The dressing up goal had so many different
possibilities with it that it ended up becoming a four-part goal that is still
not quite done. ("Done" is kind of a loaded term for me anyway.)
Writing a fat heroine has been like that too, though
in some ways it felt more like I was working my way up to it.
I gave Claudia and Morgan some extra padding, where
confidence was an issue but not health. That didn't really feel like enough. If
the heroine wasn't grappling with all of the issues of being fat, then I am
probably not really facing my full issues. I still totally see the point in
getting more body types represented in fiction, so it had value in that way,
but it did not address my specific issue.
I do sometimes think about turning the fan fiction
into a dystopian novel series. In light of that, I have thought about putting
someone who looked like me into there, but all I could imagine was some kindly
fat older person who sacrifices herself for someone who could actually run.
At the time that seemed reasonable, because the
post-apocalyptic dystopian wasteland is a harsh environment where fitness seems
advantageous. Since thinking that, I have had to remember that I was conflating
weight and health - a common mistake. A different discussion since then
reminded me that I have larger friends who are good runners, and I know thinner
people who are pretty weak.
I am not fast, but I have good endurance - better
than a lot people's. Getting regular meds would probably be difficult in said
wasteland - which could hamper survival - but maybe if your access to food is
really irregular, your access to insulin matters less.
Viewed in that light, I am probably not ready to
create a fictional fat heroine until I have spent more time on exactly what my
fat means to me. That is not merely how it affects my self-image (which I have
thought about a lot) but also fully realizing what my body can do. I don't give
it enough credit, and so that's not really truth. Honesty is crucial to
writing, and it means seeing the good and the bad. I haven't fully done that. Fortunately,
there are many steps and goals on this journey that do focus on my body and
health and things that will be overall helpful to my healing.
There have been two other surprising developments.
One is the other drawing project I am working on. I mentioned yesterday that I
was drawing faces for "Powers". What I did not mention was that meant
specifically drawing faces of Black women. "Powers" is set at a
historically Black women's college. Not every student and faculty member is
Black, but all the main characters are, and I had this idea that for the
mini-bible when it goes over characters I could draw the student body cards and
faculty badges to make it visually interesting.
I had given up the idea because I didn't think I
could do a good job, but then it is taking me a while to complete anyway, and I
want to draw, so I am at least trying. That means looking at women of different
ages and physical types: one color, but with a lot of variety.
I am learning a lot from it. Drawing from my head
kind of gives everyone the same basic features, only really changing the hair.
There is a lot of variety in face shapes and noses and eyebrows. I will
probably never be a great artist, but doing this now makes me more aware of how
many different ways people can be, and that does not hurt for a writer.
(And I can totally see now how much the options
would open up by adding color, and also know that I do not have the ability at
this time to make that work, so am sticking with pencils and gray scale.)
The other part of that was finding that I could not
envision a happy ending for me at my size. Having encountered great difficulty
in changing my size made that particularly painful. My life script had always
been built on thinking that part would change and then everything else would be
fine. I could reexamine the idea of a happy ending, and the idea of bodily
shrinking fixing everything else (both seriously flawed concepts) but there in
my core wound there was still the problem of me (as I am) not getting
happiness.
So the most important thing may have been writing
out stories of things happening in my life, to me, where I was getting what I
wanted. They focused on love, which may be worth examining. One dealt with the
financial issues only by mentioning that things had come through at the last
possible moment. I really regret that now because I am afraid it will turn out
to be predictive, and exactly when is that last possible moment and how scary
does it get before then? But at the time I didn't even think about it because I
was so focused on love.
Still, I was able to visualize someone I loved
loving me back, and in the stories it seemed plausible.
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