I’m not altogether sure why but I decided to get involved in NaBloPoMo, which is National Blog Posting Month on Blog Her. The goal is to write a post a day for the month of July. I’ve been slack with writing of late, which, honestly, is a result of the spectacular failure of my last attempt at moving forward. Now I’m ready for another go at this blogging stuff, because well, it’s just so damn attractive.
I will cross post everything from the NaBloPoMo on this site because I intend to talk about a subject that’s been rattling around in my mind for a while now (about 35 years and counting) and something I’d like to get straight for myself. Body acceptance.
POST #1
Where Would I Love To Go Swimming?
I love to swim. And yet I don’t do it very often. I don’t really know why. Time maybe, or more specifically lack of it.Then there’s the whole finding somewhere to swim. The beach where I live is a surf beach and I never learnt to swim in the surf so it’s not so attractive. I don’t have a pool at home so if I’m going to swim I need to find a public pool.
At that leads to the whole swimsuit in public thing and I’m not so down with that. In fact that’s fairly high on my list of things to avoid if at all possible.
You see, I’m fat. How fat? I hear you ask; to which I reply, does it matter? I could be overweight and still ‘saveable’ or super obese and on death’s doorway and really would that make any difference? Because it doesn’t to me.
I’m the size that I am and it’s not a size that is ‘acceptable’ in modern society.
And I’m ashamed of that. Not my body. I’m not ashamed of my body and my dirty little secret is that I never have been; even when I’ve been caught in the depths of such rampart self-hatred that some days even getting out of bed was a challenge.
What embarrasses me is that so many genuinely good people, really lovely people, people that I might have liked to have been friends with, are complete bigots on this subject. It’s become acceptable practice to spew hatred at people who are fat, because they’re fat. And some really nasty stuff. I feel so bad for people who do that. They cannot seem to see how truly offensive, how completely cringeworthy that sort of behaviour is. Being in the presence of bigotry like that is embarrassing and … just, yucky. It feels so bad to create such a huge impression by simply being that someone would sacrifice their own personal well-being for – well I don’t even know what for.
So rather than deal with the possibility that something like that might come up I choose not to swim in public places; unless I’m feeling particularly strong and devil-may-care, and seriously, who has time for that these days.
Where would I love to go swimming? Everywhere; anywhere. And I get that the only thing stopping me is my own fear of confrontation so maybe it’s time to deal with that.
Lisa
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