the end (and on the end too).

These days I'm pretty resigned to it. I try to eat healthily (although I still maintain that chocolate is a food group), I play sport and enjoy exercise. In fact I've recently started training to run a half marathon. I'm pretty excited about this. I run 4 days a week on average and, while I don't always enjoy doing it, I get a sense of satisfaction from completing each week of the programme I'm working through. However there has been an unexpected side effect.

It's an internal issue. When I decided to do the half marathon, I was determined that this wasn't going to be about my weight. I'm fat, I'm almost 40, I've had three kids and gravity has taken a terrible toll on my anatomy, I'm involved in a long standing love affair with chocolate. I'm unlikely to ever be slender - EVER. I know this. I'm pretty happy with things how they stand. I have days when I hate my looks, I have days when I know i'm looking pretty damn good. That's good enough for me.

BUT

I had to start weighing myself regularly of late because my weight was creeping up (too much work and junk food, not enough exercise) and while I'm good with how I am, I don't want to be any fatter so I monitor things. Just after I started paying close attention to my weight, I started running.

Remember the running was about feeling good about me and feeling pride in an achievement.

Although this wasn't supposed to be about my size,  I started feeling upset that my weight wasn't decreasing as my running increased. I was angry and disappointed. I started to feel inadequate and that horrible internal monologue started up. You know the one: "you're fat, you're lazy, why can't you show some self control, why are you so disgusting, why don't you care what you look like.... and so on".

Chickadees, I spent YEARS freeing myself from the internal monologue and that's one place I refuse to revisit. So I did something very difficult, I stopped weighing myself everyday. I've limited myself to once a week. Eventually i'm aiming for once a month. But I know that would be very hard for me to do so once a week is fine. And it's helping. Being overweight my entire life has had a profound impact on my self esteem and it's very easy to backslide, to listen to the horrible monologue, but being fat can also be a source of pride. Yup I'm fat and middle aged into the bargain but i'm still going to run a half marathon. I refuse to be limited by the perceptions of society. Even if I get to the day and don't finish the 21km or my time is so awful everyone has pack up and gone home, I will still have achieved something wonderful. So that one day, in the (hopefully) distant future, when my fat rolls finally strike and I drop dead where I stand (or I get hit by a bus), I can go out with a smile on my face and a sense of pride in who I am. From where I stand that's way more important than how much I weigh.

Cheers
The Fat Lady



(*Yes, I do realise that those people at the other end of the scale have to put up with some pretty annoying shit too. It is possible to be both too skinny and too fat for society's tastes. However, i'm fat so I'm going to be talking about that end of things.) 

Going The Extra Mile

Hey there chickadees!

Today a quote to share:

"When you have an AS child you soon discover that he needs you to go the extra mile for him again and again" From: Parenting a child with Asperger syndrome by Brenda Boyd.

This is a book that the Partner in Crime and I bought just after our eldest child was diagnosed with Aspergers. We read it and thought it was very good. Lots of insights and helpful advice. Just what we needed at the time. Then we put it down again - hooray we now know lots more than we did and can move on.

Today I picked up the book again for the first time in 3 years and the above quote hit me and it hit me hard. You see, in the intervening 3 years, much has changed in our house. Child 1 is a happier person, the diagnosis and the help we've received afterwards (seriously, you can't fault the care of Autistic kids in the land of pears) has been fantastic and much appreciated.

BUT

But but but but but but

We are STILL going the extra mile. Every. Day.

Let me tell you chickadees, some days are like a walk in the park on a sunny day and other days are a full marathon without the crowds supporting you and no refreshment stop in sight.

And it's lonely. Even if we had not have chosen to migrate it would still have been a lonely road to walk. Much of the care of a child on the Autism Spectrum is done in the home by the parental types. Not much care of the parental types is done in the home. The parental types are far too busy looking after everyone else. We are, more or less, permanently fatigued.

Which brings me back to the book. I'm not sure why I picked it up today but i'm very glad I did. There is stuff in there that I had completely forgotten about and that I really wish I'd remembered. Small things. Well, seemingly small things. Apparently it's common for Aspergers kids to have problems with their handwriting. No big deal right? Well, no big deal until you are negotiating with your child to write just another 100 words on their book review and the child feels is on the verge of crying with shear frustration.

We are now trying Child 1 with an iPad at school to see if that will help get more work written down. Remove the stress of having to form the letters at the very least. We don't know if it will work but we are running out of options. Child 1 is very clever but if no one can see it in his written work then how will they know?

Today I'm very tired because I didn't sleep so very well last night (sometimes I just don't) and this tends to make me see the glass as half empty instead of half full. The truth of the matter is that there is a LOT of good stuff in the glass. We are lucky enough to have an intelligent, independent, caring, thoughtful, responsible, young man in our lives. He's funny and excellent conversation and enjoys the same movies and books that we do. He worries about the environment. He does his best to help both us and the other children in the house. He reads - obsessively, compulsively, in fact. But how many parents worry that their children don't read at all? Lots! A bonus for us :)

He is also rigid in his approach to the world, resistant to change, unable to write more than a couple of sentences without developing a nervous tic (although he can TELL you pretty much anything you want to know, even if you don't want to know it), unable to admit he's wrong (perfectionism gone bad), unable to deal with crowds, some loud noises and flashing lights and sometimes he bangs his head against walls.

And EVERY DAY we go the extra mile for our special young man. EVERY DAMN DAY.

And

And and and and and and and and

EVERY DAMN DAY it's worth it.

Time to go and reread a bit more of that book I think .

Screaming in the Silent Places.

Hmmm, well this was supposed to be an opinionated once a week blog not a OMG I have a spare five minutes for the first time in months blog. Oh well dear people, if any people at all are interested in my opinions, I have some time to spare and an opinion to share so here I go again after a longer than expected interval.

I have had all kinds of ideas for blogging flit across my mind in the last few months.

The perils of dieting

The hazards of wearing your underpants on the outside

Why there should be 28 hours in the day and why I should be allowed to sleep during the extra two.

The realities of autistic kids in holidays (my family is actually pretty happy when vacation time is over)

Being fat and happy

Being fat and unhappy

Being judged and how hard it is to avoid judging others

The unrealistic expectations of a high school education

And so on and so on……

Today my mind is much occupied with screaming. Not the word “screaming” but the action of screaming. The idea of loudly and unreservedly letting the world know you are annoyed/upset/in pain/extremely happy/a child has just jumped at you from behind a door/there is a snake in your boot…. That kind of screaming. In fact it’s amazing how versatile that action/sound is, what a wealth of information we can gain from listening to someone scream. For a parent, a scream in the house makes us stand still, head to one side, waiting to see if it’s followed by a laugh or another scream. The first lets us relax, the second sends us sprinting towards the screamer at high speed.

But what about the screaming that no one hears?

I started screaming, that silent screaming that sends tears down your cheeks but little more than a whimper out your mouth, when I was a child – maybe 11, maybe younger, maybe a little older. I’m not very clear. Life would get too much. As a large child I got teased about my size and my lack of athleticism and children can be thoughtlessly cruel. My family had money issues and my parents fought quite often, home life was stressed. I didn’t feel that I could take my problems to parents with problems of their own. I’m not saying this to sound sad and pathetic – although it does indeed sound just a bit that way. I’m just giving some background information, trying to understand for myself where this impulse to scream inside my head comes from and why I try and paint a normal face over the top of it.

When I got older and started heading towards my first nervous breakdown, the screaming was accompanied by self harm of a mild sort. Pulling my hair, hitting myself in the head and legs. Hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to really cause injury. A physical manifestation of the silent noise. In the end I couldn’t handle the screaming any more. I had fallen into a black hole of depression that was living up to its name and sucking me deeper and deeper down with no hope of escaping that dreadful gravity. So I overdosed. Unsuccessfully. Which is a good thing all things considered because I’ve had a bloody good life since.

That isn’t to say that it’s all been smooth and easy. I’ve had periods where I’ve screamed and screamed and no one has heard. No one has heard because I haven’t let them listen. I’ve gotten good at saving it for times when I’m alone. The shower is brilliant for that. There are days when I just turn on the water and crumple to the bottom curled up on the floor, water pouring over me, washing away the tears and putting in a good effort at covering any noise that escapes me. My sad little secret.

And yet, my secret came out again a little over a year ago when I had my second breakdown. No suicide attempt this time, although still plenty of drama. I’ve grown weary of drama and yet I have a great deal of difficulty not creating it for myself. I’m still in recovery mode and may be for some time or I may be fully recovered in a week. These things are hard to judge. But there has been some good things to come out of it. If I’m screaming these days then I will mention it to my Partner in crime….. most of the time, and the Partner in crime has gotten very good at spotting when i'm overcompensating (if I don't happen to mention it). This is an improvement. And of course I’m talking about it here for all the internet to see – why you may ask? Why do that? Why set yourself up for all kinds of random thoughts, trolling and judgments from the masses?

Because there are more screaming people out there than we realize.

Because these people have partners and loved ones who care for them.

Because I want both sets of people to realize that they aren’t alone and it can get better. 

Do nice guys get the girl?

The thing that is interesting The Fat Lady today is the way men and women view relationships. In fact the bit that currently has my attention is the way that the two genders react to rejection. Now I’m making a huge generalization based on my own personal experiences and the people I’ve met. As chance would have it my children, The Fat Lady knows A LOT of male geeks. Some of them are probably even nerds. There are a few that still live under rocks and try to limit themselves to communication via morse code and MMORPGs. I also know and have known a fair number of young women (some of them are geeks too); in fact I may have been a young woman myself at some point in the past.

 Now, when a young woman enters into a relationship or starts looking for a relationship to enter into. Sometimes she experiences rejection. This often happens more than once. And there will come a time when she makes the following statement (or some derivative thereof). “What is so wrong with me that I can’t get a man to love me?” In many cases this boils down to a question of how attractive she thinks she is. She starts considering what can be done to make a woman look more attractive to prospective mates. If she’s rejected, does that mean she’s not attractive enough? Most wearers of lady bits seem to believe it’s so and the media feeds this idea at every turn. It’s a bit sad really. You may find it hard to believe but looks are not anywhere as important as a shared world-view and a good sense of humour.

Now moving onto the male of the species. The following seems to occur alarmingly often in the subset of men living the geek life. When those lovely gents suffer the agonies of rejection, what is often heard is: “Girls only go for douchbags, I’m too nice a guy to get a girlfriend”. This isn’t just limited to people I’ve met; a few minutes online will confirm that this is a reasonably common idea. Just try googling “girls never go for nice guys”.

THIS makes me SCREAM! Isn’t it interesting my little fruitcakes that when a prospective relationship doesn’t work out, EVERYONE involved blames the party of the female part (or possibly parts). She thinks there is something wrong with her because otherwise she would get a man to stay by her side longer than it takes to whip off the condom and have a quick cuddle. He thinks there is something wrong with her because she’s not into HIM.

 Ladies, I’m here to announce that there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with you. You may be tall or short, thin or fat, bitchy and unpleasant or quiet and serene. You may have tattoos and a nose piercing. You may indulge in many sexual encounters; you may be waiting for “the one” (he doesn’t exist btw so good luck with that). The truth is that he just might not be all that into you. You might not be his type. He might have tried a date or two and discovered that you are just not someone he can talk to. Or that the sex wasn’t what he wanted (not bad, just not what he was into). Or that you have an annoying habit of scratching his ears that he just can’t stand and is too polite to say so. It doesn’t matter! There are lots of good reasons for people not being able to connect that don’t actually have that much to do with your physical attractiveness. So, stop dieting or buying anti-wrinkle creams or doing Pilates or whatever! Unless these are things you are doing for YOURself because they make YOU feel good. The Fat Lady often neglects to wear makeup to work but lays it on with a trowel before washing the dishes all alone. The makeup makes me feel good. If someone else finds it nice to look at and I’ve somehow brightened their day, I’m pleased for them. But, if it does nothing for you, I don’t care! It wasn’t for you anyway. It was for me. It certainly wasn’t for the dishes!

 Now thinking about the parties of the male parts. Gentlemen, read the above because it works for you too. Maybe there is nothing wrong with her. Maybe she’s just NOT INTO YOU. Sorry about that. This has nothing to do with you being a nice guy. In fact if you are sitting there blaming some female for having the audacity to not be into YOU, you’re actually a bit of an arsehole thus proving the fallacy of your argument. It is The Fat Lady’s opinion that the moment you even say the first word of a sentence condemning all women everywhere to partnering douchebags because they had the bad taste to turn you down….the very second that thought even enters your tiny brains…..you didn’t deserve her anyway. There is no woman who has ever done something so bad (even in a past life) that she should be condemned to a relationship with such a self piteous prick.

 The thing is, I find this kind of thinking in otherwise intelligent men to be somewhat disheartening. Take some responsibility for yourselves gentlemen. Again, try not to think about looks. Do you have a good sense of humour? Are you able to have a decent conversation with the lady in question? Everyone wants something nice to look at in the morning but sooner or later we are all old and wrinkly so there had better be something worth talking to when that happens. Something The Fat Lady considers important is that you can be respectful of your prospective partner. NOTE: Before you say that you are respectful of the women you meet, THINK….because if you are one of the unfortunate souls who is too “nice” to get the girl (see above), you just failed respect 101.

 And so ends my first rant post.

 TFL