Not What I Ordered

I was always overweight. A tricky word that one. Most of the body-builders are overweight. But you understand what I mean when I say overweight don't you? I mean I was always fat.

My parents tell me that I was refused to come out of my mother's womb for a whole week and the good doctor finally had to cut me out. Now who would want to leave such a cozy place and I am sure if all babies had enough knowledge of the outside world they would hold their mother's wombs hostage. But what this extra time did was make me a lot heavier than any normal baby.

Just look at my baby pics. A fat baby is always cute and so was I. I remember being happy when I was young. I was more free. Free in my thoughts and actions. Not a worry in the world and all the time to play around. I was smart. I remember my kindergarten teacher telling us that I was going to go places. The only reason why I still remember that moment is because of the belief she showed in me even at that young age.

I always remember being fat. Torn shorts were a regular part of my life as a kid. So was the kind of abuse you get for carrying around all that extra weight. At times its almost on a daily basis. Be it from my friends at school, strangers on the street, my teachers and yes, even the parents. Take this and multiply it by all those school years and I was just a shell of what I could have been.

I was smart but too afraid to speak out, lest I be noticed and ridiculed.

Even for my weight I was quite athletic but was always held back by coaches and team captains.

I remember when I was young we would have this Ganesh festival stages where there would be music and for all purposes, in the night, the place would turn into a club. People would come down and dance to the most popular hindi music. The first night when I contemplated going down and joining them I was very excited. But all it took was a couple of people laughing their asses off and shaking their heads in disapproval at a fat kid trying to have some fun to kill all the love for dancing I had at the time. I haven't really enjoyed dancing since then.

Fear of buying clothes.

Fear of eating.

Fear of the numbers that show up on a weighing scale.

My point of illustrating all this is just to provide a slight glimpse into how disappointingly gloomy life can be for overweight kids. I know that not all kids get affected this severely by the degrees of abuse they might face but I believe that it has to do with how much support you have in your life. It has to do with if you have these people (pillars if I may call them) in your life who will make you feel good about yourself. Make you feel like you are a human being and nothing less. I don't really remember having anyone like that.

All of this made my weight loss that much sweeter for me. I had been yearning to go to India after I finished my O levels in Thailand. On reaching I again felt the same wave of abuse I had felt when I had left two years earlier. But this time somehow I was my own pillar. 'Fuck them' I said. 'I will show them what I can do'.
The workout routine that started then escalated into something that changed my life, if only for a few years. I started running atleast five days a week. Only two to three kilometers at the start. A few months later I was hooked. I was loving the change I was seeing in my body. I was eager to add new and more intense workouts to my routine. At my best I was going to the gym during lunch, playing sports at school and at home and then running about 6-7 kilometers everyday. If I remember correctly when I was in Korea I was spending three to four hours working out every day.

Of course, this meant no social life for me. It meant waking up every morning with painful heels and shins. It was all worth it though. I had lost more than 50 pounds and was in the best shape of my life.

But now when I think back on it, I wonder, 'who did I do all that for?'. Am I sure I did it all for myself or was it all about proving someone wrong. If so, then no wonder I lost my discipline three years later. Some part of me likes to think that to most extent I did it all for myself. I wanted to be healthy. I wanted to know what it felt like to look good in all the pants. I wanted to know what it felt like to not have to alter a pair of pants just because they are too long. I wanted to know and feel the flexibility and speed that come with being smaller. And yes, I wanted to feel accepted. I know I was treated better. I felt more confident. Life was better.

This is not the body I would have ordered for but this is what I have and I plan on doing what I feel like to guarantee that I live a happier life.

Having said that, something has to change somewhere. People making themselves feel better by making others feel smaller has to be one of the worst sins. I for one plan on doing my part. The next 'thin' abusive person I meet, I am socking him in the face.

PS: Hi. I am back. Things are going to change. To start my blog banner up there has got to go. I still read comics but now, somehow, it just seems silly. Or maybe now I would just like to talk about more serious things and Spiderman, Hulk and Deadpool just don't cut it.