oh, the stigma(ta)

Today, on the bus ride home, I was pondering why I feel compelled to come out to people around the whole Weight Watchers thing. I think I tell them so there's no place to hide. If they know, and then I do something rash (read: eat a plate of fritters), I might feel ashamed. But then again, I feel this shame at needing to watch what I eat, and being where I am. It's one of those glorious double binds: damned do, damned don't, you know the drill.

I guess what people don't know, and what I am only starting to discover, is my own long history with all of this-- the shame, the powerlessness,the hope and disappointment and the hope again.

At some point, I was a teenager, a fat teenager, and I went on a diet (it wasn't a bad word to me then), and maybe it was the Richard Simmons plan and I had a giant Queen poster in my bedroom (and how gay is all of that) and I dreamt that one day, I would be thin, and wear overalls, and ride a green schwinn 10-speed. And I had this picture in my head, of how good life would be then, and yet the day never came. Sure, I got thinner and then I got fatter and again and again.

I don't need the overalls now. I'd maybe take the bike. But what I want, more than anything, is to find a way to be that's healthy, that I can maintain-- longterm. I don't wanna succumb to my own survival/coping mechanisms, which were laid in place so long ago, and have proven time and again, that they really don't work for me.

But sometimes, this business of remaining conscious, of not numbing it all with food, it makes me itchy all over. It feels like my skin is gone, and I'm all flesh and sinew in the wind (or today, rain). There are times when it's nearly unbearable-- and others, it's amazing. It's better than drugs (or the food that might take the buzz away). So maybe that's the duality of this new way of being I'm trying to make my own. Blake said "Without Contraries is no Progression." For now, I'm sticking with the wisdom of Billy Boy.