Saturday, May 2, 2015
Correspondence June 17, 1987 (cassette tape)
On this tape, I do something which was very common for our network of pen friends to do. I inform him a bit about my personal history. With my mothers noisy dog barking at me for attention and her even noisier bird banging on its cage and shrieking in the background, I did my best to let him know who I was at that moment by telling him more about who I once was.
Select transcript June 17, 1987:
As far as me as a child, I can remember certain things, but I don't have a great deal of memory of my childhood. I don't think anybody has a real vivid memory. I remember always having my sister around and me always wanting to do things and her never wanting to do anything. I always wanted to play. My sister never wanted to play anything. I wished I had a sister who wanted to play with me so I always turned to my cousins, but there wasn't a good situation with my cousins either. That's also a story unto itself. It's hard to explain all of the inter-relationships. I can remember that always happening... that I would always wanted to do things and (my sister) wouldn't.
As far as in school, I got D's in first grade. I did not do well in second or third grade as far as grades went. In fourth grade, I started to pull straight A's. In fifth and sixth, I started to vacillate a little bit and get B's and C's. Then, in 7th and 8th, I got A's and B's. And then 9th through the rest of school, I got straight A's and did real well. I don't understand why my performance wavered, but the funny is that I always used to feel that I was stupid and then got intelligent. It was really weird.
I would not know what was going on and then a door would open and I would understand everything. First, second, third grade, I thought I was really dumb and I couldn't understand things. Math, in second grade, geez, the math teacher hated me because I was so damn dumb that I couldn't get anything. I remember on multiple occasions her trying to make me understand and it never quite getting through. Then, in fourth grade, it was like "bang, bang, bang", it all made sense. It was like it took my brain up until fourth grade to develop any abstract thinking at all. In fourth grade, it was all clear. In fifth to sixth grade, again, it sort of dropped off then 7th it all came back.
In 7th and 8th grade, once more, it went away. In 9th, it came back. It never went away after 9th, by the way. Then, it was okay. I can remember these spurts of growth and (not having) intellectual growth. I remember never having it clear for awhile and then it just all of sudden being crystal and I don't understand that about myself, but it happened enough times that I don't know. I used to think I was really dumb though. Now I know better, but I used to think I was really stupid, especially when I was very young.
As far as social relationships throughout my childhood, I was a very thin child in first grade. I was really skinny and scrawny, but in second... from second grade on, I was very overweight and, as you know, there's a lot of abuse from other children for that. I can never remember a time more or less of not being overweight. By the time I was up to 305 lbs., which was my peak weight, which is the weight that I was at for a long time, through much of my last two years of high school. In my last two years of high school, I weighed over 300 pounds, and through my first three years of college, I did, too. It reached the point where I didn't even feel like a person. I felt like a creature and I didn't feel like a human being.
You asked me some questions about that. How did I change? Well, I feel like a person now whereas before I felt like I wasn't even human and I (now) deserve to be treated like a human because, for so many years, I was treated as less than worthwhile. People snicker and they make jokes. They always torment you and taunt you and I can never remember a time in my life when that didn't happen prior to my transition.* I never, ever felt like I was an attractive person. I tried to convince myself that there were certain parts of me that were rather attractive, but I could never delude myself to that point. I always was thinking, "Some day, I'll do this or that, or whatever," and I never did it as far as losing weight. I want to find the questions that you asked me specifically so I can address that.
What I wanted to tell was that, you have to consider that there's a lot of emotions that go along with being the weight that anybody is at when they're severely obese. You have a lot of anger at the people who are taunting you and anger at yourself for not controlling the problem. You have a lot of self-hate and a lot of hate toward the people who are bothering you. There's a lot of negative things and one of the things that I found when I show people that this is what I used to look like, they say that you looked a lot less happy than you do now.
A lot of that dissipated, but not completely. I still hate to see anybody judged on appearance. I hate it with a complete passion. It bothers the hell out of me. I really resent that you asked me my height and weight. For me, it's enough that I sent two full length, full body pictures. What more do you want? I'm not going to tell you my weight! It's none of your damn business. If you can't tell what I supposedly look like from two pictures that show me in my entirety except for my feet, I'm going to tell you! It's none of your business!
I hate talking about this, by the way. You said, do I feel comfortable. It's not a matter of comfort. It's a matter of hating to, but doing it anyway because there are reasons why which I'll go into later on.
*****
*This "transition" refers to dramatic weight loss. I'd lost about 140 lbs. by the time I started corresponding with T.
*****
I had sent T two photos of me in my second correspondence to him. Those pictures were me prior to weight loss and after weight loss. I didn't want to show him the "old" me, but I felt that I had to in order to be emotionally transparent and to avoid talking around certain topics. I had fallen in love with him, and I didn't want him to see what I used to look like because I was afraid that it would convince him stop corresponding to me altogether. Fortunately, it did not stop him.
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