Trauma Work Summer Has Actually Been Kinda Lovely, Part Two

In case you didn't know! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNWZoZnRFhA

So I was in a Living-In-RFK's-America mood, trying not to think about the wellness camps, when one of my coworkers, obsessed with her own Noom journey, started doing a thing she does--listing off all the "obese" people she knows and cataloguing what she thinks what they are/shouldn't be eating. This included her own husband, from whom she hides food. She also begs her husband not to take GLP1s for his diabetes, because "Those are like giving drugs to a drug addict."

All  year long, I'd avoided any disagreement with The Work Ladies, leaving the room whenever I was tempted to argue. Being good about practicing my codependency recovery. But this time I didn't feel like leaving the room or even putting my headphones in--I just wanted to be in a workplace where my body-size wasn't seen as shameful, where, OMG, body size wasn't my coworkers' business. So I spoke up, tried to explain why "obese" feels like a slur to me, why this conversation felt bad to overhear. She continued her hiding-food-from-her-husband story, so I again asked her to stop, less nicely but still pretty civil.

There were three or four weeks of meetings about how "confrontational" I had been. My colleagues had been having a "normal conversation," said the HR director. The HR director was only a little bit smaller than me, and said she never experienced any anti-fat bias. Her boss reserved the right to enjoy talking about her South Beach Diet journey and ask anyone and everyone how they are eating.

I might write more about the scary meetings someday, but for now, that's enough to see why I landed in a profound burnout afterwards. I'd spent the year making myself as unobtrusive as possible, and I'd still ended up feeling like I was a threat to be contained and a problem to be solved. This is about the time my OCD therapist suggested a round of PTSD treatment.

The pattern of trying to stand up for myself and being treated as the problem is deep in my trauma bones, and I knew just the memory I wanted to work on. It was nothing directly about food or fatness, but about fighting for what's right and getting (literally, in the memory's case) kicked around and blamed for it. I was about to live in a nightmare over and over all summer in the name of healing. I'm almost done now, and I think it's working.
 

Trauma Work Summer Has Actually Been Kinda Lovely, Part One

(Except I'm not dead! Nor am I wrapped in plastic!)

I want to say livid with desire, though that isn't the right word at all. Radiant. Radiant with love and joy--there's a day like that, many paragraphs from now. Dizzy with love and sunshine for someone who's not a match, but a friend. No one wasever so crushworthy. She cracked open my heart with her openheartedness and generous spirit, and of course her pretty face. So many sentences before Summer Princess (The first princess to steal my heart!) but this story is grim so I wanted you to have something to look forward to. I'll try to make some pretty art along the way too, we'll see.

The Trauma Work Summer sprung from fatphobia (the world's) and codependency (mine). It starts one late spring morning when Rachel Maddow's podcast broke my faith and ruined my day--she said she felt "ooky" for talking about the president's obesity treatments, and I really wish she would have followed that "ook" and not DEVOTED LIKE TWENTY MINUTES OF THE ACTUAL NEWS TO A DIET BOOK.

I don't like admitting I depended on a newscaster to keep me sane  during the start of evil 47's evil second term, but I like the way she focuses on the protest movements and her sense of humor is a balm. It's mortifying to say I felt abandoned and betrayed, that someone I looked up to and who gave me so much strength over the years could be part of the "obesity epidemic" assumptions that bodies like mine need to be solved, done away with, disappeared. I don't want to be disappeared.

Ever since Lizzo slimmed down (Which is her right! Nobody's business, least of all some middle aged lady who doesn't have to get on stage for anything!) I've been grieving the body positivity era--hot, fat Lizzo! Regular Maintenance Phase episodes! Shrill the TV show! Fat Girls Dance Movement! She's All Fat! Danny Lavery as Dear Prudence, giving fatphobes the what-for at every opportunity! It seemed like Maddow's diet book moment was the final death knell of my hopes for Fat Liberation.

So that's the mood I went into work with that morning, and it was about to get worse.
 

That Darn Internalized Fatphobia, Part One

OMG I’ve only got thirteen days left of my dating break!! For the most part, I’m rarin’ to get started—everywhere I go, there are completely smoochable-looking guys. I’ve got some cute new pictures for my Feeld and Bumble profiles—my favorite is me in a pink tutu sort of dressed up as Rose Quartz, carrying a sign that says “Ban jerks, not books.” It’s really starting to feel like there’s a romantic future for me, like at least one more entry into the First Date Hall of Fame might be in in cards.

I found a really nice Summer Therapist who has helped me believe I might really move on from the margins of others’ relationships. It’s been such a lovely summer with myself so far, lots of firefly walks, friend time, pictures of flowers.

But this dumb, sexist, fatphobic thing happened in the lap lane at the pool last week. Too dumb to recount, but when a thin and unhelpful pool manager blamed me for “just not feeling confident” that day, I thought it might be a good time to write about where I’m at with body positivity and fat liberation. Summer Therapist, by some miracle, listens to Maintenance Phase, so I can talk to her about like 80% more things. (You should listen! Especially if you’re a straight-sized person! https://www.maintenancephase.com/)

The Kitten Calendar has been all about body love, so I want to be PERFECT at it by now. When I started this blog in 2011, well before “fat” was even THINKING about being a neutral term, I had the idea that because I was plus-sized (Size 20 then, around a 24 now) I could only be attractive to women, that all men would find me disgusting. The Nude Beach and all the different play parties and superhot experiences gave me a more well-rounded (Ha) view of beauty and desirability, but the internalized fatphobia (and weird sexism about it!) is still causing trouble in my heart.

In the present day, I’m pretty convinced I’m desirable. Most of the time, I walk through the flirty world feeling like an adorable dorky goddess—cute, abundant, lush, bountiful. Like a human pleasure garden.

But when it came to intimacy with a man, there was still a tangle of self-doubt, self-consciousness, and pain. I never found a good way to talk to The Shy One about it, so instead, I’ll blog it out to you. Thanks for listening!

Postscript: The Coach (Imaginary Asses Are SO Easy to Google!)

 

I guess it’s not a good sign that I’ve been feeling nostalgic for a breakup dinner from like eight years ago: I was looking for a hot story to send The Coach and I landed on part two of my Real Date/Car Sex story with Steampunk Guy. Here’s part one: https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2013/07/real-datecar-sex-with-steampunk-guy.html It’s not great that I refused to admit to myself that it WAS a breakup date until a couple weeks later, but looking at the story through my current pleasantly-poisoned-by-hookup-culture view, the dinner part of the story felt like a miracle. Steampunk Guy had like nine partners, including a wife, plus a kiddo to take care of, but he still took the time to break things off kindly. I felt, here in Slutty September of 2021, a burst of gladness that Steampunk Guy had, well, broken my heart, but in such a dignifying, humanized way.

The Coach didn’t break things off, he just finished getting vaccinated and still didn’t want to spend time with me in person. He still sexted a few late-nights a week, and I was still having fun with that until I wasn’t. But I can’t fathom, and I really wish someone would explain to me, how sexting could have been fun for him with someone he did not want to be in a room with. Why not just look up some porn or pay a cam girl (and tip her well!) instead of keeping someone he didn’t like on the line for longer than he wanted to?

When I responded to his messages/comments a month ago, I’d put a pin in the prob he and I had encountered long ago, the feeling of him having a fat fetish (rather than simply being attracted to whole hot fat people) or thinking I was just someone to be humiliated. I saw the physical mismatch of us—him twenty-nine and slight except in one particular way (I found out through unsolicited-but-not-entirely unwelcome dick pic, obvs.) (But is there such a thing as dick-catfishing? Probably.) and traditionally fit-looking, me 47, Amazonian and weighing in at 302 pounds. We WOULD have looked a little funny in public together, but someone who liked me as a person wouldn’t have cared.

What started as feeling appreciated, celebrated, overwhelmingly desired a month ago turned into hidden, erased, dirty-in-a-bad-way. Maybe he did feel attracted to me but ashamed about it, or maybe he just wanted me to be a sex-typing-bot whose feelings, bad days, and vulnerabilities he didn’t have to care about. Maybe he wasn’t brave or kind enough to turn me down directly. Maybe he was just a jerk. In fairness to him, I knew that trying to be casual would get me to this emotionally untenable place eventually. I just shouldn’t have let it go on until it hurt this bad.

This past few weeks have been a (not un-fun) scramble to find the things The Coach couldn’t provide in someone else, to distract me from the loneliness while I kept him in the mix. Not! A great! Strategy! As sad as I am to lose (and reblock) The Coach, I’m grateful to be done with that scramble. I’m so impatient with what I really want, it’s so annoyingly specific and (imaginary in this case) snuggle-prohibitive sometimes.

Yesterday, a car plowed into my side mirror and smashed it off on my way to work. I wasn’t hurt but I was heartbroken—I love my car so much, and the mirror metaphor was a little too on-the-nose. Sweetie-Now-BFF immediately sprung into action ordering a replacement mirror and rearranging her schedule to get me to work until it was fixed. And while that was happening, I was worrying that I would seem too needy when (okay IF) The Coach texted after ten. I know it’s not superfair to compare a TWO DECADES LONG friendship/love/friendship with a recent not-quite-a-fling, but BFF’s kindness and concern reminded me of what I’d like to have eventually with a guy. The Coach was not going to get me there.

So at quarter to ten, I said texted him the things I was feeling. He was was an entitled, bratty jackass about it. So ends my foolhardy foray into hookuptown. I can’t promise it’ll be the last, but I promise to keep trying to embrace wanting what I want. But first, wallowing.

 

OMG First Horror Movie Date, Part One

I’m not being falsely modest when I say I didn’t understand what The Coach was seeing when he first asked me out at my college bookstore job in 2016. I was in a real post-adventures schlubby phase. I probably had on my heather-purple college logo shirt with loose AND ill-fitting jeans and (still my faves admittedly) the Payless version of black lowtop Converse. It was first thing in the morning so my long hair was probably damp in its lazy bun. This was (only a little bit) before Mr. Makeout Music came into the picture and made me want to doll things up again.

But here he was, getting sports-guy snacks before work or class or whatever. Slight-but-strong, a little less than my height, skin the color and smoothness of caramel, fluttery innocent dark eyes. In retrospect, the way he hit on me was delightfully old-fashioned and direct: He wrote his number on the back of a receipt and JUST CAME OUT AND SAID (something like) “I think you’re really attractive and I’d like to take you out. Give me a call sometime.”

Honestly it was tempting to think he was trolling me, but he really did seem sincere! I was working with BFF at the time and, well after The Coach had left, I was all “I think ______ _______ asked me out?” (He’s a full-name guy. Love it.) I couldn’t imagine us having anything in common.

Next time he came in, he looked a little shy-but-still-swaggery and said “ You didn’t call!”

I was a little snappish about it—I had this idea that nobody should be hitting on someone when they’re stuck behind a counter, but seriously, 2016 me, I was a middle-aged assistant manager, not a kid! It’s not like there was a power imbalance, unless you count the part where he was 24. (As was Mr. Makeout Music! Should I stop automatically swiping left on the under-30 set? Maybe not.)

A few months later, I apologized for being kind of a B and asked him out, but he’d gotten a girlfriend by then, so I happily/flirtily wished them well.

After he and the girlfriend broke up and after I was COMPLETELY DECIMATED by Mr. Makeout Music/the 2016 election, the thing with The Coach came around again. We’d planned to get together causally, but got derailed by some mismatched sexting—I got triggered by the way he talked about my body, too porny and harsh. The ways he talked about my fatness felt fetishizing, so I blocked him. We were still friendly in person, so we meandered back into each other’s feeds. And then I blocked him some more.

In her book, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon has a chapter about different forms of objectification of fat people that really shifted my perspective. Why, she asks (I’m paraphrasing) does it have to be something shameful when somebody is attracted to fat? Why do we consider it a bad fetish? I mean, he did need to learn a LITTLE bit of manners, but I wondered why I was so triggered by this particular (sporty, fit) person finding my big ass hot? (NOTE: Aubrey Gordon is way better at talking about this than I am. You really should read the book!)

Anyway, last year sometime, I sent a friend request from The Coach into the ignore pile, but he must’ve still been following. When I posted about loving the new Shang-Chi movie (Speaking of deliciiiiiiiiious men) The Coach commented/messaged three different ways to try and talk to me about the movie. And of course, I’m superslutty for talking about movies!