What do you do when a lifetime of being overweight has impacted your ability to form relationships and mature emotionally?
Below is a comment I made on a post where the OP was asking about the unexpected changes that could happen from losing a lot of weight. After typing it I'd realised it could be worthwhile discussing with like minded people what strategies we might use to deal with the unexpected awkwardness that can come from losing weight.
So some back story. I was overweight most of my life, stayed at around 130kgs untill I was about 24, and it was always the part I hated the most about myself, otherwise everything was peachy. I was quite extraverted back then and made friends easily, I must've been overcompensating for a shit self esteem. However, being a fat gay man in a sea of perceivably perfect men chiseled from marble eventually kicked me in the ass. In 4 months I purged and starved myself down to less than half my body weight, most unwise. I spend a few years building up muscle to compensate for the (luckily, minimal) loose skin which remained.
Fastforward. Walk into a gay club still fully expecting to be ignored, I seek the smokers area so I can light up with the single ladies whomst I'll probably spend the night crackling with while we sip wine until 4 am. Instead, halfway up the stairs my ass is grabbed by a guy who happens to not be drunk or in his 60s (a win for the ego). I arive at the bar "what can I get you gorgeous?" asks the topless bartender (Who me? srsly?), a drag queen asks ME for a photo (ok). By this stage the world feels more like the truman show; in what feels like 5 minutes I'd received more flirtatious attention than I'd ever received in 27 years. An existential wave of dread figuratively adds another 50 kgs of fat to my body as I suddenly realise I have no fucking clue how to appropriately reciprocate any degree of flirting. If someone flirts with me I've still got no clue what to say, I try to diverge the conversation to something safer before I begin stuttering. Sex is still off the table; I don't feel self conscious about my body; but more so about other heavier things. Like, shit, I've never dated anyone ever, my crushes never knew who I was, never held hands with anyone; every interaction feels like a jump into the murkiest deep end without floaties. Recently I managed to fuck up my first ever date before it ever happened; talked to a guy for a few days online before someone sugested we meet up for a few drinks at a lowkey local tavern. We are chatting the day before confirming things are still going ahead and stuff kinda talking about how excited we were to meet in person, before he mentions something about going back to his or my place for sex afterwards. I've no idea how to effectively communicate how anxious the idea makes me, so I rescheduled. We kept chatting but I kept rescheduling. He stopped messaging eventually, understandably too. So I'm currently weighing up the pros and cons of swapping body fat for emotional baggage and I can't decide which is heavier.
In any case, I've learned not to dig myself such deep holes in the future. Don't indulge your vices too much or you will eventually feel like you're starving when the well of self pity runs dry. Don't abstain from adventure so much that you lose the instinct that tells you to tread water to stay afloat
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2LuMfrz
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