Fitting In

Saturday 11-19-11
Why the world is not designed for me

My whole life I've been battling with various things that don't fit me.  For example, despite how big I have allowed my body to become, I have really small bones underneath it all.  Really, petitely, ridiculously small.  I have an old ring of my Mama's that I wear on my right thumb that is a size 7.  On my THUMB.  As big as I am, you'd think my hands and fingers would be sized on a scale to match.  But no.  And since most rings on display in jewelry store windows are usually a size 7, anytime I have bought a ring or had one purchased in a store for me, it has always had to be sized down.  While my wedding dress definitely does not fit me anymore, my wedding band still does.

Then there were the years when it was nearly impossible to find the shoes I wanted because of my size 5 feet.  Really.  I remember the Easter that I bought a navy blue silk dress with a white collar.  I loved that dress and I wanted navy and white spectator pumps to wear with it.  The Hubs and I searched for weeks all over the Florida panhandle to find the shoes I wanted because, while the stores that year had plenty of navy and white spectator pumps, there was a distinct shortage of them in the size 5 medium I needed.  I think we finally found the "perfect shoes" in Panama City.  I am fortunate to have a Hubs who will trek hither and yon on quests such as The Great Spectator Pump Hunt of 1989.

I am also left-handed, so lots of things people use every day are not designed for me.  Kitchen knives often have blades with edges made for use by the right hand, as do scissors.  My schools only had right-hander desks, so I sat in them.  I didn't even know left-hander desks existed until high school and by then I had gotten used to the other ones.  I grew up adapting to these little inconveniences without much trouble.  To this day, I cannot use a pair of left-handed scissors because I had to use right-handed ones for so long I got used to them.  Ditto for computer mouses (mice?) because they are always placed on the right.  I am unable to "mouse" left-handed.  I wear my watch on my left wrist like all the right-handers in my life did because I was surrounded by them and that is how they wore their watches.  Putting it on my other arm feels weird to me.

The biggest issues I have had with things not designed to fit me, though, have been because of The Girls.  You know...hooters, knockers, ta-ta's, melons, jugs, boobies, sweater cows, man pillows.  The names for women's breasts are limited only by one's imagination and/or lack of good taste.  Mine have been large and contentious ever since they were installed!  And the warranty on my breasts has not been good, either.

In the sixth grade at age 11, I was 5 feet, 1 inch tall, weighing 109 pounds and wearing a 34-B bra.  Looking at photographs of myself back then, I realize that I was just plain STACKED.  At the time, though, all I felt was huge and fat.  I was taller than most of my classmates, and the arrival of The Girls just made me stick out (pardon the pun) all the more, at a time when all I wanted was just to fit in.  Girls my age who had been all through grade school with me started acting differently toward me, and boys I'd known since first grade became mouthy, lewd and sometimes even grabby.  I was freakin' 11!  Junior high was pretty much the same story, although I think that my having a steady boyfriend in the ninth grade encouraged other boys to keep their hands and comments to themselves.

My family didn't seem to know what to make of The Girls, either.  Before the growth spurt of both height and boobs, I'd had a couple of pudgy years, and I think my father (the Fatophobe) had already decided that I was just going to be another fat member of my mother's family, because as I asserted before, obesity does not come from his side.  When I got a little taller and The Girls came to live with me, Dad had nothing to say about my appearance.  It's sad because his approval meant more to me than anyone else's...probably because I never felt like I had earned it.  I have always wondered, if he had just told me that I was pretty and looked good at that size, might I have been able, or encouraged, to stay there?  I'll never know because he never did. 

The Girls came around the same time that my period, my migraines, and my own thoughts about things started to erupt.  I have always joked that my scintillating best-selling memoirs would be called "Breasts and Opinions".  (If I saw a book with that title on a shelf, I'd sure pick it up!  Wouldn't you?  Just don't steal my title and use it for your own.  Thanks.)  In truth, the arrival of Breasts and Opinions began what I have come to think of as The Great Divide with my Dad.  I think he just had no clue what to do with me, or how to relate to me anymore.  As I got older and my breasts, and the rest of me, got bigger, his distance and disapproval seemed to increase. 

He's not a bad person, but he has definite ideas about how people are supposed to look and behave.  Fat people are not presentable, and we are never just fat.  We are generally fat and something else...fat and lazy, fat and sloppy, fat and undisciplined, fat and pathetic, fat and selfish.  But I never heard him allude in any way to the fact that someone could be fat and wounded, which is how I believe many of us get fat to begin with.  I feel pretty sure that my own wounds contributed to my own problem, the "need to feed".

As I try to sort out the tangle of emotional and physical issues that have gotten me here, I know that The Girls will get more blog time.  And that is only fitting.  After all, when addressing The Girls, the blog entry should naturally be a Two-Parter!  (Yeah, I know.  Groan.)