From One Fat Chick to Another: An Open Letter (whatever the hell that means...)

Dear Ladies (and the occasional wandering eyes of gentlemen),

Once upon a time there was a little baby girl, and for some reason or another she grew and Grew and GREW into an enormous, unhealthy woman.

She blamed her state on everyone else:
Even though no one was force-feeding her like a goose.
Even though she was perfectly capable of lifting whatever five pound object was in her home (a large jar from a failed DIY project, one of her many cats).
Or put on a pair of shoes and walk outside at a brisk pace.
With slim exceptions, such as the bleak hours of the night where one secretly admits to the Sandman their folly- her unhealthy state was, unequivocally not her responsibility or fault.
She blamed all men for not seeing her inner beauty.
At times, people were mean to her about her weight, so clearly she had the right to be mean to others, considering she was the victim and all...

For hours she'd stare zombily at social media sites.
She posted quotes by amazing people, as if to live vicariously through their minds (although most were dead, so it was more retroactive...) but never acted on anything that inspired her.
She ogled pictures of faraway places and beautiful cultures, but decided the mountains looked too steep for her, the oceans too deep.
Her favorite thing she COULD do, however, was mock ugly pictures of celebs.
Or wait sneakily, like the villainous cat from 'The Great Mouse Detective', for someone to post something, anything to sink her teeth into.
With a whole list of retorts she'd been holding back since middle school (because kids are judgey assholes at that age) finely crafted through the years- she was a warrior of the comment section!
The touch pad her sword and the 'delete' button her shield.
Titles like:
"Blah blah FAT SHAMING blah blah"
and 
"REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES!"
and
"Insert Generic Comment Here About How Every Womyn's A Goddess And Men Are Pigs."
and
"Health Tip Only Meant For Already Healthy People But The Blogger Is Trying To Raise Their Viewership, So They Make It Seem Anyone Can Do It!"

To these, the woman would tear vehemently at the article and posters, with the ferocity she'd show a German Chocolate Cupcake with a truffle in the middle.
She cheered and shouted out, and wrote how true it was her curves were that of a woman- men SHOULD love her the way she was!
With puffed chest, she'd look down upon the kingdom of her feline masses like the Goddess she was meant to be.
She'd repost the health tips, as if everyone but her should be doing them, because, after all, they'd never have known it without her.

She'd tear down the people she longed to be like and raise up those that were just like her. 

There were times she'd watch a woman or girl she considered much fatter than herself walk by, hand in hand with a universally hot guy.
Sometimes it was a hot woman with a balding, pork-bellied man.
She wondered how it was possible (and not in a good, self-respective way).

At some point she may have found love.
Maybe they were both just settling because neither wanted to 'die alone'.
He may have accepted her weight, maybe not.
In those bleak, Sandman hours maybe both wished they were lying next to their ideal instead.  
Maybe he was just like her and content to talk about all the things he'd like to do as he binge-watched Netflix with her for the rest of their lives. 
She may even have had kids; fat chubby bastards, just like their parents- after all, monkey see monkey do.

What I do know is that she was always tired.
Her skin was always oily.
Her hair greasy despite all the fancy shampoos at Sephora.
In her thirties, without any sort of disaster or infortuitous circumstance, her body began to ache at the joints.
First her knees.
Then her hips.
Next to rebel were her arches.
She began to have 'pains', like her nerves twitching in odd places.
Paranoia set in about heart attacks just in time to get diabetes.
The electronic chair helped her get around, despite everyone always being in her way.
She wasn't very kind at this point either.
The world owed her.
She watched from her chair as women twenty years her senior still laughed and moved around, unhindered.
She died eventually, like we all do.


And that was her life.
She never went on an adventure because she knew she couldn't make it up the mountain or across the river.
Certainly not without help.
Certainly not without embarrassing herself and having to admit she couldn't make it.
Admitting it out loud.
And she never found the person she felt she deserved, unlike that bitch, Savannah down the street, still outside everyday doing yard work. 


My morals of the story are these ladies:

-Weight has nothing to do with health.
-Our health is the only true thing we have control of in this world.
--Thus: Your health is your responsibility. No one else's. Only yours.

-Healthy people want to spend their time with other people who care about their health.
--It's not that our personalities are necessarily lacking, but we can't blame others for finding value in one's body when we aren't showing we do as well.
---Healthy doesn't mean a size '0' or being able to run a triathlon while skipping: it's being able to physically do all those things you want to do, and only stopped by physics, genetics and anatomy. 

-Choosing to spend the amount of time ALL of us do on Social Media and Netflix, letting those hours slip by unnoticed, is a fault.
--If you have the time to spend doing all that, you can equally chose to improve your health with that time.

-A "Real Woman" has two X chromosomes. And then there are those that want to have two X chromosomes and guess what? They can be real women too. The more the merrier! So knock the rest of that crap off.

-Being happy with one's self isn't usually followed with verbal hostilities about someone else.
--Shrinks call it 'masking' or 'projecting'. Recognize yourself.

And most importantly:
I want you all (myself included) to live an amazing, healthy and happy life filled with all the potential you could possibly achieve.
So please, let's all drop the ego, the act, and the excuses and get our own asses out there.
That's my New Years wish at least... 


Sincerely,
Dust in the Wind

In a Superperson World #4- A Diary

April 15th, 2035
My Apartment, Mid-City


Dear Diary,

My dad used to say, once I start paying taxes, I'd be considered an adult. He failed to mention, after I got my first job junior year of high school, it only applied after I got married and moved next door, preferably.
But under his roof, I'd always be his baby girl.

My mom once said being an adult meant accepting all trivial things and all big things thrown at you, and managing them.
From:
bills
not running out of toilet paper
insurance
getting along with your coworkers
-to bigger things-
going to work despite heartbreak
paying rent (or your bookie) on time
avoiding a SPEZ (SuperPerson Engagement Zone)
and remembering your mothers birthday.


I lived on my own at 22. A bachelor degree of what-the-fuck-does-it-matter, crisp in my hand.  I said sayonara to my parents and the coffee shop (my first gig in high school). Hopped on a bus and went.
More than sure- I didn't think I wouldn't be fine. 
I moved from this crazy place and straight into the arms of it's sister city. A slightly different rhythm of crazy, but played with all the same instruments.

A lot of things pop up when the nest is behind you. Like all the additional costs. The stuff you didn't realize wasn't a given.
Like a trash can, or dish soap. A mattress that doesn't smell like a locker room floor drain.
There are many eternally internal debates too.
Whether packing the hangers is worth the hassle versus buying new ones. Do I reeeeaaally need a bath mat? Will my new roommate get offended if I spray the roaches in the kitchen as, every night, he turns into a large dung beetle?

All these get sorted eventually. It might take a few paychecks... A couple years even... But it gets there. As long as you can find the job to get said paychecks. Which is a whole other maze of banal crap in a new city. And the degrees we thrashed around for, amounts to, about as much as the toe-fungus mattress.
So then there's the cost of not working.

From there, rent. Bills. Groceries (sometimes I resent not being one of those osmosis people. Eating is so damned expensive.). I'd pay for this and that, on time mostly. Hold down a job until the place got slammed into/blown up/burnt down/swallowed into the earth. You know, the usual. Go out with coworkers. Friends. Do all those things my parents said made me an adult (I've started to notice they're all money related).

The freedom is great. Sometimes I'd trip and fall. My parents helped me out occasionally- as long as I promised to Skype with them.


Five year ago, I was shuffling papers around my ugly-ass beige desk. Sunset long over. There were fireworks in the distance (it was a munitions plant exploding). I was the last one in the office. Well, there was Fred the Janitor too. We chatted a bit. Watched some kids play tag around the sky-scrappers. The LED-GLO in the soles of their kicks illuminated neon trails behind them. It wasn't a bad night.

But I didn't feel like much of an adult.

I was wearing a pencil skirt and a button up blouse. Reasonably heightened heels. Eggplant purple hair tamed into a bun.
I looked professional.
I looked like an adult.
It all fit better now- compared to when I burrowed into my moms closet and played dress up.

But I still felt like that kid, hoping to play the part.
I wonder if other grown-ups are the same.

So five years ago, I took all the money I saved. Shipped my shit back home. Quit the office. Hopped on a bus and went.
Then I hopped on a plane.
Then off a plane.
There was also a train... Somewhere in there.
And before I could catch up, I was in Europe. Greece, to be precise.

There was Ouzo. Lamb roasted in drum barrels, buried in the sand of newly formed beaches. A cute fisherman named Paulo who could speak to starfish (apparently they didn't have a lot to say). And a whole group of minstrel-like locals, who played like Metallica was going out of style. Not in this century.

Once a month, I'd ring my parents, to let them know I was safe, well-fed and not doing anything they wouldn't do. I crossed my fingers for that part.


A few months later, I met a crew of crazy mutant kids, just graduated from University. They were fun.
Traveled with them to Spain. We ran from mechanical bulls through the crowded, cheering and drunk streets of Pamplona. One of them, girl named Jezzi, turned a bull's horns into baloney right before it gored her. Instead, she was only head butted with a lunch meat. Michael jumped onto the back of one, in the middle of the mob. We didn't see Michael again until Paris.

In 2022, the mutant spider(s) responsible for Spiderman and his silk (see what I did there?)and escaped the laboratory... again. This time, making it all the way to the docks and up a lee-way line. They sailed across the Atlantic. Eventually disembarking in the port of Marseille-Fos, France.
No one's sure exactly what happened next but... well, let's just say, they got big. Like, size of a car, big. I'll save the history lesson for another time, but the long and short is they took over the Eiffel Tower... and somehow the dome of Saint Peters Basilica in Roma.

They've calmed down quite a bit since then. The french airlift cattle near a woven funnel "entrance" once a month. In exchange, they don't eat the citizenry.
Everyone wins.

So, of course, it's become a tourist attraction. And a popular dungeon crawl, for those adrenaline junkies. Not recommended. Or legal. 

It was here we ended up-
Wearing specialized head lamps in the middle of the night; a tour guide holding a boomstick like a magic wand. We crouched through eerily white, gauzier tunnels, covered in cooking spray so we wouldn't stick to anything. Phones on silent, flash turned off.
Every hush of wind.
Every swaying strand.
Every skitter.
Every echo of tapping.
We were paranoid beyond our wits. Our imaginations proving far more monstrous.

It was mostly safe. A week after feeding, the spiders hibernate into a food coma.
Still. What a rush!
Exiting through the sewers, giggling like school children. The tour ended at a pub, with a pitcher for all. We cheered to our guides health.

An automated voice message had flashed up on my phone during the crawl. I shut it off. Probably a computer asking me to vote for that floating bald guy again.
My phone disappeared at the bar.
For about a month.
I let it go. All the pictures were saved in the cloud. I'd download them when I got back.
We kept traveling. All the way up, to yodeling with sheep farmers at the tip of Scotland.
Then, through the workings of a karma, my phone found me. With the message waiting to be heard.


My parents should have added, 'Get to the shelter quickly, as to avoid the tip of the Space Needle, flung, far from across town.' to the list of adultification. I'd have appreciated it.


My key still opened the door.
Everything looked the same, but fake.
The scuffs on the wall from Mr. Johnson's bike tires. The frosting stains on the floor from when mom dropped dads birthday cake. The coffee, feet and oil stains of everyday life. Even the smells, made the hallways familiar.
A recognition of time passed. Silly little memories created. The proof of a home.
Gone.

A condolence wreathe of lilies decayed, liquified and matted onto the counter. A note from PepsiCo stuck out awkwardly from the feted floral foam.
There were frames on the walls, but no pictures. A couch, but no cushions. Toilet paper, but no trash can. The bedrooms looked ready for a photo shoot, except for a fine layer of settled dust. 

And that was that.
I bought hangers and a bathroom rug.
Got a job as a barista at the coffee shop again.
On a walk, met the owner of Bunsen and Beaker. We talked about Paris. And from there... you know the rest.


Funny... I never wondered if I was an adult again...


Cheers for a tomorrow,

Penny