Negotiate

To be honest, I don't have any lofty plans for when I get skinny and lose all the weight. If hard pressed, I could probably come up with a list of 100 reasons to lose the weight, but when I think about it, and believe you me, I have thought about it a lot, the biggest thing for me that will give me the greatest joy is to not have to negotiate my way in the world. Anyone who is morbidly obese knows exactly what I am talking about.

Negotiating your way means constantly having to think about how you move spatially in life. It's not only whether or not every chair, seat, bench, sofa, booth will fit, but also will it creak, will it moan, will it break ... will it be comfortable, will it hurt, will it cut off circulation to my foot, will I look silly, will I have to shift positions every 5 minuts, will I be able to get out of it comfortably, when I do try to get up/out/off will it creak, will it moan, will it break, will my ass look big, will my shirt scrunch up, will my back fat show, will my pants, skirt be uncomfortabley scrunched up so that my leg fat shows, will I have to step out wide so that the bunched up clothes between my legs can fall down....on and on and on. Concerns about "do I look fat in these jeans" don't even matter because you're lucky to even find jeans that fit. Up until a few months ago, you didn't even know they made jeans that big.

You are so far from "are people looking at me" that you are in "I don't even look at people" mode. For me, I could care less what people think, I have long passed that concern. I don't notice or care if people are staring and pointing, it doesn't even register if there sneer or laugh. When I deal in the outside world, I have blinders on, it's like people are just moving objects that I pay no mind to. I'm afraid of what might happen if I do. Nevertheless, these objects have to be negotiated. It's a daily struggle of can I get past that object gracefully without touching it, will I knock something over and will anyone notice, will I be able to take up two seats on the airplane without someone interfering, will I remember to bring my seat belt extender and not have to ask the flight attendant, will I fit in the seat of a car I've never been in? Will I be able to fasten that seat belt? Or adjust the steering wheel? Will I be able to step on that deck? Will I be able to get on a elevator and not have it jump a little? On. And on. And on.

And that's only part of it. You find that you hate anything and everything that brings any attention to yourself. Anything, I mean mundane stuff. You hate shopping for clothes and you hate shopping for shoes and you'll be damned if you go and try anything on. You think "who wants to see a fat girl try on shoes or try on a skirt?" Not to mention that at the same time you're thinking "Is anyone staring at me while I'm trying on these Nikes? Is my ass showing?"

It is a brutal, unrelenting, pride-swallowing seige.

To let all of that go, to just exist in the world without excuse, would be absolutely divine.