Gargantuan

That feeling from yesterday swelled and morphed into an overwhelming sense of doom.  I can't seem to shake it... can't find the joy today.

The Very Fat Guy is still Very Fat, but I don't mind today.  I will tomorrow.  Today I don't mind.

A good day to be working inside.

What a good weekend! Actually got things done. You know you've not
been too well when a good weekend consists of getting a few sacks of
rubbish out into the bins, going out for breakfast and reading the
paper, and writing. Maybe a couple hundred words (not counting
various blogs), but it's more than I get done most weekends.

Not perfect, but I'll take it.

I love breakfast. I don't much care what it is. Bacon and eggs, sure… eggs benedict, or a fresh bagel with avocado and smoked salmon. Rye toast and manuka honey. Hot black coffee.

I don't need to be stuffed, at breakfast. Breakfast is not the time for bingeing. It's the time for being outside and looking across the water, or down a busy morning street and watching the crowds go by. Reading the paper, finding out what the world's been up to while I've been ignoring it.

I don't have time for such luxuries today, but I'm still going to go make coffee and sit still for a few minutes. Let the mind of the Very Fat Guy stray to the end of the week and the blue sky blanketing the city this morning.

How the hell did I survive?

I'm 34 years old. How did I not die yet? I have all the risk
factors, in spades. I don't know anyone beyond a passing hello in the
hallway. My apartment is dirty. God only knows what devastating
bacteria are growing in the kitchen sink, waiting to pounce on my
struggling immune system. Suicidal ideation has been a companion many
times in my life. But for some reason, I'm not dead yet.

You ever get the feeling something is keeping you alive, that you're
not done with whatever it is you're supposed to do with your time
here?

I get that feeling, but then you have to worry... what happens if I
finally figure it out, get it done, and then like the car at the end
of the Blues Brothers movie, I disintegrate from accumulated damage?

I think the idea is to make sure you're 90 years old before that
happens. Not sure I've got that long. Still, the sun came up today.

Changing back to a stock template, till I can sit down and customise properly.

I've noticed distinct phases, which I have come to think of as sunphase and moonphase, in my state of mind.

I think they might be linked to the weather... this whole Seasonal Afective Disorder thing. Looks like I'm dependent on the sun which is odd as I like rainy days, snow, thunderstorms, lightning, fog.

So it's been moonphase for a few months, and the Very Fat Guy has been in hibernation. Batten down the hatches. But you know, it didn't last so very long, and wasn't a complete disaster. The sun comes rolling around again. Seems I'm learning to ride out the bad weather.

Recently I met two strange women. Not strange peculiar, strange new. One is a 'text buddy' who has SMS'd me back and forth for quite awhile now, and we caught up for a coffee on a sunny-turned-windy day last week. Walked and talked. I suspect there's a buddy-type relationship there which would be nice, but just the sniff of perhaps a little something more... stay tuned.

Another, an arranged meeting through one of those introductions sites which I joined in a moment of weakness. Coffee again, it's been a caffeinated week! Some connection on an intellectual level (I love meeting people who can write) but I doubt much more than that. We're walking back to our respective apartments, which by chance are quite close together. Mind of Very Fat Guy tries to absorb data and come to correct conclusion:

I have no instincts. I don't know signals. I can't read the signs. Too long away from civillisation. Might as well have spent the last decade in the jungles of the Congo for all I know about talking to people.

Scratch that. Would've met more people in jungles of Congo.

I think I'm getting the polite brush-off. Am I? It's hard to tell. "You've got my number." What does that mean? I should use it? She's going to be very busy, she says... surely a hint.

You've got to laugh, don't you? I could be a runway superhunk and I'd still have no clue.

But then, I hear that cluelessness is not completely unknown in the male population, so there may be hope for me yet.

write.

Why is that?

I have discovered a cache, at the foot of my bed, obscured by a table.

A cache of socks.

It seems that when I get home, exhausted, I kick off my shoes and socks, and lie down.

So that's where they all went!

names

Michelle left a note worrying about calling me 'Creature'. I don't necessary think of it as a derogatory term. After all, I am to some extent a creature of habit. I'm often a creature of instinct, and there are days when I think of myself as a creature of the sea. I'm clearly an odd creature, usually a timid creature, and on rare occasions a fearless creature. Naturally I enjoy my creature comforts!

And yet, the mind of the Very Fat Guy recognises that

there is the monstrous within us that must be wrestled with (or embraced).

sun creature

The name in fact comes from some verse I wrote at the end of last year, when things were really beginning to change.

aftermath

i am a creature
of the sun
shapes plucked from shopsigns
twist whirling in my
seeing space
i am a creature
of heat and hard
bone
the furnace now is me.

every day,
every interaction
brings its own addition
to my core;

selfishly i make them mine,
for i am of the deserving ones
who sat in silence,
i who went to die
became my other,
lost a brother
and regained
colour and the juice of oceans,
the blood of leaves

i fought at shadows and
lost;
i cast aside a mountain and
took flight!

now i see the flux
it is me
i flow past, behind, in tandem with
adversaries, and in my wake they douse themselves;

i am a creature of the sun;
it never lost its way
and i have heard
its flamboyant cries
again.

I know there are many other deserving ones who sit in silence. I don't know what can be done about that yet, but I hope someday soon I will understand.

I went out this morning to look at the world, have some breakfast and watch the water for a moment or two. Cold and bright, an ice-blue sky, hard sharp-edged buildings with perfect outlines. Sunlight-speckled waves.

I wish I lived somewhere snowy.

I've been getting the "You've lost so much weight!" remarks the last week or so. It's nice, but I wish they wouldn't. I think it warns my brain that something good might be about to happen, and it naturally veers toward doom and disaster again. The more static I am, the less I move each day, the easier it becomes to continue the slide.

How do we get that way, where we seek ruin and shun good fortune?

At a crucial point, age eight or nine, do we decide that loss and isolation are safer?

Tomorrow morning, first thing, supermarket. If I walk along the foreshore, I know the day will go well no matter what else happens. Mornings are important.

Just watched an old episode. At the end, the writers speaking as Chris:

"I know most of you have been where I am tonight: the crash site of unrequited love. You've asked yourself, "How did I get here? What was it about her? Was it her smile? Was it the way she crossed her legs, the turn of her ankle, the poignant vulnerability of her slender wrist. What are these elusive and ephemeral things that ignite passion in the human heart? That's an age-old question. It's perfect food for thought on a bright midsummer's night. Hey, you said it best Will:

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind
And therefore is winged cupid painted blind

Yeah."

The unhealthy part comes when every day is like this. When every love is unrequited. After awhile you start to fall into a pattern. You obsess for a week or two, knowing deep down nothing will come of it. And eventually it fades.

I often wonder what it must feel like to be in a normal body and not know what's going to happen; to avoid that sense of inevitability, throw the dice and take your chances. What possibilities must dance in their minds, with blinded cupid flinging arrows at random in the hopes that one will strike home.

But after awhile, after years of it, you begin to feel as if you don't want to inflict yourself on anyone. And that's where the rot sets in.

Some days, more often these days, I can say "fuck it" and get on with things. Not so much tonight. Talk about wallowing! Pass me the serotonin, if you'd be so kind.

I am waiting for the oedema to go down.

When I don't exercise, and sit at this desk all day, my feet and legs swell. It hasn't happened in awhile because I've been so active. However, it happened this morning because I've had two inactive days.

Time to break the cycle. I'm going outside. But I need to squish my foot into my shoe, and let the excess water drain away.

I am waiting for the oedema to go down.

I've just finished a string of days off, slightly unexpected. My shifts just fell this way at the beginning of the month. I should have done a lot of things but didn't; I remain unrepentant!

I spent the entire period alone. Not mostly alone, but entirely alone. Work is where people are. Home is where it's just the Very Fat Guy:

It's not too much longer. Every day I'm growing back out into the world. I can see myself, bubbling upward.

It's not for too much longer. I built this cave, the hiding places of security doors and shuttered windows were of my necessity, but I am not bound by them. I am bound by nothing.

It's not too long to go now. There is movement. There is sun (and downpours catching me on the walk home, twice in two days, soaked to my blubber.)

Soon.

So back to work, and fluorescent light and people. Can't wait. But it's nice here too, in the dark, writing this that a few might read it to pass the time. Shower. Maybe a bite to eat. Bed.

G'night.

So I've been reading about fat acceptance a lot. Most of the links in the sidebar will take you to appropriate sites if you want to read about it too.

I can see why people are on the defensive. It's hard not to feel attacked when phrases like 'war on obesity' and 'fighting fat' are everywhere, because the mind of the Very Fat Guy finds it difficult to distinguish between an attack on the person I am (as opposed to the weight I carry):

Those who seek to 'wage war' on a fatter society. Well-meaning people, all of them. How many actually understand what it's like to live this way?

Aren't they just reaffirming the separationist attitudes that are already entrenched in our culture? Do we risk making the 'war on obesity' a war on children who happen to be overweight?

As an adult, I have difficulty with the blurred message of fat disapproval. I'm not sure how I would deal with it had it been overt and government-sponsored when I was growing upwards and outwards. The ability to distinguish between attacks on lifestyle and attacks on self is even less developed as a child.

So am I an activist? Not the kind that champions fat as healthy, I'll say that to begin with. I hate being fat. I know just how much damage it can do, mental and physiological. The arguments in favour of being obese are, it seems, just as stretched and convoluted as those claiming that people who are overweight are lazy and ignorant.

I am an ACTIVE-ist, if you'll pardon the faux-self-help book butchering of the word, in the sense that I threw a large quantity of exercise into my life and am reaping the benefits. I want to lead by example. I want to be able to say to some of the kids I work with, "It's not hopeless. There are people who know what you're going through. Here's how you start."

I am an activist for people. The anti-fat and the fat brigades combined (what a lovely, squishy melange that would make!) I want to see us, as a people, indescriminately prosper. I want people to be able to live and be loved without fear. I want us to stop being reactionary, to drag ourselves out of the ambulance at the foot of the cliff mentality, to follow the trail back to the point where things started to get out of control, way before the cliff was even an issue.

I want to be happy. I'm an activist for happiness. Is that the most schmaltzy thing you ever read in your life?

As it turned out, the rain had stopped. I walked out beside the marina towards the bridge. If you pick your time right, you're literally walking towards the setting sun which is all very poetic. It was one of those finger-suns where the digits of light stretch out behind clouds, reaching for one last shot at this portion of the earth.

And as I watched the other walkers, the mind of the Very Fat Guy spake:

Those two sure are clinging to each other. I hope they're happy... they look happy.

This guy is carrying a lot of stress.

That's not a dog, it's a large hairy rodent.

That one is in serious need of a hug. Wish I could help, sorry, they arrest you for stuff like that.

It's getting cold.

I shouldn't daydream about her so much. It can't be healthy. It'd probably creep her out if she knew.

And yet... what if the daydreams are what's keeping me going? Tricking the Fat Guy mind into maintaining lots of serotonin at the synapses.

I wish I knew what she was thinking.

Turn back. Remember, you have to cover all this distance on the way home again.

Oh well... maybe a few more minutes won't hurt.

It was dark by the time I got home, feeling strong.

It's raining. I'm going out for a walk.

I've always walked. Maybe that's the reason I'm still alive. Ever since I started shrinking (more on this later), I've been walking in addition to everything else. Long, wandering, no-goal-in-mind walks.

A few months back I walked in the rain, pounding down, that really solid kind where you almost feel massaged if only it weren't so cold. I was wearing fairly tight drawstring pants. When I got home, hours later, I discovered the soaking wet drawstring had cut into the skin of my abdomen, creating a long wound. I still have the scar now, it looks almost surgical. Maybe people will think I've had The Operation.

Now I'm going to wander along the harbour's edge, with umbrella, see where I get to. Some days I feel called out into the rain.

So, there's this woman...

Of course there is! I'm fat, not dead. There's someone at work, which is really the only time I spend with people.

She's bright, funny, a little quirky. Interesting accent. Challenges me. Has a gentle strength about her, and yet a kind of reticence sometimes, like she's not sure where she fits.

So ask her out, you say. I would love to. Here's the mind of the Very Fat Guy at work:

What on earth would she want with someone like me?

I'm fine talking, but no one could possibly feel good about becoming physically close to me. I have breasts. I have an abdominal pannus [fat that hangs down].

I've spent years alone. I'm awkward and moody.

It will make her feel bad to have to say 'no'. It will invoke pity.

Pity is something that at once entices and terrifies the Very Fat Guy. Sometimes you find yourself playing for the pity vote, and yet all the time you detest it.

There is an often repeated cliche that it's easier for men to be obese than for women. I imagine it may even be true in a few individual cases. For the most part though, it's admiring from afar for me. I watch guys mistreat the women they're with, ignore, insult, attack, belittle and be violent towards them. And I think, being with that woman would be an honour. How can you waste such a precious thing? To be close, to have secrets with, be inspired by your lover. To touch...

I go for years at a time without being touched. Sometimes someone will come up behind me and clap me lightly on the back, and I'll flinch, will feel that hand imprint for hours afterward. It's not a grab for pity (see above), but more to ask the question: who are we that we let this happen to ourselves? And what community to we live in that allows such isolation, that even has an undercurrent which encourages it?

It's happening all over, now. Fat? Let's rearrange your innards a little. Knife please.

All power to the people who are having bariatric surgery, and to those who market it so agressively. (It's all over the Internet, you know.) But it's not for me.

Gastric bypass. Just the name sounds inviting. 'Bypass' it all, that's the solution. Create a small pouch in the stomach, then detour around the rest of it and the first chunk of intestine.

My problem is not with the risks of the procedure (very low, with a laparoscopic approach). I don't think we have a lot of data about long-term effects yet, which is troubling, but that in itself wouldn't stop me having surgery.

I worry about the economic incentives for hospitals to be performing these procedures. Bariatric surgery is big business now. I dislike any surgery on spec which has such a powerful economic motivation behind it. That's hardly atypical these days; any number of cosmetic and elective surgeries fit the same description. Still, it makes me wary.

What really bothers me is that we haven't yet found a way to stop children and young people from becoming obese in the first place. We now have a significant and growing surgical infrastructure designed to 'cure' the morbidly obese -- at least, those among us who can afford it -- but no real idea of reducing the number of people who develop the condition. Trust me, general practitioners and nutritionists saying 'diet and exercise' doesn't work.

There is a deep-set, insidious, intractable failure of our communities, our families, to handle what is happening. We are beginning to abdicate responsibility, to stand aside for someone else to alter our plumbing in the name of recovery. We become too desparate, and finally too tired.

I will not arrive at the hospital with a smile and an 'incise here' mark on my belly. There is a greater responsibility at stake, for those of us affected to discover more. Why did we become this way? How can we prevent the next generation from undergoing worse hardship because we were not prepared to face ourselves?

Good afternoon. Welcome to another blog. My name is Creature. I will be your host.

I am morbidly obese.

This term may not delight the reader. Some are uncomfortable with it, because 'bese' sounds like 'beast', and morbid anything can't possibly be good. I've grown accustomed to it, over the years, and now use it freely to describe myself.

You may be interested to know, depending on how bored you are, that there is a clinical definition of morbid obesity. Anyone with a Body Mass Index greater than 35 is considered morbidly obese.

At best estimates, since I am too heavy to use conventional scales, my weight when at my heaviest was around 180kg. I'm 187cm tall. That's a BMI of about 50. I guess I qualify.

(For the imperial at heart, those numbers are 400lbs and 6'2". Saved by an enthusiastic ephiphyseal growth plate!)

My intent is not to glorify or excuse, whine or prevaricate. Rather, I offer an insight into the mind of the Very Fat Guy.