The Stigma of Skinny

In today's society, there is a huge emphasis on being skinny. To be fat is to be lazy, is something I hear often. I am far from overweight, in fact I struggle with my weight and losing too much, from years of having Cancer and other health problems, along with some pretty bad choices in my diet and the way I take care of myself. I can be considered a rarity, when people compliment me on how thin I am having four kids, I usually respond that I would rather be heavier.

People have a hard time understanding that I would rather gain 30 pounds than keep the size 5, 135 pound body that I am in. I look in the mirror, and I am not pleased with what I see staring back at me. I look in the mirror and I am quickly depressed at the shape my body has taken. Aside from when I was pregnant, I have not weighed over 130 pounds since before I suffered from cancer, and before that, I was only a mere 150 pounds, standing at 5'8" tall. I cannot recall a time when I ever envied or wanted to be like one of those super skinny cover models, showing off their rib bones as if the are the sexiest feature they have to offer. Many will read my words and wonder what drug I am on, trying to weigh over 150 pounds, but when you are this size all of your adult life, had to fight off disease after disease, and being too weak to even move at times would make anyone want to be heavier. 

I've had many "stigmatic" moments in my life that have been the dose of reality needed for anyone to fight, or become super depressed in their own body and sadly, I have become the latter. Seeing photos of myself at a weight of less than 120 pounds, showing my definitions in my bones, looking like my clothes were going to just fall off, is devastating to say the least. Depression sets in and that always brings with it my lack of feeding myself. I will totally stop eating if I am eating alone. If I am not feeding my family, I do not eat. My husband notices and with his sarcastic sense of "humor" pokes fun trying to get me to eat by making me see that others see what I am doing to myself. Yet that would never help, only hurt me more than he ever intended and drives me into a deeper depression. This life of depression, pain, poor health, and basic fasting are overwhelming to say the least. There is never a day that goes by that I do not feel bad about myself, regardless of how my husband tries to make me feel better, or someone doesn't believe that i have four children because I am so skinny. This is not a compliment to me, this only makes me feel worse about myself because, I remember how fast the baby weight just "fell" off after all of my kids and how badly I wished it would have just stayed on. But with each pregnancy, i do not gain more than 30 pounds for the first six months, then I am able to gain enough weight to be healthy enough for the pregnancy, but then shortly after my children were born, the weight comes flying off.

Many people eat when they are stressed out, I lose my appetite completly. I can go for days without eating, but I cannot identify myself as having an eating disorder. I do not feel as though I am making a choice as to whether or not I am eating or not. I do not look in the mirror and want to be skinny, or feel that I am too fat and need to lose the weight. It is exactly the opposite. I want to gain weight, but it seems as though my bodies response to stress is to go hungry. Does this make sense to you? Me either. As backwards as it is, this is my reality. This has caused for countless questions, to taking vitamins to help me gain weight, even leading to many blood tests leading to no answers and yet another mistery diagnosis to add to my list. Will I ever find the answer to wait ails me? Will I continue to be unable to eat for days when I get to stressed out? I am not sure that I will ever have all of the answers, but when do we ever? 

Not having all of the answers is frustrating for anyone, let alone a person who is more than used to hearing disheartening news from the doctor. I lived for more than 5 years with cancer growing, and festering in my body, without even a word from my doctors aside from prescribing more pain medication. I lived my life in constant pain, knowing that this disease was growing, begging to be treated, all to fall on deaf ears. This struggle with my weight seems no different. It will sound strange to compare weight problems to Cancer, but to a person who has battled both ailments, there is little difference in the actual struggle of the fight.