(no subject)
6. Sedna
I'm often lonely. This shouldn't be a huge surprise. I'm fat, disabled, and acerbic. Besides, so many people are often lonely. Their partner goes out of town. They're injured and can't go out for a time. It can feel pretty crushing.
No, what I'm talking about is something a little more permanent and harsh. I'm talking about being trapped inside your loneliness. I'm talking about desperately needing that most fundamental of all human needs: love, and knowing you're not going to feel it. That's the kind of loneliness I'm talking about.
Now, first of all, this is a prison of my own making. I created a 500 pound plus wall of flesh that keeps me isolated from the rest of humanity. I am a disgusting mass of fat that I have mounded up over years to protect myself against the injuries done to me that I just couldn't or wouldn't heal from. In building this great wall, I've also injured myself. Like a snowball rolling downhill, a little regret became more regret, which grew into self disapproval, which ballooned into self loathing, which grew into a self hatred that could only be cooled by stuffing it down with food... by packing on fat to numb myself and keep people away. It's effective. I disgust even myself.
The first line of defense against anyone getting close is the social stigma. Fat people are assumed to be lazy and stupid. After all, why would we knowingly do this to ourselves? Surely if weren't so incredibly stupid we would know what to eat and how much. Shouldn't we be exercising? How can we not exercise? We must be incredibly lazy to not want to walk and go to the gym and work off that fat.
People often assume I simply can't be bothered to walk or get up out of a chair and get whatever it was I asked someone for. I wish. I really do. No, when you're my size, you only get so many steps a day. Simply getting out of a chair is excruciating. Walking across a room is painful and exhausting. Doing the laundry is a task so daunting it's nearly impossible. The act of taking out the trash can drive me to tears. This is not laziness. This is pain, pure and simple.
The second line of defense is the physical ugliness. Beauty is a social and genetic construct and we're programmed both by our genes and by our culture to desire people who fit a certain mold. Thin, athletic people fit the cultural ideal and are thought of positively by potential partners. Fall too far outside of the norm, and you're ostracized by most people. I can hardly blame them. I'm an extreme outlier. I'm so far out of the norm that I'm more circus freak or animal than human. Again, I weigh over 500 pounds. I can barely stand. When I sit in a chair, my fat overflows out around me. I don't look human, so I can certainly understand why no human wants me as a sexual or romantic partner.
The third line of defense is the harshest: it's the smell. Look, a lot of fat people, myself included, smell pretty bad. It's okay. We can all admit this. The mistake is assuming that we somehow don't care about hygiene. That's not true. A lot of us, myself included, really put a lot of effort into smelling better. The problem is that when we get warm, which is all the time when your insulated better than a walrus, we sweat and that sweat builds up in our many, many crevices. We develop yeast infections in all sorts of places, often under the massive abdominal fold that is the hallmark of central obesity.
I assure you, I shower. I shower a lot. I use antimicrobial soap that is harsh on my skin. I use a brush to try, desperately to reach and scrub the area out of reach of a cloth held in hand. I try. I desperately try. I scrub myself until it hurts. I scrub as I desperately try to wash the filth and slime (yes, there's slime) off of my body. I wash until I can't feel the stares of all the children I disgust lingering on me from the last time I went out.
I swear to you, I'm as clean as I can be.
The next big factor in my isolation is money. I'm on public assistance. I don't have a ton of money. I live on a few hundred dollars a month, most of which goes to helping with the mortgage and buying groceries. Now, lots of people don't have a lot of spending money, but I really have to watch it. I can find myself without food or medicine pretty fast with a lot of month left to be lived.
Another part of that is the shame of being on disability. "What do you do?" is a big part of getting to know someone. Tech support, dog walker, customer service, graduate student, teacher... All of these are, at the very least, employment. WE put a lot of emphasis on employment in this culture. Maybe that right, but does it have to be everything? Do I have to feel so ashamed of not being able to work? I'd like to work, but getting hired when you look like... this... is nearly impossible. Add to the fact that I nearly lost a job, and lost several promotions because I smelled bad, and I've learned that I'm really in no fit shape to work. There just isn't anything I can realistically do.
I miss working. As much as I complained about the callers, I liked working for the University. I loved solving a problem. I loved coming up with an answer that made someone's day better. I loved that rush. I was tech support for the professors at school. I was good at it too. There again, fat killed off the job. The aforementioned smell made me undesirable to be around. A big part of not getting hired on full time was that I couldn't "keep up my hygiene." There was no way I could be hired on, given benefits, and sit in on meetings with professors. Not a chance.
My attitude began to suffer. I wasn't as good at it. It was dead end. I felt judged. I felt loathed. I felt disgusting. I started applying for other jobs. That's where I screwed up. I told them about it and let slip that there was a slight chance someone might hire me immediately and I might not be able to give notice.
My honesty was the last straw. They had ignored how horrific a person I was too many times before and I would not be invited back to work next semester. I was out. I was alone again.
That's the soup I'm still stewing in. There were two short term jobs after that, but my confidence was shot. I never had a permanent job again.
So, with all that, let's focus on how I feel about trying to date.
I'm disgusting. We've already established this. It's okay. You can admit it. People don't want to get close to me. I'm socially awkward, making the mistakes teenagers make in the few relationships I've had, mostly because we usually make those mistakes as teenagers and I never had the opportunity. So, I drove off the one person in the last decade that at least said she wanted to love me. I was secretive. I was unreliable. What's more, it was long distance. When I did actually get to be in proximity to her, it was awkward. There was no hiding how disgusting I was. There was no hiding how little mobility I had. There was no hiding the desperate need for something physical despite the fact that we were basically still strangers.
There was no hiding that she wasn't terribly interested.
That was my last relationship. It ended five years ago by my current count and I haven't been on date since. That wears on a person. I'm lonely. I'm the kind of lonely I can taste. The desire to be touched by another human being in something more than friendship is consuming. It burns and gnaws at me. I'm not just talking about sex, here. I'm talking about simple acts of affection. The acts that prove to us that we're not completely alone. I don't have that. At this point, I'm pretty sure I never will again.
For a while, it was a little easier. I had fallen into a depression so deep that any sexual desire had completely faded. I had no real interest in sex or in intimacy of any kind. I was frozen. I was stone. Then, along came a new drug and the darkest part of the depression lifted. I'm nowhere near completely out of it, but the very, very deepest part of the hole went away.
The drive for contact came back.
The fucking need for someone to just touch me returned. I'm desperate for emotional and physical intimacy again. I can taste the harsh, bitter bile in my mouth that comes from NEEDING something so badly and knowing that there is absolutely no chance I'm going to get what I need.
I want to love someone. I want to give someone my love and for them to be happy about it and love me back. There are people I would have loved to love over the years. There were girls I absolutely adored, and some of those potential relationships would have been a good fit... but I was fat and awkward. What's more, I knew it, so I acted out. I was a jerk and a loudmouth so there was an excuse to keep people away. If I knew they wouldn't be interested, I could lie to myself and say I could stand it.
This doesn't make a lot of sense, I know. I understand.
Anyway, there were some incredible women I've known over the years There were women that liked how smart I was, but if I tried to take it further, they just weren't interested. It was pretty clear why, so I gave them an out by behaving badly. So, here I am.
I'm fat, and I'm likely going to remain so. I'm inexperienced at personal relationships and finding someone who will tolerate that at 40 is as impossible as finding someone who will look past their natural disgust to see what little I actually do have to offer.
That's the kind of loneliness I'm talking about.
I'm often lonely. This shouldn't be a huge surprise. I'm fat, disabled, and acerbic. Besides, so many people are often lonely. Their partner goes out of town. They're injured and can't go out for a time. It can feel pretty crushing.
No, what I'm talking about is something a little more permanent and harsh. I'm talking about being trapped inside your loneliness. I'm talking about desperately needing that most fundamental of all human needs: love, and knowing you're not going to feel it. That's the kind of loneliness I'm talking about.
Now, first of all, this is a prison of my own making. I created a 500 pound plus wall of flesh that keeps me isolated from the rest of humanity. I am a disgusting mass of fat that I have mounded up over years to protect myself against the injuries done to me that I just couldn't or wouldn't heal from. In building this great wall, I've also injured myself. Like a snowball rolling downhill, a little regret became more regret, which grew into self disapproval, which ballooned into self loathing, which grew into a self hatred that could only be cooled by stuffing it down with food... by packing on fat to numb myself and keep people away. It's effective. I disgust even myself.
The first line of defense against anyone getting close is the social stigma. Fat people are assumed to be lazy and stupid. After all, why would we knowingly do this to ourselves? Surely if weren't so incredibly stupid we would know what to eat and how much. Shouldn't we be exercising? How can we not exercise? We must be incredibly lazy to not want to walk and go to the gym and work off that fat.
People often assume I simply can't be bothered to walk or get up out of a chair and get whatever it was I asked someone for. I wish. I really do. No, when you're my size, you only get so many steps a day. Simply getting out of a chair is excruciating. Walking across a room is painful and exhausting. Doing the laundry is a task so daunting it's nearly impossible. The act of taking out the trash can drive me to tears. This is not laziness. This is pain, pure and simple.
The second line of defense is the physical ugliness. Beauty is a social and genetic construct and we're programmed both by our genes and by our culture to desire people who fit a certain mold. Thin, athletic people fit the cultural ideal and are thought of positively by potential partners. Fall too far outside of the norm, and you're ostracized by most people. I can hardly blame them. I'm an extreme outlier. I'm so far out of the norm that I'm more circus freak or animal than human. Again, I weigh over 500 pounds. I can barely stand. When I sit in a chair, my fat overflows out around me. I don't look human, so I can certainly understand why no human wants me as a sexual or romantic partner.
The third line of defense is the harshest: it's the smell. Look, a lot of fat people, myself included, smell pretty bad. It's okay. We can all admit this. The mistake is assuming that we somehow don't care about hygiene. That's not true. A lot of us, myself included, really put a lot of effort into smelling better. The problem is that when we get warm, which is all the time when your insulated better than a walrus, we sweat and that sweat builds up in our many, many crevices. We develop yeast infections in all sorts of places, often under the massive abdominal fold that is the hallmark of central obesity.
I assure you, I shower. I shower a lot. I use antimicrobial soap that is harsh on my skin. I use a brush to try, desperately to reach and scrub the area out of reach of a cloth held in hand. I try. I desperately try. I scrub myself until it hurts. I scrub as I desperately try to wash the filth and slime (yes, there's slime) off of my body. I wash until I can't feel the stares of all the children I disgust lingering on me from the last time I went out.
I swear to you, I'm as clean as I can be.
The next big factor in my isolation is money. I'm on public assistance. I don't have a ton of money. I live on a few hundred dollars a month, most of which goes to helping with the mortgage and buying groceries. Now, lots of people don't have a lot of spending money, but I really have to watch it. I can find myself without food or medicine pretty fast with a lot of month left to be lived.
Another part of that is the shame of being on disability. "What do you do?" is a big part of getting to know someone. Tech support, dog walker, customer service, graduate student, teacher... All of these are, at the very least, employment. WE put a lot of emphasis on employment in this culture. Maybe that right, but does it have to be everything? Do I have to feel so ashamed of not being able to work? I'd like to work, but getting hired when you look like... this... is nearly impossible. Add to the fact that I nearly lost a job, and lost several promotions because I smelled bad, and I've learned that I'm really in no fit shape to work. There just isn't anything I can realistically do.
I miss working. As much as I complained about the callers, I liked working for the University. I loved solving a problem. I loved coming up with an answer that made someone's day better. I loved that rush. I was tech support for the professors at school. I was good at it too. There again, fat killed off the job. The aforementioned smell made me undesirable to be around. A big part of not getting hired on full time was that I couldn't "keep up my hygiene." There was no way I could be hired on, given benefits, and sit in on meetings with professors. Not a chance.
My attitude began to suffer. I wasn't as good at it. It was dead end. I felt judged. I felt loathed. I felt disgusting. I started applying for other jobs. That's where I screwed up. I told them about it and let slip that there was a slight chance someone might hire me immediately and I might not be able to give notice.
My honesty was the last straw. They had ignored how horrific a person I was too many times before and I would not be invited back to work next semester. I was out. I was alone again.
That's the soup I'm still stewing in. There were two short term jobs after that, but my confidence was shot. I never had a permanent job again.
So, with all that, let's focus on how I feel about trying to date.
I'm disgusting. We've already established this. It's okay. You can admit it. People don't want to get close to me. I'm socially awkward, making the mistakes teenagers make in the few relationships I've had, mostly because we usually make those mistakes as teenagers and I never had the opportunity. So, I drove off the one person in the last decade that at least said she wanted to love me. I was secretive. I was unreliable. What's more, it was long distance. When I did actually get to be in proximity to her, it was awkward. There was no hiding how disgusting I was. There was no hiding how little mobility I had. There was no hiding the desperate need for something physical despite the fact that we were basically still strangers.
There was no hiding that she wasn't terribly interested.
That was my last relationship. It ended five years ago by my current count and I haven't been on date since. That wears on a person. I'm lonely. I'm the kind of lonely I can taste. The desire to be touched by another human being in something more than friendship is consuming. It burns and gnaws at me. I'm not just talking about sex, here. I'm talking about simple acts of affection. The acts that prove to us that we're not completely alone. I don't have that. At this point, I'm pretty sure I never will again.
For a while, it was a little easier. I had fallen into a depression so deep that any sexual desire had completely faded. I had no real interest in sex or in intimacy of any kind. I was frozen. I was stone. Then, along came a new drug and the darkest part of the depression lifted. I'm nowhere near completely out of it, but the very, very deepest part of the hole went away.
The drive for contact came back.
The fucking need for someone to just touch me returned. I'm desperate for emotional and physical intimacy again. I can taste the harsh, bitter bile in my mouth that comes from NEEDING something so badly and knowing that there is absolutely no chance I'm going to get what I need.
I want to love someone. I want to give someone my love and for them to be happy about it and love me back. There are people I would have loved to love over the years. There were girls I absolutely adored, and some of those potential relationships would have been a good fit... but I was fat and awkward. What's more, I knew it, so I acted out. I was a jerk and a loudmouth so there was an excuse to keep people away. If I knew they wouldn't be interested, I could lie to myself and say I could stand it.
This doesn't make a lot of sense, I know. I understand.
Anyway, there were some incredible women I've known over the years There were women that liked how smart I was, but if I tried to take it further, they just weren't interested. It was pretty clear why, so I gave them an out by behaving badly. So, here I am.
I'm fat, and I'm likely going to remain so. I'm inexperienced at personal relationships and finding someone who will tolerate that at 40 is as impossible as finding someone who will look past their natural disgust to see what little I actually do have to offer.
That's the kind of loneliness I'm talking about.