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F.A.T
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F.A.T By Claudia Knight
Being fat isn’t always about being the biggest person in the room.
It’s about the awkwardness you feel crawl over your skin as the person on the bus squeezes up next to you. It’s the way the voice in your head tells you that the people on the table next to you are watching you eat all of that food by yourself.
It’s eating that food and then blocking out the devil named Guilt as it tuts loudly at you. It’s finding the person of your dreams and slowly realising that you only see them when it’s dark outside, or when they’ve been drinking for nine hours.
It’s sweating at just the thought of going jeans shopping and then literally sweating as you change in a cubicle with too many mirrors.
It’s powdering or slicking your thighs in the summer to lessen the sting of the chafe that appears when you finally decide to wear that dress.
It’s the paranoia that creeps in as you try to walk with confidence through a park during summertime full of people projecting their lack of it onto you.
It’s the pink grooves left on your back, your groin and your stomach at the end of the day when your underwear has protected your softest parts.
It’s being held by the person you actually feel okay with letting into your life and inside you, and wondering if they love your mind or your body.
It could never be the latter. It’s slathering your stretch marks with oils and butters and swallowing the disappointment that rises in your throat in the morning when they haven’t vanished.
It’s hearing your friends receive compliments on their various outfits for you to be told repeatedly that yours is ‘flattering’.
It’s losing the will to point out that people’s concern for your health wouldn’t exist if your dress size were to be divided by two.
It’s acknowledging the space you take up and truly believing that you are worthy of being there.
It’s taking the time every evening to show yourself some love and appreciation because the world can be a cruel place at the best of times.
It’s being loud and being quiet. It’s being dainty one day and being the bull in the China shop the next.
It’s thanking both sides of your family for making you and moulding you.
It’s learning and recovering and breathing and smiling. It’s being authentically you and holding your tongue the next time you go to apologise for it.
Follow Claudia on Instagram @claude_knight.
