"We Don't Love You Because You Are Fat": My Shocking Gift

I find myself wondering how many others have faced this. This meme is in reference to dysfunctional relationships.  Part of my recent growth is knowing that love is never going to come except from God and other people who do value me in my life. Sometimes facing harsh realities is part of recovery. Even the guy yelling "Glutton!" at me, would be no match for what my own mind used to scream at me for being fat or daring to eat anything!

The rejection of my entire person hood for being fat was overwhelming but now I know the weight was just a tool for malignant narcissists to scapegoat me and unload everything they loathed about themselves on to me.

How many have faced this out in the world?

One thing I found myself telling a friend, was "They never saw me, they just saw fat and nothing else!"

and sadly that happens to many people in the supersizes and perhaps even others in the midsizes.

Of course if you are a super-sized person that has known true friendship and I have, you can see the black and white difference. Around those who love you, the fat ceases to exist, and while they may understandably have concern for your health, you are "seen" as the person, the soul inside. The minds meet, the conversations flow, and it is a totally different deal. One feels joy, love and happiness around such people. The wall has come down, while with these dysfunctional others that wall is impenetrable. 

I know I have been opening up about some serious abuse when young. While I ran to the therapists when very young, there is more work to be done even at this late age finally facing the truth. That's one thing about life, growing up and seeing through past delusions or false things others told you or you even told yourself.  I saw people destroyed in my family, who never stood up for themselves or were able to stand up for themselves. Totally destroyed, and these were the ones who never "rebelled" or even dared to walk out the door from them.

Isn't the formation of a new narcissist too, a form of destruction? Where they only care about images and what is reflected to them? Where they can't form decent human attachments or even love [in the case of the malignants] ?

I even realize that my values I hold today were formed via God, and books, and not from those who surrounded raised me but many other places, toss in a few good friends and decent teacher here and there, and at least I was able to learn compassion.

I have grown stronger in my decision to have gone no contact. In fact so much so, it may have been the best decision I've ever made in my life. It finally asserted my integrity. I have found myself realizing while life for me has many challenges at least I stood up and said, "NO MORE!"

One thing that a lot of the abuse centered on being fat. It was the nexus it all seemed to revolve around.

When I was young I was not supersized, around age 14 I was maybe around 40lbs overweight, but then I would gain to the mid and upper 200s around the middle of high school and college. Puberty seemed to bring an inability to control my weight. So fat yes, but at nearly 6 feet tall not at the severely obese score.

Here is a picture of me around that time..[age 21]..this is where my weight would hang out for a long long time around age 15-26, there was some minor losses and gains but around the same overall.

Remember I said I was around the same midsized weights for a long time before the HUGE WEIGHT GAIN CAME. High school to my mid 20s, I bounced around the same region. I have pictures of me around the same weight teaching at the juvenile home.

But you would think at the smaller weights I  was a monster according to how I was treated. I was told I was "lazy", "fat", "a pig", "too fat to get a boyfriend", ugly, too big and tall. So many insults were based upon my weight and arranged around it. One time, when I was at the size 22 mark or there abouts, she offered me $1,000 dollars to be thin! "You can do it!", she said. Okay maybe some people would have been motivated but at that point I was using every ounce of confidence and strength I had left within me just to manage my work life and stay out of the hospital from asthma and breathing problems and by that time I was already fighting weight gain from steroids, then fought with 2-3 mile walks which as you all know was a battle I lost in total later on.

In fact I was at my mothers' house last year and they had the old photo albums out, and I was in shock, knowing yes I fit the criteria for obesity, but remembering how I was treated you would have though I had hit super-sized status early on. The photos from age 14, shocked me, I was barely fat, but remember how much weight was focused on. I was not. I was told over and over by my narcissistic parents that I was unworthy for being obese. That I was no good. This abuse was not just every now and then such like if I took an extra serving at a meal but everyday.

That's is why I found this article fascinating...Connection of the cortisol stress factor?

Study: Hating on Fat People Just Makes Them Fatter

Now you can imagine how the treatment got when I had the major weight gain. Things got far far worse. 

I still remember that day, it was during her vacation stop-off I mentioned here during my weight gain, she turned to me, and said "Do you know how fat you are getting?, it is disgusting!". I told her I knew I was sick, and was ignored. Later on she would try to rewrite history and said "We tried to get you help and you ignored it!", but that was a lie, I'm the one that very year who found my own endocrinologist willing to test me for free because I had no health insurance and that was just the hypothyroid piece of the puzzle. How did she expect a person barely able pay the rent on a two room slum apartment to finance a trip of thousands of miles to Rochester MN to go to Mayo?

Then there was the time around 4-5 years later, I had come down from near 700lbs into the 500s where I would stay for far too long. The timing was when I was living in my small town. I sometimes consider putting up pictures of myself now and at high weights but don't feel like seeing a picture of me near 700lbs, with the caption, "world's fattest bride". Online supersized fat people better be careful, pictures are stolen and used even ones where the identities are hidden. 

A shocking gift showed up at the door. 

Around 10 packages of THESE. BIG MAMA UNDIES........

Looks like they are still for sale.....[this was around 2000 or so]

Giant underwear, bought out of a joke catalogue, one of the most fat-hating gags out there. Cheaply made too by the way.

I opened the box, and saw them, and thought, maybe someone nasty had sent me these underwear which were meant to be hung out on clotheslines as a gag but it was my own mother. I would confront her later and she admitted it, saying with a sneer, "Well I thought you would be able to finally have some underwear that fit you! You know how difficult it is at your size!"

Obviously these panties were shaped in a way where they did not fit and were far too huge even for a very super sized woman. By the way even at near 700lbs, I could find specialty underwear that was REAL, no gag gifts required and even find shorts to wear as underwear. They were made for a giant, not just for someone who was fat. There was no warning given that these were going to be mailed to me. No questions of, "OK we know its a gag and don't want to hurt your feelings but know underwear is hard to find!" The box was sent without communication.

It was yet another PUT-DOWN. Another message of "you are unworthy!". I remember crying to myself softly over the box, and then later when she came up with her excuses on the phone, I don't even remember what I said, but she insisted on her "innocence". Back then I wasn't on to things like gaslighting though I knew she was full of it, and pitched all the packages save for one--[I wanted to show them to a friend] right into the trash can.

Early on I knew fat equaled bad. The worse thing with American society is that while life itself is bad enough for the fat, where you are written off as a glutton or deserving your fat, the abusers and rest in society can use obesity and go to town with it. What does one do, when your own family deems you non-acceptable because of your body, your size and more. I consider them non-acceptable now for their wickedness and lack of caring.

Some of you may be wondering, what was your mother's size? She was never hugely fat, but she was never thin, she has ranged from size 16 at the very lowest to averaging around 18-20 and size 22 on the high side. She must have fell asleep in high school during genetics class, since she married a fat man, that was in the 300s. She is not model thin, and some of those years I was attacked for being fat, I was very close to her size though obviously I went well beyond it later.

One thing that can happen to young abused fat girls, is the number of enablers and those who back up the abuse especially abuse that is focused on WEIGHT. I've already mentioned my mother's friend who told me when I was 14, agreeing with her I never would get a boyfriend. I had another one of my mother's friends tell me back in 2001, a life long family friend say to me direct as if a mother's hatred of a daughter was to be valid based on her weight alone, "Your mother never could accept you because you are so overweight and she is right!". Talk about the horrors of staying with someone and you realizing they "don't see you either", they just see fat, just like your family. I ran out of there. One of the enablers even defended the underwear gift. No one defended me. No one stood up for me.

My family never knew me the person, they just saw "fat".

How many does this happen to?

See

My Mother and Me

The Social Stigma of Being Supersized in One's Family