Well, I've always tried to properly launch a blog and I've never found the time to sit and write something that would be just as personal as it was diplomatic - my thoughts always need serious translation before they hit the virtual paper, lest you find me one of those people more than enough qualified for residence in the local penitentiary or asylum ...
Nevertheless I've spent enough time thinking about it and since nothing gets truly done by thought alone (besides more thinking, but that's beside the point), here I am, writing this special little post. It is a far cry from what you'd call my first blog, but it more or less is the first one worth displaying publicly. Therefore I invite you to consider this a journalistic christening of sorts. It's less of a fair-weather tool and now more of a blog that gives you a look into my very strange mind.
I'd not bother to ask why you'd want to look in there anyway, since I know people have this strange tendency called curiosity that takes them into all sorts of places they have no business being, like in those movies where the damsel-in-distress-to-be hears a threatening noise and while the sensible person (Trinidadian) such as (possibly) you or I would run in the opposite direction, she unknowingly and ineptly drags her feet towards the source of danger. If you've come here hoping to become like this poor sucker, please, shuffle forward into the depths of my dangerous mind as I follow my odd compulsion to document the things that go on in there, and more importantly, the things that influence what goes into there. You've been warned.
Fancy talk and pseudo-editorial quips aside, I would like to thank you for - 1. getting this far into the blog since my writing surely has worked to bore you some, and 2. caring enough to continue reading from this point onward. As a reward I'd like to give you what you came seeking in the first place, my first blogging-challenge as I'd like to call it.
1. The Physical Challenge.. ready-set-... can I go now??
The topic you just read is the one that's likely to recur in this blog, so I might as well ask you to get used to it (for my blog's sake, please). Anyone who really does know me knows that I've been struggling quite a bit with what they call yo-yo weight over the past few years. In fact, my weight was something I tried not to, but was forced by people to start 'worrying' about. Before I blog about my current challenges, this post is here so you can take a look at my history. Know well that even though I'm supposed to be 'worrying' about this and even though it 'bothers' me, my stats and my past aren't something I care enough about to 'hide' from the general public.
Sparing no quotation marks either, here goes.
All throughout preschool and primary school I was referred to as 'chubby', 'plucky', 'fatso', 'big', oh, did I say 'chubby'? Sometimes I wondered if my parents gave me a middle name called Chubby and I wasn't informed. People called me Chubby more than they called me by my real name - kids, their parents and my teachers referred to me as 'the chubby girl', pinched my cheeks and tickled under my neck calling me 'chubby chubby' for years. While psychologically causing long-term damage and lasting self-esteem issues, they honestly thought it was cute. Who cared about how the child felt - it was cute, for pete's sake. God Bless Stupid Trinidadian Adults.
When I was about five or so, my classmates used to refer to me as 'the fattest girl in school' (yes, I kid you not), and relentlessly saw me a fit partner (girlfriend) for 'the fattest boy in school' who was actually many many pounds overweight, and while I felt sorry for him, I was pretty sure I was not in that sort of league. I didn't like him at all but even grew to resent him because of the taunting I described. Since there were no girls fatter than me though, I had to suffice, after all, you weren't complete if you didn't have a companion matching in your physical stature. The skinniest boy in school got teased with his 'skinniest girl in school', therefore I was destined to follow the same fate, with my fattest prince in shining armor.
Well, since you may be curious, or simply forgot what I looked like when I was little, here's a picture. Judge for yourself, and I influence you neither way. Me at five years old, and the fattest fat lard there ever was, or so I was told.
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| a fat little oompa-loompa |
And since you're bound to ask, no, brains did not count. I was the fattest girl, but the thing that kept me afloat is that I was also the 'smartest'. Thank God, I had usually the best grades among my peers, till the very end of primary school, I could not be beat, and this be no boasting, since I was pretty miserable during my school days but dared not tell my parents lest they considered me a failure (children think strangely). My grades was all I had to redeem myself. I'm also thankful that I was too young and sheltered to understand all this, and only could describe that 'sinking lump in my chest that hurt' whenever they started the name-calling. I never forgot things that meant something to me during my childhood, good or bad.
This post turned out much longer than I thought it would be so I might have to talk about my physical state during high school in another blog (with more pictures, I promise).
By the way, this word 'fat' is something I always thought of as a hurtful word that is much bigger than its meager three-letter composition. I've grown with that word and still dread it. You'd think someone used to it would be numb to it but it's pretty much like digging a hole - keep digging and the hole doesn't just stop getting deeper. You keep digging and that's what will happen - a bigger hole will be dug. Being called 'fat' never did motivate me to change how I looked but instead it just did what it was made to do - damage. So what can I say, except next time you want to share a description with someone about that someone, I'd love it if you were a bit more careful on what you had to say. Leave the accusations to Doctor Phil - he gets paid for that stuff.
I love that picture.
Thank you and goodnight. I'll describe the Murderous Joy of an All-Girl Catholic High School next, maybe tomorrow, if I get the break to do so.
Till next blog!
