Writing in particular helps me. I feel like it is therapeutic in ways I can't really express. Selfishly, it allows me a space to speak the truth I am living, good or bad. It's almost like once it is typed out and exists in the world, I can release it. Additionally, I seems my words resonate with people who may not have even known or recognized that I was struggling with something they also fight daily.
However, I also feel like I am a crazy person sometimes. I have very specific memories about things that happened to me when I was younger and how they happened. But I have read and studied about the fallibility of memory, psychological protections our brains instinctively use (particularly as children), and how individuals experiencing the same event perceive it differently (clouded by their own perspective). All of this makes me question myself and my memories of traumatic events in particular.
Am I remembering these events, that have now become a part of me and my life experience, accurately? Was my perception of the motivations of the people around me on point? Can I look at my experience now from my lens 20 or 30 years in the future and understand where the other people involved were coming from?
Was there some sort of embellishment I gave to these stories? Because some of them seem ridiculous now. Ridiculous in that I don't understand why the other people in these situations (particularly adults) acted the way they did to a child who was clearly struggling with her body, acceptance, and ridicule among her peers.
Example, I remember going to the Debbie Gibson concert when I was around 14. I had just lost 40 pounds on Nutri-System and was feeling pretty good about myself. When we were walking down the row to our seats at the coliseum, there was a group of teenagers in the row behind us. One of the boys, probably 17 or 18, was chanting "boom, badda, boom, badda, boom, badda" as I walked in front of them.
Whatever self confidence I obtained from the weight I lost was immediately shattered in a matter of a few seconds. I was at the lowest, most normal weight I had ever been and there were complete strangers mocking me in public. I can only assume he was just being an asshole and trying to impress the girl he was with; though I can't really understand how destroying a 14-year-old girl would impress a 17-year-old one.
What would that guy say about that situation now? He probably doesn't even remember it. If he was a bully to many people, it may be one in a series of events he puts out of his mind as an adult. To me, it altered my perception of myself. And to him it was probably nothing. In retrospect, this was around the time I quit Nutri-System. What was the point if I lost weight and people still made fun of me?
Another example, I had a teacher when I was in grade school who through a variety of statements and behaviors I won't go into here (simply so as not to embarrass them), made me feel like I was not like the other kids and should feel bad about myself. As a teacher, they were the adult in the situation, and had control over aspects of my life and self-perception, and treated me much in the same way that 17-year-old boy did at the concert.
By singling me out, it made me feel even more excluded than I would have if they had just let me fade into the background. Were they unhappy with their own life choices (also being overweight) and were attempting to change a pattern of behavior early for me before it got more out of control? Did they just not like me because I was overweight, awkward, and didn't fit in? Did they participate in this different kind of bullying because of their own issues with their own body?
I don't have answers for this. I think to myself, that put in a similar set of circumstances, that I (as a person who struggles with my weight) would have extra compassion for a child going through something similar. That I wouldn't have singled them out in front of everyone and embarrassed them, even if it was in an attempt to get them to participate more fully in their own health. That, if anything, I would have taken them aside privately, and said that I understood how they felt and I wanted to help them. Even if they didn't want the help and refused it outright.
Perhaps this person regrets the choices they made and the things they did. Perhaps they don't even recognize it was damaging. Perhaps they thought they were doing what was best, or what my parents wouldn't, or what I didn't want to do. But my experience of them, as a child, was traumatic. And I haven't let it go. And I haven't forgiven them.
Another example, there are people in my circle (friends, family, acquaintances, past lovers, however you want to define it) that I feel talk out of both sides of their mouths about fat people. They claim to not see any difference between a fat person or a thin one, and claim to not judge people about their weight. They claim they like me for who I am and don't think of me in a negative way. Then make comments to my face about other fat people.
"You were never as fat as THAT woman."
"I don't understand how he could even eat all of that."
"The only reason people are fat is because they do it to themselves."
"I would never let myself go like THAT."
"Look, he's going back to the buffet... again."
"Have you seen her lately? She has gained a LOT of weight."
"You weighed 300 pounds? Wow, I didn't know you were THAT big."
"I can't believe they would let their child get like that."
"I don't think that about you though."
I can only assume that these statements come from a place of their own self-loathing. The alternative is that they are completely unaware of how offensive or hurtful the things they say can be. Like if every single fat person in the whole world had a choice this morning to wake up fat or thin, they wouldn't choose to be thin. Like every wish I ever made on a shooting star, or an eyelash, or at 11:11 wasn't... "I wish I was skinny."
Sorry for the rant.
The point in all of this, is that you can't revise history to make yourself feel better about your own choices and how they affected other people. My teacher cannot take back the way they made me feel in school. The people in my circle cannot absorb and erase comments they have made to me or about me regarding their judgements about fat people. That 17-year-old asshole can't undo the damage he did in 5 seconds in 1990.
I can change my perception of myself in relation to all of these events. But the events happened. We cannot pretend they didn't.
And if it seems like this is directed at you specifically, that's on you. Perhaps you are perceiving something about yourself. I don't believe that anyone should be censored as I clearly don't censor myself. What you see is what you get. And what I say, I mean. But I also don't believe anyone should expect that their words and actions are not going to have an effect on other people, and no one gets a free pass.
You have to own your words and actions, as well as how they might affect the people around you. If you don't want to hurt someone's feelings, don't say hurtful shit. And if you do, do so with the understanding that you can apologize, but you can never take back words once they are spoken.
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