I KNOW I’m Fucking Fat!

So.  I went to the family dinner tonight (mini, mom’s side).  It was at an Italian-like food place named Morita’s.  Don’t ask because I don’t know why an Italian place has a Japanese name.  Anyway, I was pretty much defeated by the rest of the day, so I just went (I had originally told my mom that I didn’t want to go).  I had to eat dinner, anyway.  I met another cousin I hadn’t seen in at least fifteen years if not twenty, and he looked great.  He’s twenty-three and doing his mandatory military service so he had to eat and run.   He was pretty cool.  There were only two sisters (including my mom) and one brother at first, and then the eldest brother and his wife showed up.  The dinner was in their honor because they were visiting Taiwan as well.  The wife had cancer a few years back and wasn’t expected to make it.  She did, and she’s in remission now.  Anyway, she is one of those full warpaint, dyed hair, dress to the nines kind of women who desperately tries to look thirty years younger.

One of my uncles was eating grapefruit after he had his dessert.  This aunt turned to me and said, “Minna.  Grapefruit.”  I said, “No, thank you.”  Then she said in her little-girl voice, “Minna.  Grapefruit.  Diet.  Lose weight.”

“Fuck you, bitch,” flashed through my mind, but I did not say it, of course.  Instead, I turned away from her, and she was dead to me from then on.

Look, people, it’s pretty simple.  I know I’m fucking fat.  I know I am gross and disgusting and a blight to humanity.  I don’t need you fucking telling me that, ok?  Goddamn it.  I have a hard enough time with the teeny-tiny Taiwanese Tinkerbells looking at me in wonder and disdain.  I don’t need people telling me that I need to diet and shit.  I FUCKING KNOW THAT!  The minute I get home, I will do something about it.  I will fucking starve myself to a size zero so I won’t offend “my people” with my hugeness.

It’s true that I have a solid frame, anyway.  Even when I was a size two, I still had my boobs, unfortunately.  I have huge wrists (check out the previous entry for my trauma concerning that), thick thighs, and meaty calves.  I have broad shoulders, and I will never ever ever look like a waif.  One of these days, I will scan in a pic of me from when I was skinny, and you can see how curvy I still was.

I spend so much energy fighting the urge to completely sink into despair at how fat I am, and then my aunt says something like that (after the comment my brother made earlier).  What the fuck is the point?  I was thinking, the last time these relatives saw me, I was about this fat, too.  After that, I was at my skinniest (and anorexic), and now, I am at the fattest I’ve ever been.  I am so fucking tired of this.  I see all the Barbie dolls,  and damn it, I would give ten years off my life to look like that for ten years.

I am already broken in spirit and body.  Tomorrow, we are going to Hua Lien–a very beautiful city on the ocean.  We will be going on a tour in the afternoon for four hours.  We will be going on another tour in the same city the following afternoon–for four more hours.  I am already doubting that I’ll make it through the first tour, let alone the second.  My bro and niece are wandering around at the local night market as I type.  They both will most likely be able to do the tour tomorrow with no problem.

WTF is wrong with me that I can’t ever get in optimum shape?  No matter how much I exercise (anywhere from an hour and a half a day to seven hours a day), I am never in shape.  I get winded when I walk, and it just…hurts.  My body sucks, and not in a good way.

I am so done with this trip.  Right now, I am in tolerance mode.  I am trying to endure, but I feel the real me slipping away a bit more each day.   I can’t fight any more.  I can’t continue trying to get my family to give a damn about the real me without getting anything in return.  It fucking hurts.  I am tired of constantly having to move so my father isn’t directly behind me.  Whenever he manages to sneak up on me (not on purpose), I jump out of my skin.  I had to hug him today before he went to the office, and my skin crawled upon contact.  I also watch when he’s near my niece, though I don’t really think he’ll do anything to her.  It’s exhausting.

I am not looking forward to anything else on this trip other than the food.  I am trying so desperately hard to be good and not say anything controversial or lose my temper or make any kind of waves, and it’s killing me.  The same aunt who told me I should eat grapefruit to lose weight was talking about her serious run-in with cancer.  She said she was in remission, and she added, “Praise God” and raised her hands to the heavens.  She added with a smile, “It’s a miracle.”  I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t say anything.

Then, another aunt and uncle were escorting us back to the hotel because they didn’t think we could make it on our own (we could).  They were smirking and saying, “You lead.  We will follow.”  WTF?  Seriously, WTF?  My brother has an excellent sense of direction, and I can speak a smattering of Chinese.  Enough to get us to where we needed to go.  But, it’s how the family rolls.  Lots of put-downs done with a smile.  Then, as we were walking, my aunt was talking about the night market.  She was saying that they had a Christian bookstore on campus.  I was noncommittal.  She said that my cousin_____ (the one in the second picture) liked to visit that bookstore.  She and her husband were trying to remember the name, and all I could think was, “I’m not a fucking Christian, so WTF do I care about a Christian bookstore?”  Again, I did not say it, but I certainly radiated the thought.

I fucking hate this.  I knew it would be bad when I came, mostly in concern to all the activity and my self-image, but I didn’t realize it would be this bad.  When I am not numbed with depression or disassociated from my body because of the emotional pain and/or the physical pain, I am so full of rage, it scares me.  I am angry at everything and everyone–but I only feel safe turning it inward.  I know that I can take the damage that I give out when I am angry.  Plus, I don’t fucking matter anyway.  My family has made that abundantly clear.  I may as well be dead.

P.S.  First pic is of my fat face.  Second pic is of my very cute and skinny cousin.  Third pic, from left to right, is skinny cousin, me, my niece, my mother, my father, and my brother.

P.P.S.  Day Six Pix.

P.P.P.S.  I just looked at the Day Six pictures, and I’m a fucking cow.