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| Some were sick through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities endured affliction; they loathed any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress; he sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from destruction. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind. And let them offer thanksgiving and sacrifices, and tell of his deeds with songs of joy. Psalm 107:17-22 NRSV Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When He had said these things, He spat on the ground and and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And He said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which is translated, Sent). So he went and washed, and came back seeing. John 9:1-7 NRSVGraph of Discovery |
Fortresses to Build and to Destroy
- How I Recovered from Fatness and Rebuilt My Life
- Chapter 3
It is hard to think about what it is like to be fat. The reason I have been able to
achieve good things in my life is that I have been able to put my 'fat problems' in a
place separate from the rest of my life, and thereby go on with my life. You might
think that is a cop-out. But if you do not have good choices regarding weight loss,
then my choice looks good. After all, while carrying this uncomfortable and
cumbersome load, I have first stayed alive and free of disease, and second
accomplished professional goals that were more important to me than being slim
could ever be. More important, I have been able to love family and clients in a way
that has benefited them and myself, without doing any harm.
People who have serious unfixable disabilities could learn from me, and some people
in this situation do learn from me through my social work practice. It is true that one
can experience love, happiness, joy, creativity, variety, new learning and interest in
work while being seriously handicapped or in frequent pain. Healthy handicapped
people know that these things are more important than physical beauty, strength or
agility. There were a number of reasons that I could be happy despite my problem. I
developed a religious faith, a love or learning, and an ability to solve problems during
my childhood. Section II describes these developmental successes. For now, the
conversation is about what fatness feels like.
The first ten pounds gained is the most emotionally painful. The moment I added
those ten pounds to already larger-than-normal hips, I was no longer slim; I was
again overweight. The first result of too large a size in a woman is what I call 'stroke
deprivation.' That is, people make eye contact with you less frequently. In fact, they
are less likely to look at you at all. I came to understand that the tendency to look
away from a fat person is partly due to the kindhearted tendency to look away from a
person who stumbles so as not to embarrass them.
No matter how benevolent the intention, it becomes harder to get positive attention
from others, including during interactions at work, school and church. When
attempting a question or opinion in the classroom or workplace, the fat person works
harder than others to get necessary attention. This overwork happens naturally, as
the fat person attempts to maintain the personal interaction skills common to them
before the fatness.
This overwork has a negative consequence in personal and work relationships.
There are people who feel offended because the fat person uses up too much space, e.
g., in theater seats; these people feel doubly offended by what they interpret as
'pushiness' by an undeserving person.
Worst of all, if the fat person later becomes slim, the over-used skills are no longer
necessary; therefore observers who misunderstand the lingering need for extra effort
will judge harshly this excessive work. What was once pushiness is now some type of
self-centered conceit. Paradoxically, no one views you as conceited if you are
overweight!
Meanwhile, the person who is gaining weight is experiencing many physical
problems with mobility. We all associate fatness with breathlessness and inability to
walk or run distances normal to slim people. Similarly, we all become aware of the
logistical difficulties regarding space met by the person who has achieved an extra
hundred pounds of weight. It is harder to find a large-enough seat anywhere;
furthermore the fat person fears that she may break a chair simply by sitting on it. It
is difficult to get up from low chairs without help. One cannot get down on one's
knees for any cause unless there is assistance in arising.
The saddest losses occurred in the beginning of the weight gain. I could no longer
cross my legs while sitting, or experience the joy of sitting cross-legged on the floor.
I could no longer go for enjoyable walks. I could not bend over and pick something
up off the floor without some kind of assistance standing up again. In the years that
followed, I could no longer lean forward in my chair while listening to someone talk
because my belly was in the way. Throughout the years of my private practice, I have
provided therapy services to clients sitting in a recliner with my legs up to ease the
pain in my back enough to concentrate on the other person.
Eventually, as my weight increased, I could not tie my own shoes, could not reach
the center of my back during a shower, and had difficulty with personal care in the
bathroom.
As weight increased, I no longer made an assessment about space between cars in a
parking lot. That had long ago become an impossibility. Now the question was,
"What could I take hold of in case I stumbled?" I have often walked around
someone's car in a parking lot to be able to place my right hand on the hood of the car
if I stumbled while attempting to step onto the sidewalk curb. Yes, of course I was
afraid someone would see me and get angry. My action did no harm to their car; I
did it to be sure of balance. But if the weight had increased any more I would not
have been able to walk around the car, or step onto the curb, even with an object on
which I could balance myself.
My extra weight of 240 pounds divides into three phases of eighty pounds each. The
first eighty pounds resulted primarily in social losses. The second eighty pounds
brought prejudice about my capabilities and personality into the workplace. The last
eighty pounds brought disability. The disability meant that I could not walk more
than 50 steps without sitting down. Three factors contributed to this problem:
breathlessness and fatigue, pain in my back, and pain in my feet and knees. More
than fifty steps resulted in a fear of fainting and falling that would have serious
consequences to a woman who weighed 370 pounds.
At 370 pounds, I could no longer roll over in bed without using my cane for pushing
or grabbing some object with my hands for pulling. I could no longer stand in my
kitchen for longer than three minutes at a time. I cleaned my kitchen by standing,
then sitting, then standing, all the while using one or two canes for support and
balance. It usually took an hour, after which I felt tired and sat in my recliner. It
took two hours to finish my shower and personal care. At times I could not finish my
shower without stopping and resting before finishing. Forget climbing stairs. Or
walking across the street. Or taking a plane flight. Or going to the movies. Or
attending a symphony orchestra. Or walking across the parking lot into the church.
Or walking more than the usual 50 steps to the bathroom at any given community
activity. Oh yes, there is incontinence too.
Imagine a large pear, with two little feet trying to maintain balance. You know the
movie, "A Christmas Story," where the little boy dressed in a snowsuit falls and
cannot get up? Or the pictures of Humpty Dumpty with two little legs. Mostly I think
of the Kafka story, "The Metamorphosis," in which a man wakes up to see that he has
been transformed into a giant beetle. For the rest of his life he is unable to turn over,
get up or go to work. His family learns to take care of themselves.
Anyway, I walked with two canes to make sure that I did not lose balance. I stooped
over, leaning forward towards my canes, damaging my back further, to maintain
balance and reduce back pain. So here is the thing you may not know. It is pain. No
one except a fat person knows how much pain there is each moment that you are
carrying fat. No matter where you focus your mind, it hurts.
So you learn to control what you think about. You control your life more and more.
Did you ever see an aging person disguise that they are getting blind? They put
things where they can remember where they are. They count steps. If you move a
pencil from its normal place, they become angry and upset. That's because they
don't want you to know how much they can't see. They are depending on their own
organizational skills to get by. It is the same when you are carrying 240 extra
pounds. You count the steps or the minutes. You arrange furniture so that you can
sit periodically during your housework. You concentrate on lifting your feet up
when you walk. You time things so that people do not have to see how hard it is for
you to get out of your chair. Most of all, you never go where there is no chair for
sitting after walking fifty steps. If you make a mistake, people will see your pain, and
they will feel bad. You are doing all of this to avoid pain, to avoid falling, and to
protect the feelings of other people.
The fear of falling is worse than the pain. After I had gained about 160 pounds, I
began falling. This happened because of fatigue, or because I forgot to pay attention
to my footsteps. Sometimes it would happen when I was walking at the same time as I
was talking to other people, and in the process forgot to concentrate on lifting my feet
up. Imagine what it is like to never be able to talk at the same time that you walk,
because every time you do, you fall. It might be somewhat like having Parkinson's
Disease.
If you stumble, there is no way to regain balance when you are built like a large
pear. You learn how to fall without landing on your knees. Each fall is extremely
painful, and leaves you knowing that someday you will not live through such an
experience. Meanwhile, my knees were more and more damaged until in 1993 I
hurt them bad enough to be on crutches for months. The physician told me that I
could not have knee surgery because of my weight. I used my own persistent and
moderate methods of recovery; after about four years, I gradually regained the use of
my knees.
Incidentally, when I would fall, I would call the ambulance. They knew me, and
would send three able-bodied people to rescue me. One person took each arm, and a
third stood behind to push. There is a certain angle on rising in which I am dead
weight to my helpers because at that angle I cannot use my feet. Test yourself. Get
on the floor and try to get up without putting weight on the ball of your foot, or
turning your knee. Or try turning in bed when you cannot use your knee for
strength or for moving sideways. The knee is an amazing thing. With it we turn from
side to side. We have flexibility and agility. Without it, we turn our whole body to
move. It takes a long time. Without knees our species would not have survived.
Part of the reason I cannot get up or down is because after I had gained 160 pounds I
broke my foot just using it. That's one reason I am still so careful how I put weight on
it.
Finally, the weight gives you spiritual pain; you have the knowledge that if you die,
people will feel abandoned. They will think you didn't love them enough to try to live
and stay with them. That's the worst thing. When I had my gastric bypass surgery, I
was afraid I would die, or that my health would be damaged. But I knew that my
family would know I was doing this to live longer, to stay with them, and to have
greater pleasure with them.
Questions for the Reader:
1. If you are a fat person, what does it feel like physically to you? How did
the writer have to tune out the pain of obesity in order to function in her daily
life? Has that happened to you?
2. The writer received less attention from others because of her fatness,
thereby complying with the painful rules and deprivations of her childhood. At
the same time, the writer worked harder to compete for necessary attention,
thereby rebelling against the unhealthy rules of her parents. Do you have
anything as confusing as that going on in your life, where you seem to be doing
two contradictory things at once?
3. How did the writer use her fatness to avoid her family's pattern of false
pride, while simultaneously forcing herself to become both determined and
modest?
4. The writer hints that she avoided unhealthy responsibility by gaining so
much weight that she became disabled. Why was she not willing to 'just say no'
to the unreasonable demands of the people in her life? Do you have times when
you would like to avoid family demands? Would your family stop loving you if
you did? If they would, do you really need to continue that relationship now
that you are an adult?
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