Do you see what I see?

Today, I received the pro photographs from the 70.3 mile (114km) triathlon I ran over the weekend.

2 km swim. 90km bike. 22 km run.

Photos, or it didn't happen.

I was excited to see them- and yet, not.

Because I knew what I would see.  The same thing I always see when I see pictures of myself.

A body- my body- in a sport where it doesn't belong.
A body- my body- still seen through the lens of body size.
A body- my body- forever ugly, forever rejected, forever hated.
A body- my body- forever fat.

I haven't written about my body dysmorphia for a while, mostly because I was told by a fat friend that I really had no place in conversations about fat bodies anymore. My body, as it is seen by others, no longer qualifies as 'fat' enough. I now have to accept my place in a world of thin privilege. I now have to leave the conversation to those who are currently living it.

I get that. I really do.

It's complicated, but I get why someone would feel this way.
After all, I'm now- inadvertently, and through no fault of my own- part of the problem.

In my transformation of health and fitness, I have managed to do the improbable: significantly reduce my body mass by an amount that could probably qualify me for a reality show. 100lbs.  That's more weight than my 6 year old and 3 year old combined.  It's about 5 times more than my bike weighs...

No doubt about it, my body has 'transformed'.
And, in that transformation, I have- intentionally or not- taken my place in culture where 'smaller is better', 'fat=bad', and 'weight loss should be your goal'.

I'm the poster girl for lifestyle changes, right?
I can see it now: "Fat, Sedentary mother of two discovers exercise, loses 100 lbs and transforms her life"

Sure, they'd mention my triathlon...as a byline along the way. But the real story would be the weight loss.

Here's the catch though- they'd still photoshop me thinner.

And they sure wouldn't want to show you the skin that I literally have to tuck into my clothes.
I mean, really...I do my best to not show you that either.
No one wants to see that...

And somehow, in all of this, I became a cliche.

I didn't mean to do this. I promise you. But I understand that it doesn't really matter if I meant to or not. My body, and its renovation, will trigger a lot of really big feelings for a lot of people.

I get it. I know how other people's bodies used to affect me. And I know how they affect me now.

(Confession time: I am jealous of your 'real' triathlete body. I want to look like a 'real' triathlete. But I have this skin...)

I wish it weren't so. I wish we weren't so deeply conditioned as to define ourselves as successes or failures based the size of our own waist line, let alone that of another person's.

But we are all social animals, and we are all subject to the social constructs that surround us.

"You must be so much happier now" they tell me.

(No one asks. They always tell.)

And what am I supposed to say? It's a complex question with a complex answer.

I can't lie and say that I am not happier than I was two years ago. But how do I explain that this happiness has literally zero root in my body's actual size? And why bother?

(No one ever believes me anyway.)

"Of course you are! How couldn't you be? Look at you!"

Look at me... Look at me...?
Do you not understand that what you see and what I see are different things?

Do you not understand that you see what you want to see?
That I see only what I am terrified of seeing?

I do an awful lot of 'looking at me'.
Trust me, it doesn't help.

But they tell me that I am happier. And in some ways they are right.
That's probably the worst part. They are right.

Am I happier now?

Yes.

I am.

I am ashamed to admit it, but it is true.

But did the weight loss bring me happiness?
No.
Not necessarily.
Not directly.

It did reduce the amount of stigma, othering, judgment and personal attacks that I lived with on a daily basis. I am no longer afraid of walking down the street and having strange men shout about the size of my 'fat ass'.

I've traded that in for strange men shouting about the 'the ass they like to tap'.
Either way, the shouts suck. But, it's true; the first type kind of sucks more.

So am I happier now that I am not under constant attack for the amount of adipose tissue that has collected my frame?

Sure.
Not being abuse tends to always trump being abused.
Being slapped is less painful than being stabbed.
But that doesn't mean that getting slapped feels good.

You see, the problem is that my body's actual size isn't really the determining factor in my happiness quotient.  My mass doesn't directly cause changes, positive or negative, to my emotional wellbeing.

(Correlation isn't causation.)

Am I happier? Sure. The same way I would be happy if someone who was trying to drown me let me get a gasp of air.

I'm a solid swimmer.
The water was never the problem.
The hand on top of my head pressing me down is the problem.

(The weight was never the problem.
Society's assumptions about me were the problem.)

The ugly truth is this: Weight loss literally can't make me happier. Because, in my eyes, my body has not changed. When I wake up in the morning, I literally see the exact same frame.

The only difference now is that I used to try not to think about it.
And now, I can't stop thinking about it.

Because it doesn't matter how small you are, society doesn't let you ever forget that you are defined by the size of your frame.

"Fat Ass" or "Tappable Ass"- at the end of the day, you are seen as nothing more that a body.

And try as you might to fight it, sometimes you have to admit that you play into this game too.

The one thing that I was terrified of defining me has literally become how I define myself.

Back when I had a fat body, I did my best to avoid it.
And as long as I didn't think about it, I was pretty happy with it.
In fact, I hardly thought about it all.
And I was pretty happy with myself.

Now, things are different.

I spend hours criticizing every picture.
Feeling like a fraud inside a body and lifestyle that I don't recognize. 
Terrified the weight will creep back.
Hoping that the weight will creep back. 
Terror at knowing how I will be perceived...
Hopeful at the idea of feeling at home in my skin again. 

I wanted a triathlete's body.
So I went out and became a triathlete.

But when I see these pictures, all I see is a fat body, desperately trying to outrace a world that is doing its best to catch up and tear her back down to reality.

What I see is a fraud.
A big fat fraud.

And that's the last thing I wanted to see.

Body Dysmorphia. It's a thing. And we need to start talking about it.

Because I know I can't be alone in this.

(God, I hope I am not alone in this.) 

I had really hoped this race would heal me.
I had hoped to finally get to see me through different eyes.

I guess I have a lot of work to do before I actually reach the finish line.