Ugh Ugh Ugh Ugh

Ugh...that's how I've been feeling tonight. I know it has to do with a couple of specific things that set it off, but the emotions wouldn't have swelled and held if they weren't based in some history.

So I want to lose weight. A lot of weight. I am totally committed to doing is slowly, smartly, with fitness and a good diet.

Making the decision to do what is right for me is gratifying. I am beyond happy that I am doing this.

But, that doesn't change the fact that deciding to do this means admitting something that I know but hate to think about: everyone who knows me thinks of me as fat.

Duh, right? But it's so easy to go around knowing your fat, but thinking that people don't care. I'm nice, smart, outgoing, funny, and talented (all the major signs of a fat girl). Day to day, it's easy to pretend that this is what people see when they look at me.

But it isn't. They see a fat girl. And if they get to know me, they discover that I'm not awful or terrible or boring. But I'm still fat. And if they don't get to know me, then I'm just the fat girl. And admitting that I want to lose weight means admitting that I'm a fat girl. The kind who is so fat that she has to lose almost half of her body weight to be considered healthy. It means admitting that the carefully constructed self-image I've been cultivating was designed to protect me from this. And I can't protect myself from the truth and try to lose weight at the same time.

I love who I am, and who I am is the product of an intelligent girl dealing with being fat and creating a niche for herself. If I had grown up skinny, I'd be entirely different. I'd do different things, have different friends, and maybe have different goals. Not better by any means, but different.

I love myself and I want to do this. But I want to live in a world where people love me and don't care whether I do it or not because it has no bearing on their opinion of me. Because how fat or thin I am is not relevant to just knowing me.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.