Designated Fat Girl (8 page)

Being obese makes clothing emergencies all the more difficult. When we went out of town to visit family, I couldn’t simply borrow a jacket if I forgot to bring one. No one had anything that fit me, not even the men. When I volunteered in the church kitchen, I couldn’t wear one of the standard aprons emblazoned with the church logo because they were too small.
But perhaps the most embarrassing problems occurred when I was faced with unplanned clothing situations at work.

Winters in North Carolina tend to be pretty mild; if we get a good dusting of snow once a year, we’re doing pretty well. But in 2002 we had one big snowfall after another, and this meant extra-long hours of work because I was employed by a television news station more than an hour away from my home. Once I was caught off guard; I was still at work when the ice started to build up on the roads, and the forecasters were predicting widespread power outages and road delays. I would have to spend the night, perhaps several nights, in a local hotel so that I could make it into work. Normally this would only be mildly inconvenient, but for someone with a big weight problem, it seemed catastrophic. What was I going to wear? I hadn’t packed any clothes, and it looked as though I’d be stuck for several days. Finding clothes to fit me was difficult under the best of circumstances, when I had several stores to choose from; now, I had to go to Kmart, the only store that was open and just down the street, hoping and praying to find something I could wear.

I went first to the women’s section, picking out a few simple tops and bottoms in the largest sizes they had—24. I took the clothes to the dressing room and confirmed what I already knew in my heart: The clothes didn’t fit. They were too small. Fighting tears, I hung them back on the rack and made my way to the men’s section. They had some husky-size sweatshirts and sweatpants in men’s 3X. I swallowed hard and took the men’s clothes back to the women’s dressing room, hoping no one would notice. The clothes fit, but not entirely well. Still though, I had a problem. These were sweat clothes, and the only shoes
I had with me were dress flats. I had to go over to the shoe section and pick out sneakers. I knew I would look ridiculous in these clothes, and I felt so much worse. But what choice did I have? I was stuck, with nowhere else to turn. I got through the next three days the best I could. And I was never caught again in wintertime without an extra set of clothes packed in my car.

I have reached a new wardrobe low. Eli’s baptism is almost here, and I have nothing to wear. And I don’t mean I have nothing that I like; I mean I have absolutely nothing dressy that will fit my body. Going shopping for clothes is right at the top of the list of things I hate to do, along with going to the dentist and having my taxes audited. But this is one special occasion I cannot—I will not—miss.

Nothing would make me happier than to buy a beautiful sundress in a pretty pastel color. It’s April, and we’re holding the party after the baptism in our backyard. Everywhere you look the colors of spring are bursting, and I’d love to match, or at least come close to matching, the joy of the occasion with my outfit. But pastel and three hundred pounds don’t really go that well together, and at the rate I’m going, color is not going to be a privilege afforded to me. I’ve been to all the major department stores and have come up empty—nothing fits. Fighting back tears, I make my way down to the mall to one of the specialty shops. I should be used to this by now: wanting something to wear for a special occasion and being utterly disappointed by my choices—or lack thereof. But this really hurts. This is my
baby boy’s baptism. After some initial health problems at birth, he’s now thriving at nine months old and cute as all get out. I want to celebrate with my family and friends; I want how I look to reflect how I feel about Eli. But how I look only reflects the inner turmoil that rocks me on a daily basis, and a drab outfit bought in an act of desperation certainly will not help matters.

In the end I settle for a black linen jacket and a hot pink shell to wear underneath. I pair them with the same long black skirt I’ve worn on many occasions, a skirt that honestly looks like a bedsheet. Dressed in black, in the springtime, at an outdoor party for my baby boy’s baptism. Lovely. As unexcited as I am about the outfit, I’m even more depressed at how much the clothes cost me.
At least Michael will have something to bury me in,
I tell myself.

I certainly could have handled it all a whole lot differently, perhaps have even made myself feel better, if I’d simply done all I could to help my appearance. Even if I was heavier than I’d ever been, even if I had to shop high and low for hours on end, I should have made more of an effort. But truly, the reality of how I looked put me into a state of shock. As the weight piled on, there were things happening to me that I never thought possible.

You know how some people have double chins? Well I definitely had those, and I think one extra. But what was really
weird is at one point I had three
stomachs.
It was right after my second C-section. I remember my sister-in-law saying her C-section permanently damaged her abdomen, that no matter what she did as far as exercise and diet, she couldn’t get her stomach flat again. I scoffed at that notion, especially after my first C-section, in which my stomach went back to its normal (lumpy) state. Nothing looked different to me (unfortunately). But after my second surgery, it did change. I had the same roll of fat above the belly button, you know, right above where you fasten your pants (or for me, tie the drawstring). And then I had the same enormous roll of fat below the navel. But in between the two, I developed a third layer of blubber that added incredible insult to injury. Sucking it in? Not even close to an option, although really, it wasn’t much of an option before. Still, I looked like an absolute freak, and it wasn’t just my stomach making me feel that way.

About a year after I started gaining weight and was unable to stop it, I started to lose my hair. As I tell this now, it’s easier, because it started so long ago and I have since accepted it. But at the time, I was beyond bitter. Was my fate really meant to be this way? Not only was I on my way to morbid obesity, but I was now going to draw even more attention to myself by becoming bald? I panicked. I went to see a specialist. And then another and then another. No one could tell me why it was happening, and there were no suggestions as to what to do about it. Sure, I tried Rogaine. I tried hair supplements and special shampoos. Nothing worked. The pounds piled on, and the strands of hair littered my clothing, my sink drains. I started to get comments from well-meaning coworkers. “Do I see your scalp?” one lady
asked me, looking closely at my head. I was mortified, and depressed beyond belief. I was heavier than I had ever been. I wore the same three to four black-blouse outfits every day. And now my hair was thinning. After a while I just grew kind of numb to it all. On better days I would convince myself that once I started to lose the weight, my hair would come back, even though the doctors I saw couldn’t tell me if my weight gain had anything to do with it. On my really bad days, I told myself that I already looked like crap and the hair loss just completed the shitty picture. I accepted it as though I deserved it.

I felt like a shell of the young woman I once was. Granted, I was never a beauty queen, but I took pride in looking the best that I could, wearing cute clothes and styling my long auburn brown hair in a pretty decent way. I wasn’t bad looking, I told myself. But now I was beyond bad. I bordered on grotesque. And it all seemed to happen so quickly that it took my breath away. The quicker the changes came, the more powerless I felt to do anything about them. When I tried to get motivated to lose weight, I would think,
What’s the point? I’ve got stretch marks covering my body. My hair is gone, and my skin has never looked worse. How can I possibly improve all of this?
And when I tried to find solutions to my hair, perhaps a wig or a weave, I would get discouraged and wonder why I was going to such trouble and expense when I was helplessly—hopelessly—fat. It was a vicious cycle, and I was forever trapped.

The John Hughes film
The Breakfast Club
is one of my favorite movies of all time. In it Judd Nelson’s character asks the teenage girl played by Molly Ringwald her name. When she tells him it’s Claire, he tells her that’s a fat girl’s name. “I’m not fat,”
she protests. But Nelson’s character says one day she could be: “You see, I’m not sure if you know this, but there are two kinds of fat people. There’s fat people that were born to be fat, and there are fat people who were once thin but became fat. So when you look at them you can sort of see that thin person inside.”

Whenever I’ve watched that movie over the years, especially once the weight started to pile on, I’ve felt as though Nelson’s character was speaking to me. Growing up I was never considered thin. But compared to the morbidly obese, I was certainly on the average side. But that changed, and I felt trapped in a grossly bloated body—an overstuffed version of what I once was—unable to get out, unable to do anything about my health. Unable to live my life.

Even though I kind of gave up on my appearance at times, I constantly worried about what other people thought. The stereotypes of fat people were forefront in my mind, including the notion that all fat people are lazy (no, we’re not) and fat people smell. For the longest time I dismissed that as silly. I was heavy, to be sure, but I didn’t have any hygiene problems. On
Oprah
I once saw a woman who weighed five hundred pounds admit that she had trouble washing herself.
I’ll never be that fat,
I vowed to myself.

You know where this is going.

At my worst I was 336 pounds.

And I had trouble keeping clean.

If you think about it, it makes sense. Your arms are only so long; if your middle keeps growing, sooner or later you’re going to have problems reaching all areas. And I did. Admitting this makes me sad beyond words, but it’s important to me
to be honest, to let others who are suffering know they are not alone. This does happen, and it is devastating, especially to women. How much more basic can you get than your ability, or inability, to wash your body parts? You take a person whose self-esteem already takes a daily beating and then add this to the mix, and you’ve got a real mess on your hands. Unfortunate pun not intended.

What did I do? Thank the Lord for handheld showers. I tried to sound casual when I mentioned to Michael that I preferred our kids’ shower to the one in our bedroom. Really I don’t know how he didn’t see right through me; we both knew their shower had terribly low water pressure. But it had a handheld shower, and the one in our bathroom did not. I was too ashamed to simply ask Michael to install one in our shower; as it was, I hoped he would never discover the real reason I was using our kids’ bathroom. If he ever did figure it out, he never let on, and I love him for it.

It’s for these humiliating reasons that I have a hard time believing there are people out there who are happy being overweight. I mean let’s forget for a moment about the physical tolls obesity inflicts on your health—the increased risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, joint pain, sleep apnea, heart disease, cancer, and early death rates. What about the daily embarrassments and humiliations you suffer when you are so heavy? You can’t fit into a restaurant booth. You break toilet seats. You have to go to extraordinary measures to bathe. Could anyone possibly be happy with that? Some say they are, but I’m sorry, I don’t believe it. Maybe saying so is a defense mechanism of some sort, and I can totally sympathize with the need for that.
But the truth is, being morbidly obese is a disgusting, humiliating, torturous existence that threatens your very life. There’s nothing to be happy about.