The-F-Word.org

I was inspired by Kate’s sage repost over at Shapely Prose in honor of Valentine’s Day commercially-induced love mania to share the story of how I never met my husband because I thought I was too fat.

It was rather serendipitous the events that culminated in me meeting Brandon. I had taken a week vacation off work to spend in the library - yes, the library - doing research when I encountered a dear old friend with whom I had lost touch. Later that week, I happened across a fabulous retro dress in exactly her size while thrifting and stopped by her apartment to give it to her. There, I met her extremely fat roommate who was preparing to leave for Indianapolis to be with a man she had met online (they’re now married and have a beautiful daughter). She encouraged me to try online dating.

I had tried online dating exactly twice in the past, the first when I was a naive 18. I met an older man who, not so surprisingly, had completely misrepresented himself. The second was a few years later, when I weighed my heaviest at 300 pounds. I contacted a guy closer to my age who appeared fat in his photo, thus, I thought, improving my own chances. I sent him the classic fat girl head shot of myself and we soon began talking on the phone twice a day and chatting till the wee hours of the night. He wanted to meet and my thin friends stupidly assured me that he had gotten to know me, and would look past my weight.

We met at a Journey concert and seemed to hit it off. But then he never called or emailed the next day. Or the day after that. Or the rest of the week.

I found an online message board he frequented and discovered the scathing post to his friends he had made about this fat girl who had deceived him about her weight (he never asked) and who couldn’t even fit in her seat (”spilling out into his,” is I think he phrased it) and so on. I was stunned and mortified. I posted an equally mean-spirited reply about his manboobs and we never spoke again.

I relate this to give you some much-needed context to explain why I almost never met the man who would have the single-most positive impact on my life.

At the urging of the roommate, I signed up for the free trial at Yahoo Personals. At the time, I weighed about 170-pounds and wore a size 14. I had gained nearly fifty pounds in the past year after entering into recovery for an eating disorder in which I had whittled 175 pounds off my frame the previous year. I felt incredibly fat and I still struggled, to a lesser degree, with the disorder.

I tried to make my online profile sound as incredibly geeky and unlovable as possible to discourage, well, everyone. I included a current photo. In describing my match, I write, “Above all, he is someone who can accept me - as I am.”

Every lonely man in Cincinnati, it seemed, messaged me. I deleted most of them except for the man whose profile read “Talk geeky to me.” Perfect, right? We chatted briefly over the phone and arranged to meet for dinner at a local German place that, as it turns out, has absolutely nothing vegetarian on their menu. I should have taken that as a bad omen of the night to come.

Suffice it to say, it was an awful date. The man was a bore and seemed scarily obsessed with his ex-girlfriend. Somewhat demoralized, I decided to take down my Yahoo profile altogether.

Then, Brandon emailed me with a cursory introduction. He sounded intriguing, not like the others. Still, I brushed him off with a brief and dismissive reply, telling him that if he wanted to know more about me, he could just read my personal blog.

Undeterred, Brandon wrote back a day later. It was then I realized he had read through two years worth of crazy, rambling blog entries. I was summarily impressed.

We started exchanging long emails, more like tomes, really. After three weeks of emails, furtive Yahoo messaging at work, and online chats, Brandon wanted to meet in person. I kept finding reasons and excuses to put him off. By this point, I liked him far too much to have the relationship we had - even if it was just an online relationship - ruined by meeting in person. I really did think he would take one look at me and be so disgusted by how fat I was that he would literally run in the opposite direction.

But Brandon was persistent, annoyingly so. I agreed to meet him at a coffee house – really just to shut him up. But I warned him: I’ve gained some weight and I am certainly not a Barbie doll so if you’re expecting a thin girl, keep looking.”

A nanosecond later, he replied back, “I don’t care what you look like.”

We met at a crowded coffeehouse on Monday, July 25, 2005. We moved in together scarcely two months later. He proposed on Valentine’s Day last year and nearly five months later - exactly two years from the day we met - we were married in front of a beautiful Victorian mansion on Mackinac Island, Michigan. Our wedding web page is here and our online wedding photo album is here.

The last day I deliberately starved myself ended the day I met my husband. Part of this is because, as Kate notes, it’s much easier to tune out negative messages when you have someone who loves you - as you are - reinforcing his unconditional love for you on a daily basis. But as too many of us know, it’s not enough for someone to tell you how beautiful and lovable you are. You have to believe it.

It was a slow, meandering process by which I came to believe I was capable and worthy of giving and receiving love. There are times, even today, I curve up tight against my husband’s sleeping body, listen to the rhythmic beating of his heart against my cheek and the purring of the cat lying above our heads, and I wonder by what stroke of good fortune I came to be lying here, in this bed, in this life.

Relationships contain within them a mutual reciprocity, the most basic of which is a promise to be there for the other person. And I’m not talking about being there in just the emotional support kind of sense. I’m talking being there as is Physically Being There. Of all the things I could ever possibly say or do to hurt my husband, none would would drain his soul as that of me deliberately doing something that might result in my own physical injury or death. I think about him in those anxious moments when I feel too-full or too-fat or too-stressed and I want to go stick my head in the toilet and throw until my throat is raw and my body and soul empty. I think of my husband finding me sprawled in a pool of vomit on the bathroom floor, dead of a heart attack or stroke. I think of this and I wait until eventually, the urge passes and I am sane once more.

For me, this is the true measure of control; one that requires far more willpower than it ever did to starve myself.

From time to time, I wonder how my life would be now if I had let my insecurities about my body and weight keep me from meeting Brandon that balmy night in July. Not only is my life with him rich and full of love like I have never known before, through him, I now have a wonderful second family whom I have come to treasure as my own. A family who, like Brandon, loves and accepts me - as I am.

There are moments when I wonder how many other wonderful things have I missed out on by allowing my fears and hang-ups over the way I look dictate my actions. What good could I have achieved had I focused on changing the world instead of changing my body? Many bloggers have written letters to their despondent 14-year-old selves, inspired by this post at Big Fat Deal. But if I could go back in time and whisper in the ear of the girl I was, I wouldn’t breathe a single solitary word.

Everything in my life - every challenge, heartache, suffering and delusion - has brought me to where I am now and to Brandon. And I am much stronger for it. Much stronger.

I am fat, but I am healthy and strong in body, and more importantly, in mind and spirit. My relationship with food is the sanest and healthiest it has ever been. I know who I am, what I believe in, and the kind of person I don’t want to become. I am madly in love with a man who is madly in love with me.

It is enough.

(This entry began as an ode to my husband. But along the way, it somehow became more of a Valentine to myself.)