I was totally going to write something different — I don’t know what exactly — but something, but then I had to spend an entire hour tracking down my cat and “rescuing” her from the neighbor’s yard, which was so thoroughly fenced I could not tell how she got in there in the first place. Then, of course, once I’d found her, her plaintive cries for help turned to rolling in the dirt three feet out of reach. 

That whole process made me feel simultaneously pleased with myself for finally getting her out and, bizarrely, a little afraid that if I wasn’t so large-bodied, I would have been able to do it faster. What is up with that? Total craziness! But I realize have been carrying around for a very long time this inner protectiveness about people relating whatever I do wrong or imperfectly to my weight, no matter how illogical that connection would be. 

I got made fun of for a lot of things in school, my physical appearance being prominent in that array, and I always sort of felt like largeness was my biggest handicap in terms of being liked. Of course, at the time I wasn’t fully aware of how freakish I probably acted due to my extreme shyness, and how that undoubtedly contributed to the general state of affairs. But right or wrong, I carried away from school the strong impression that weight works against me in basically all circumstances. 

But I even though I believe(d) that, I didn’t want to let it stop me from being bad ass! I have always admired big butch lesbians and wanted to have skillz like them. Handiness, agility, physical strength, instincts about how stuff works — somehow having these qualities made up for, maybe even exceeded, whatever I felt I lacked in prettiness, a word which to me is(was) exactly synonymous with thinness. I could see — especially after I left school behind (whew! Thank God, and thank the Goddess for Girl Scout camp) — that there truly was a place for such women in the world, and indeed they could even be hot!

So did being fat spur me to become more handy? Who knows. But from this remove, I bet it didn’t keep me from having everything I needed to live the life I’m meant to live. 

Ok.  

Not a happy camper.