Life in my New Edgar Suit (this one goes out to the ladies)

So, I don't know if you guys have noticed or not, but I'm fat. Don't you sputter at me, Missy. And, keep your embarassed guffawing inside your mouth, please. My BMI is in the obese range. That means I'm fat.

Now....can I let you in on a deep, dark secret? I don't hate my body. It's covered in soft skin. It bears battle scars I got from building and feeding my daughters. It houses a huge mind, and stockpiles of resolve and gumption. Besides, I'd vastly prefer Botticelli's Venus to Kate Moss as the standard of feminine beauty. To each her own, I say. Now, I'm no Venus, but--I'd prefer the soft curve of goddesshood to hard pitch of cocaine if I got to pick. I say we women should come to the table and vote on our own role models. Oh, you think Kate Moss would still win? Yeah, you're probably right.

There was a time when I was even fatter than usual (thanks, desk job). When I reached the fatter-than-usual stage, I had no energy and generally felt like a huge, heaping pile of simple carbohydrates all the time. But, even then I could heave myself up two flights of stairs without getting winded. It took me 3 months to gain my "bank weight" and under 6 months to lose it. I went back to being normal-fat, and I was really, most days, okay with that. Though I did find that something had shifted in my perception of my own fatness when I had to listen to beautiful, brilliant women repeat every single day that they were disgusting. I began to think, "Well, my conventionally attractive sister, if you're disgusting, what am I?" For awhile, this inherited sense of self loathing gave me increased anxiety about meeting new people. I wound up with a gym membership, a subscription to a tanning salon and a calorie tracker on my phone. But, guess what happened when I got back to normal-fat? I got over all that awfulness really quickly. Hey! I'm Jessica frakking Weisenberg. I get over stuff.

[Later, I began to wonder if the root of gym memberships, crash dieting and tanning beds is really about matching the outer self to the outer selves of others, or if it's just some women's way of coping with the manner in which she is undervalued in her professional and personal life...anyway, gender studies aside...]

Why oh why would an obese twentysomething be unhappy with over 20 pounds of rapid weight loss? You think I'm going to tell you why, right? Well, of course I am...

First of all, out of the initial 18 pounds I lost, at least 8 of those were from my chest. Talk about your self-esteem crusher. I mean, I know they weren't perfect, but they've been right up under my chin since I was 13... and, not to be gross to you non-nature goddess types, but these are the organs which provided sustenance to my daughters for their first years of life. They're a part of who I am, part of the roadmap of my life. I never realized how attached I'd gotten. Granted, they're just significantly smaller than usual, it's not like they're really lost...that I can't even fathom.....I've once again got renewed awe for women who lose their breasts to cancer. Those women, if you know any, are the bravest, most amazing women in the world and deserve to be told so RIGHT NOW, so stop reading this and go forth into the world to hug your local breast cancer survivor. I'm going to hug my own stepmom double hard next time I see her. I only hope I don't bawl like a newborn calf when I do it.

Another obvious reflection of my troublesome rapid weight loss is that it looks like my disease took huge bites out of my body fat. What once was pale, smooth-ish flesh is now lumpy, bumpy skin. Even before the weight loss, my abdomen held the worst stretch marks I've ever seen on anyone. That's what happens when you give birth to two 9+ pound babies in under 2 years. Even if you use body butter every single day, sometimes you get stretch marks. I count them as badges of honor. Yes, they're gross, but they're mine. I worked hard for them. I have always reflected on them as markers of who I am: a mother. Well, now I've got another set of stretch marks. The kind you get from shrinking all over your body. And those white stripes of motherhood that I wore with honor? They look 10million times worse. I have found the remarkable difference between losing weight the right way and losing weight the wrong way: when weight is lost through diet and exercise, one tends to look stronger, more robust. When weight is lost too rapidly, things begin to rather quickly look very sad.

In the classic movie, Men In Black, (and yes, I mean classic, I'll arm wrestle whichever dude wants to argue as soon as I have muscle again) a space invader crash lands on a farm and proceeds to peel the farmer. He wears the skin of a misogynistic redneck asshole to hide his insectform for the remainder of the movie. The downtrodden, vapid wife of the farmer (think American Gothic, or The Miller's Wife) calls it his "Edgar suit." Well, that's how I feel about my body right now. I feel like my disease is wearing my skin. I still look and sound like myself for the most part, but really, the dominant presence inside the stretched decay of my flesh is a roach that ate me. Granted, that roach is my own immune system.

With each day, my complexion improves, and with it, the feeling of zombie-ness decreases proportionately. So thanks, Modern Medicine, for at least giving me my face back. It might not be a stunningly beautiful face, but it's an unusual face, maybe even a pleasant face, and I'd like to keep it while it's still mine.

Having said alllll that, I should add:
Because I feel so bad, I've been wearing jeans and t-shirts every day. It's harder to tell, in jeans and t-shirts, how much things have changed--even if the jeans are a smaller size. Yesterday, I put on my favorite dress, which I can almost still wear because it's a wrap. (I had to have my seamstress grandma pin up a few areas.) Looking at myself in the mirror, in that dress, I had a moment of "WOWZA!"
And that, even if I know underneath the dress is pock-marked skin with intermittent pockets of missing flesh, even if I still don't feel quite like it's my own body I'm in, felt just a little bit awesome.