The thing about being fat...

So, the thing about being fat is that it sort of becomes your identity. It's who you are, you're the fat chick. And as much as you try to run away from it by being the girl with the pink hair, or the girl with the tattoos, that's how people will recognise you. 'You know katrina..... the big girl'. And as such, it becomes very deeply ingrained in you. You feel like the fat chick, you expect to be treated like the fat chick and it really lowers the bar for what you deem acceptable treatment.

The place I've found this to have the most disastrous effect is in my dating life. Not only do I feel the need to justify myself to men before we even meet, I also use it as an excuse for THEIR shitty behaviour. I've run back to guys who have treated me like crap out of the sheer fear of not having anyone at all. I have a 'no body else will want me mentality'. I've let guys away with really awful things because, frankly, I feel like I deserve it. Because I feel like because of my size, I deserve no better. Which is, of course, bullshit.

But it is an endless cycle. 'He didn't seem to have a good time- I obviously wasn't what he was expecting ' 'he hasn't text me in a few days, I'm obviously too fat for him'.

The thing about being fat is that no matter how many times you try to make yourself feel beautiful, or someone tells you that you ARE beautiful, you can never actually feel it. When you live in a culture where being fat is one of the worst things you can be,  the simplist compliment is almost impossible to take. When you spend hours dolling yourself up and everyone tells you that you look amazing, it's still there in the back of your head. That niggling little voice that constantly reminds you that you look good, BUT.....

I hate getting compliments. They make me feel incredibly awkward because I can never accept them at face value. My mind has warped to look for the insult in every single compliment. If a guy ever expresses any genuine interest, my mind almost can't process it. Like..... why? Is this a joke?  Am I the punch line? And it's that attitude that has probably scared off more guys than my jiggly bits ever have. When your mind works a certain way even the most innocent of things can take on a very malevolent meaning. I'll give you an example-

Many moons ago, I was in bed with a guy I was "seeing" (very casually, in fact, casually isn't casual enough a word).  We had just been up to no good and were doing usual uninterested post coital pillow talk when I asked 'if I was a Pokemon, which one would I be?' BIG. FUCKING. MISTAKE. Considering that he'd not 5 minutes previous been inside me, I thought it'd be something like Vulpix because I'm cute and can be quite firey. I thought wrong. Very wrong. Because apparently the Pokemon I most closely resemble is..... Snorlax. Yep. Big, fat, lazy, always blocking the road Snorlax.

Now I KNOW that's funny, and I can laugh at it now. In no way do i think there was ever any malice behind it, but at the time when I was lying beside him naked that really, really hurt me. An alarming amount. And it's stuck with me to an extent. It really bothered me that that was the way he saw me. And when it inevitably didn't work out I already knew why.

So, the thing about being fat is that it makes you incredibly sensitive to..... everything.