December 9, 217

My weight went up after my cheat day to 217 and even though I'm watching my food, I'm also not exercising and not getting enough sleep by far due to work.

Yesterday I had something happen to me that really stuck in that sore place of mine that was carved out early in my life and strongly relates to how being fat affects my self-image and my sexual confidence.

There was this guy at work who is just a real shithead to me. He hates me for some unknown reason even though I can see he is quite friendly with everyone else and they seem to like himto despite his general shitheadedness. He speaks to me with aggressive hostility and derision, and his real motivation is to make it seem like I'm so stupid and unworthy that I'm a liability at work. There are many people in this union who feel like their business is to figure out who doesn't belong there, who the scapegoat is. A lot of people in the union used to feel this way about me, but have been won over by me, one by one. Apparently Mike hasn't got the memo.

Sometimes I feel like some people are rude to me in large part BECAUSE they find me unattractive. I don't know if this is always true; there may be some correlation. Maybe they also find me unattractive in part because they don't like me, so who knows what's the cause and what's the effect.

It only came up two or four times yesterday, really - some rude snap or derisive commentary.

But anyway, there was this one time that 5 of us were working together to lift some heavy poles into a vertical position. As the pole was going up, my shirt got caught on something and started going up with the pole. I became conscientious and was worried about exposing myself. I said, "Oops, there goes my shirt." This could also have been seen as a playful sort of flirtation, a request for attention. Mike joked, "My eyes! It burns! It burns!"

Now I tried to reason that this was how "the guys" are with each other, but I know that if this had been an attractive woman, that would never have been the response. I tried to remember that the other guys on the pole who did not respond either to me or to him except in silence do like me quite a bit and might not even find me revolting.

I don't take this comment all THAT hard. In my adult years, I have received a certain amount of male attention and flirtation - maybe nothing amounting to much but enough to feel like there are those who wouldn't mind a peek at what I have under my shirt, who don't think it would turn them to stone.

But there was a time that that was the standard - for people, boys, to make me know that I was not just benignly unappealing but aggressively repulsive. I don't think that part of me will ever heal and stop hurting. I just usually don't pay any attention to it, but it's always there and it's a constant battle in my life just dealing with it and the effects that trail out from it.

Let me just add, real quickly, for what it's worth, that this guy lives in too glass a house to be throwing stones about the appeal of what's under someone's shirt.