spryng | TW: Body Image and Weight

I have a journal entry partially written about body image and weight, but couldn't bring myself to finish it just yet. IDK if I'll ever finish it, but writing it helped me realize two things:
1) My anxiety and body image were intrinsically linked
2) Now that my anxiety is at normal levels, I don't care as much what other people think about my body

And so, while I occasionally muse on how angry it makes me that as a society, we're so obsessed with the amount of body you have, I've finally arrived at a place of "fuck off." I actually lied about my height and weight on dayjob's annual "wellness" survey and it left me giddy with joy. You don't get to give me a red or green light based on my size anymore.

But I do want to write down that I think - I think - I finally understand my wife's relaxed attitude about weight. She has never once dieted, never once been worried about her size, but I'm sure she's never been immune to it. Hell, I know I've commented on it (never in a bad way, but now that I realize how annoying it is when the world keeps commenting).

Because now that I'm off the anxiety meds and done with alcohol and biking 50+ miles a week, I've lost some weight (quelle surprise!). And I'm getting comments on it. And... it's actually really annoying? And maddening? Because it's weird little congrats and I know they're just trying to be nice, but it points out that they've been paying attention to my size and weight and not my happiness, not even slightly, and that's what society asks us to do, but if I don't say "hey I'm trying to lose weight, look at me go" it's actually incredibly upsetting for people to assume I'm happy about it.

In the past, I've been horribly ill when I've lost weight and gotten those "congrats!" Now, I just don't care.

But it rankles because the whole reason I gained weight to begin with was meds and the pandemic, and instead of asking me how I was, all I got was the occasional snide comment for daring to take up more space. Nevermind that the anti-anxiety meds had broken a lifelong habit of self-hatred. Nevermind that all the coping strategies I'd had over the years had been kicked out from under me. If I brought up either of those things, they just got uncomfortable, or mentioned I could go off the meds to lose weight again.

The fucking why??? Because being fat was worse than being mentally well??? Fuck off.

(maybe I do still have a lot of feelings here, huh)

As is often the case, it looks like it took facing my fear to get over it. In this case, it took getting medically obese (bitches) to realize how much anti-fat bias and hate I'd let myself swallow. Now I look back at all those years wasted worrying about getting/being fat with shame and anger, so it'll take some time to get over it.

Maybe that's what this post is truly about. Acknowledging the anger -- that I was encouraged at every age to lose weight, even (especially!!) when I was already at a "healthy" weight -- and the shame -- that I bought into the nonsense hook, line, and sinker.

I'm not going to pass that on to my children. I'm not.