V's Version

Psssst. Hey! Come in to the bathroom stall. Come on in and we can purge it all!

No way, I said, I hate to throw up.

Hate to throw up? Grow up! It’s the only way - the only way that you can stay the way they say you’re supposed to look.

Yeah -well I managed to escape the stall but being a teenaged girl and all is not exactly what I would call easy.

Heifer was my nickname and that was back when I was realitively thin.

60 pounds later was when the real fun would begin.

And 60 pounds after that, well, I guess I was truly fat.

So---I decided to go with it and bought elastic waists to fit.

I found that that the pounds felt good on me, that I was a diet free, redefining beauty in a way that challenged our super model society.

I laughed when they put a hand to my belly and asked when I was due. I could have said fuck you!

But I smiled instead and shook my head - No baby I said.

I’m just fat.

I’m a woman of size, a big boned gal with serious thighs.

I read fat chick zines and no lose lists. I take up space and shake my fists.

Heather MacAllister rocked my world when she honored me and all the rest of the fat girls.
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But that was before and now everything has changed - cancer has meant that nothing will ever be the same.

I couldn’t eat for almost two years - I suffered, I fought, I hid my fears.

For months on end i threw up every day - no matter what went in, nothing would stay.

I was sick, so sick I didn’t really care. I had no fingernails, I had no hair.

I didn’t notice the sagging of my dress. I didn’t notice the hollow of my chest.

I lost almost everything except my life - my job, my body, my home, my wife.

130 pounds was gone by then. I went from a size 28 down to a ten.

I looked in the mirror one day. Who the hell was I? Shock and dismay.

My identity was gone, I didn’t recognize the woman I could see.

What happened to me? I’m still a fat girl I used to be but now no one can see!

Oh! You look great they say - I hear it every day. But what they don’t get is that I didn’t choose this way.

So now I don’t know my fate but I do know that I miss my weight.

It’s interesting to have new clothes, the attention, some hair. I’m a kick ass survivor still fighting with flair.

So when I was asked to share tonight, I wrote a little poem about the fight:

Hi My name is V
But you’re only seeing half of me.
Cancer took the other half away
And I have no idea what size my body will stay.
Yeah - it’s true - I miss being fat
The trick is to love myself where I’m at.

10/18/04
V Kingsley
www.alotoflife.com

Originally written for Love Your Body Day. Please feel free to re-post with credit to authorship.


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Labels: fat activist big beautiful acceptance size anti-discrimination cancer weight loss love your body V Kingsley