2.5 Dogs: Graduating, Fatness &
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I’m obsessive. But, like, not even in the fun way where it’s like unrequited puppy love devotion to someone or something. I also don’t mean hyperfocus, special interest, “productive” obsession. I mean hangs around in the back of your head and just makes you kind of ill, obsessive. Makes you almost non-stop think about all of the worst parts of a situation obsessive. I’m graduating: a week + a day from now, which is supposed to be a nice thing but since uni work is over, this is my new thing to get weirdly existential + anxious about. Yippee!
Some of it is valid, you know, real-life, measured concerns knowing as a chronically ill person it’s going to be a pretty intense day. I’m not looking forward to the unscripted, novel experiences like getting my robes, for example, because it’s a weird mostly one-off situation and the ol’ autism doesn’t love those, in general.
Some of it is valid but as I say, more existential. More informed by my trauma, or maybe collective trauma. I don’t know. For one, I know I am going to “feel” fat.
The funny thing is, I am fat. It’s an inarguable fact of my life that I am currently the fattest I have ever been. My fatness is something I’ve been blisteringly aware of for as long as I can remember. I grew quickly, “developed” quickly, and even at times when I was genuinely quite slim for my build, I was still treated “fat”. I was the fat friend. I couldn’t borrow clothes, not even PJs at an off-the-cuff sleepover. Maybe from a friend’s dad, if they had one.
But why is it now, after over a decade of working really hard on myself, my mental health + self-image, am I so scared of “looking” and “feeling” fat at my graduation?
It’s funny, even as a kid I knew I wasn’t into marriage or kids or any of that white picket fence bullshit (except maybe the dog - can I have 2.5 dogs, instead?) but, despite the classic neurodivergent struggles with it, academia had always felt like home to me. Am I scared because graduation is my equivalent of a wedding? And a bride must look her “best” (read: thinnest) for her wedding day?
It’s been a rare occasion that I’ve “looked like everybody else”. I think there’s just something so potent in our neurotypes at times that it leaks out through the seams of even the most meticulously fashioned masks. I knew I wouldn’t look “like everybody else” last time, so I didn’t try, nor would I ever want to. But sometimes when the world is feeling especially unsafe (Trump won earlier this week) some part of you, I guess it’s self-preservation, wants to be perceived in normality. But I can’t have that. It isn’t mine.
Even with my hair dyed back to my natural colour, make-up done with the newest TikTok tutorial in mind, shoes, clothes, and jewellery, high street or high fashion mattering not, just as long as it’s appropriate and in step with trends. With my septum out or flipped up. With every painkiller I should or shouldn’t take, dissolved in my stomach, a swirling cocktail with my SNRIs + tricyclic antidepressants alongside. I still won’t walk the same as everybody else, or look at other people the same as everybody else.
I’ll still have an ill-fitting 40K bra on under my dress, paired with supermarket knickers. I’ll still be on benefits. I’ll still be so fat I had to get a different robe from everyone else. I’ll still be an overgrown caricature of the kid from East London, and the baby taken home from the hospital to a high-rise council block. And when I step up to the stage and they call me by a name I never liked or connected with, I’ll still walk funny in whatever heeled shoe I was stupid enough to wear. Struggle to make eye contact with the chancellor as they congratulate me and I’ll still reach to shake their hand a little too early or a little too late.
It isn’t me. It isn’t mine.
Maybe I’ll feel fine in the end. Maybe I won’t need the £22 vegan-friendly, cruelty-free manicure I’ve almost booked at least seven times this past week. My nails being done isn’t going to make me feel normal. Going to a fancy celebratory meal afterwards won’t either.
Drinking a little too much after that might, but at least that won’t be because I’m pretending.
At the crux of it, I suppose what I really want is to be outrageous—if anyone could be so horribly small-minded to judge me so poorly when I am just trying to live, then I solemnly hope I disgust them. Let them seethe + writhe in discomfort. Just an ounce or half for every tonne of the same shame I’ve been made to feel for just being myself.
I want to feel good about myself at graduation. I want to be able to feel the pride of being the first in my family to go to uni + the first to go back for more. I earned my MA. And I’ve fought for my right to exist brilliantly in this body. I shan’t dull myself for anything.