Weight & Me (Part I)

There's something incredibly ironic about my quest to embrace more parts of myself. As I become more comfortable with my mind, accepting the many ways I have limited my potential and forgiving myself for this gross lack of faith, I have not extended this same level of acceptance to my body. 

I will not, and so far have not, allowed my body to change – as bodies are wont to do.

My actions affirm that I'd rather be hungry, and anxious but thin, than healthy and happy but slightly bigger. My actions affirm my deeply ingrained fatphobia and hatred of fatness more than my words could ever condemn them. They show me that while I am closer to understanding myself, I am no closer to loving who I am today than I was several years ago. They expose my fears and my willingness to succumb to the suffocating familiarity of those fears, rather than risk the possibility of more rejection.  

What's funny is that this – the level of control I exercise over my body – is new. Upon reflection, I recognise it is a response to the uncertainty of COVID and that, perhaps, I did not cope as well as I did. I  But I also think it is a response to being racialised at a young age. 

I didn't think about my body until I was about 7. This was a year after my family emigrated to the Netherlands and suddenly I was hyperaware that I was different and hypervisible to everyone else. Everywhere I went, I was the odd person out. And it didn't help that I was a chubby kid either. It also didn't help that I was exposed to the media of the 2000s. Media that venerated thin, white women and over-sexualised curvaceous black women and I was neither. And the age-appropriate role models I was aware of, didn't look like me (except for animated cartoon characters). In fact, they were praised for not looking like me. 

Yet, interestingly, I don't remember feeling ashamed of my body. I just felt uncomfortable with the extra attention and wanted it off my back. So I assimilated, and assimilated hard; to the point where I forgot how to speak Kiswahili in favour of speaking Dutch. 

The shame kicked in when I returned to Kenya at age 10. Even though I was surrounded by people who looked like me, I was still the odd person out. And some of my peers were not shy in proclaiming my difference; literally calling me "Alien" for several years. This time, I knew it wasn't because I was black and so I reasoned it must have been because I was chubby. So at age 10, I lost weight for the first time and began experimenting with restrictive eating. 

At 16, I stopped eating breakfast and began eating only two meals a day while working out so strenuously that I would become light-headed. 

At 19, I began working out in a gym and for the first time, I felt good about my body. I worked out because it made me feel confident. I stopped restricting my eating as much and allowed myself to eat when I was hungry, and to eat what I wanted. Yet, I still criticised myself and bemoaned my body's very existence. I thought my body confirmed my inherent lack of blackness because I was still too slim and didn't have the "right kind" of curves. 

I'll stop the blow-by-blow here. You get the picture. 

My relationship with my body is messy; characterised by hate and coloured by shame. At no point, have I ever consistently believed that my body is worthy of love and acceptance for simply existing. I suppose it's because at no point have I felt secure enough to explore this kind of attachment. I also know it's because I spent most of my child and teen years imbibing the media of the early 2000s and early 2010s which praised bodies that did not look like mine and constantly told me to lose weight. More importantly, they told me that living in a bigger body in society was bad, and I did not want to further complicate my life. So I have always done what I thought I needed to do to unburden myself.  

Thus, when COVID hit, and my world tilted, I did not have the tools I needed to address the flaws I identified within myself in a healthy way. I could not radically love myself in a time that called for such radical self-acceptance. I could not be compassionate with myself because I had never practised that compassion before. What's worse, is that the hatred of fatness I internalised in my youth, came to bite me in the ass. Things I would never say to anyone – I would never think about anyone else – became my everyday reality. They conquered my inner monologue and dominated every waking thought. They left me shallow, and hollow and when I stopped eating, those voices went away. I mean, they were quickly replaced by different, just as destructive voices. But at least these new ones whispered and chided; not yelled and domineered.   

As I write, I realise that I was the only one who made fun of me for being chubby, stocky, stonky or fat. Every time I looked in a mirror, I ridiculed my existence and my body. And when I tried to accept myself or compliment myself, I took that as a joke. Every compliment I have given myself has been clothed in humour because I thought the idea of me looking good without reservations was absurd. 

And for this, I apologise.

I apologise to myself for believing I wasn't enough. 

I apologise to myself for not honouring myself and my body. For seeing her as a piece of land that I must conquer, rather than as a home for me. 

I apologise to myself for reducing everything that I am to how I look, and how others respond to that aesthetic. 

Above all, I apologise for rejecting myself over and over again. And for assuming others would too.  

But I don't know if I can let go of the fear yet... And that's okay. It's a process, not an event. 

I can start, today, by allowing myself the kindness of eating when I'm hungry. 

It is, literally, the least I could do.