I Just Think About It Sometimes And It Throws Me For A Loop - Tumblr Posts

(TW: disordered eating, fatphobia, body image stuff)

Putting it under the cut because it's a long one.

It's a fucking miracle I've made it this far without a severe eating disorder. It's insane to think back on how fucking disgustingly fatphobic my dad was growing up (and still is sometimes, tbh). Like, some of my clearest memories of things he's said to me involve him shitting on other people for being "fat."

Like, the most vivid one is when we were stopped at a Wendy's on a family road trip, and there was a girl close to my age, probably a few years younger, wearing those Soffee gym shorts. The waistband was cutting into her sides a little so it looked like she had a "muffin top" (she was absolutely not overweight, probably skinnier than me at the time tbh) and he said something like "I can't believe how fat kids are these days - she's probably one of the fittest girls in her class and she looks like that." Literally if you have enough skin for it to be dented by your clothes, you're fat and unattractive.

He would always comment on how much too skinny or too fat women on TV were, or the clothes other people wore in public, or the food other people were eating (ESPECIALLY if they were bigger, but also if they were very thin). He also loved to say any disabled person who was at all visibly overweight "isn't disabled, they're just fat," or otherwise blame their disability on their fatness.

I also remember him shitting on my mom's weight when I was even younger, when I was weighing myself (I think, or maybe using the scale to weigh something I was holding). He said something like "yeah your mom's 175lbs 😬😬😬" as if that was so fucking fat. For a very long time I had in my head that anything over 200lbs was like, an actual whale. I'm currently about 180-185lbs at 5'8", and it's fucking crazy to me that he was calling my mom fat TO HER CHILD at a similar BMI to where I am now, after she BORE HIM THAT CHILD!!!!!

I think maybe what saved me is that it crossed the event horizon in my mind, like he was *too* ridiculous about it so that even my very malleable, insecure brain was like "that seems like an insane thing to say, actually." He also never said much directly *about my body* to my face that I can remember, which definitely helped, but he did (and still does) *constantly* harp on how I need to exercise, get in shape, go outside, whatever - even when I was working a job that literally required heavy lifting, walking long distances, and other assorted manual labor outdoors for literally 8 hours a day!!!! (Which, guess what!!! My highest weight was while I was at that job, because I was fucking miserable!!!)

And like, I definitely don't have a particularly great and healthy relationship with food, nor with my own body/appearance, but oh my god I got so lucky because it honestly should've been so much worse.