Looking Glass

Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is how I'm seen now that I've lost 132 pounds. How I see myself, how strangers see me, how my family who saw me at my heaviest now see me, how my family who saw me heavy but not nearly my heaviest see me now. Used to be, save very, very few exceptions, I was always the fattest person in the room. There was a certain...comfort isn't the right word but almost a feeling of comfortable acceptance. "I am the fattest person in this room. I don't have to compare myself to anyone else, I don't have to do anything. I am what I am and this is what it is." Now, I'm mostly not the fattest person in the room. A lot of times I'm the person in the room who can bench press the most, knows what vegetables are currently in season, and walked anywhere from 1-4 miles before the other people in the room got out of bed. Clearly that's different from being the fattest person in the room. Clearly I don't miss being the fattest person in the room but I do somehow miss knowing where I am in relation to people. I can't look at myself and see how I look in the context of other people. Would strangers describe me as fat, heavyset, thick, healthy, strong? It doesn't really matter. I guess I'm just curious.

All of this coincides with moving back to Louisville, where I'm so much happier, so much more content and so much more confident. So do people treat me better because I'm 130 pounds lighter or because I treat them better because I'm happier? Are people more friendly because they aren't repulsed by my appearance or because people are just nicer here. Many questions but not so many answers when it comes to strangers. Family is a little clearer.

At my brother's wedding I saw a lot of family members I hadn't seen for a long time. There are very varying degrees of long time though. So I hadn't seen in 8 months, some I hadn't seen in 4 years, some I hadn't seen in 9 years, some I hadn't seen in over 15 years. Some of these people have been present in my life at moments where I was getting bigger and bigger. The ones who saw me at my heaviest and hadn't seen me since I started my healthy lifestyle last year seemed to only want to talk about my weight. I had an aunt who repeatedly demanded I tell her the number of pounds I'd lost. As we've discussed I'm not comfortable with that (though I tell you people freely enough don't I?) so I repeated my stock answer of "a little" over and over to her. She wasn't terribly amused. She didn't ask anything else about my life, our new house, my photography career, nothing. This massive weight loss is apparently the only thing about me that interests her at all.

Family members and family friends who hadn't seen me in 15 years didn't ask about it at all. They commented that I looked wonderful but I chalked that up to the terribly cute outfits I was wearing for all wedding related hoopla including fantastic accessories. Family members who saw me when I was 130 pounds heavier said I looked great but the only meaning I took from that is that "you look so much better 130 pounds lighter" instead of "you look pretty in that skirt." Did they mean either of those things? I don't know, that's just how I instantly took it.

Perhaps the most interesting exchange at the wedding was with a male cousin I hadn't seen since my grandmother's funeral many years ago. I was quite heavy at my grandmother's funeral maybe 30 or 40 pounds less than my heaviest weight. So let's say a hundred pounds more than I weigh now. Since I last saw him this cousin has gone completely bald and gained a significant amount of weight. The baldness threw me.  I didn't pay much attention to the weight, until he brought it up. He came up to me and said something about he didn't know I would recognize him. I said well yeah the bald head threw me off for a minute. He sighed and said "yeah there's that and the extra 30 pounds" in an almost apologetic manner. It was a short exchange but one that never would have happened a year ago. No one apologizes to the really fat girl about their extra 30 pounds.

Some family friends told me I looked like I did in high school, others said they would never have known me if we passed on the street. The interactions I liked best were the ones where my weight didn't come up at all.