Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Here’s what happens. You get used to your body looking, feeling, and being a certain way. You know, from an insider perspective, what it’s like to walk around in your own shape. You have a sense for your edges — an intimate knowledge of the line where you end and the rest of the world begins.

You get used to eyeballing things. You can tell, from a distance, if you’ll have to turn sideways to squeeze through

• this group of people
• that turnstile
• the doorway
• etc.

At a glance, you’ll know which chairs in the room will fit you. Sure, you’ll take a chair with armrests even if you know that it’ll uncomfortably cut against your hips after the first 25 minutes of the meeting. You’ll do it if you have to, that is. But, if you get to the meeting early enough, you can choose the chair that will best fit your ass and avoid the whole scenario.

You don’t do this by test-driving each chair, filling out a satisfaction survey, or telling yourself the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears until you find the chair that’s “juuuuust right.” You do it on sight. You have an internal meter. “My hips are this wide,” you think, and you eyeball the world accordingly. For the most part, you are dead right.

Then, the line which divides you from the rest of the world begins to change. Maybe you’re exercising more. Or eating fewer cupcakes. Maybe you are in an accident and lose a limb. Maybe you become confined to a wheelchair. Whatever it is, your body has changed, and your eyeballing skills make a sudden drop.

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I guess, truth be told, I had to get a boyfriend before I could lose weight. It wasn’t that I needed someone to look over my shoulder or police me. It wasn’t that I needed a portable cheerleader to say “Good job, honey” at every turn. I definitely didn’t need another excuse to lose weight, and much less an excuse which was based on what someone else thought of me or my relative attractiveness.

What I needed was verification. I wanted to be proven wrong in my lifelong belief that I wasn’t good enough because I was fat. I had to work the fat-girl chip off my shoulder a little bit, to stop blaming everything in my whole damn life on my weight, and to be — just once — seen for who I am on the inside just as much as for what I am on the outside.

I also feared that if I were to wait until I had lost a bunch of weight before I started dating, I’d be bitter against the men that would be attracted to a thinner me. After all, the list of things I’ve got going for and against me will¹ basically be the same.

I’ll still be an artist, a therapist, an intellectual, an NPR snob, a musician, a world-traveler, and a culture geek. I’ll always be a writer and a designer, a bit of a packrat, and a sucker for fluffy white puppies. I’ll always know too much trivia about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ll always know the words to every single Rogers and Hammerstein musical. I’ll always have to pluck that hair from my chin every 5 or 6 days. I’ll always be me.²

In spite of my good qualities, though, I had managed to go 30 years without a boyfriend. 30 years without being kissed. 30 years, for Pete’s³ sake, without even holding anyone’s hand. It wasn’t for lack of wanting or trying, believe me. It was the chip on my shoulder — the belief (not the fact, since I know lots and lots of overweight people in relationships) that no one would ever want me. That’s why, when the Record Store Romeo asked me out on a second date, my response was a startled, “Really!?”

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1. With the possible exception of increased self discipline and motivation, not to mention a little boost of esteem that comes from achieving goals but let’s face it. I don’t really need huge esteem boosts. [↩]
2. I realize that this may or may not be true… but it’s just my current line of thinking. What do I know? [↩]
3. Pete who? [↩]