FAT WARP ESSAYS # 3 PART II

I was never Obese level II, I was Obese level I. But I understand what it is to exceed one's body's scope, chained to overweening appetite, oblivion of self, dualities, depression, abandonment of identity.

 I AM HAUNTED BY RECOLLECTIONS OF OBESITY

Living with lies bloated by adipose, the heavy, I cringe at the words "fat" or "obese." The labels peal a truth too painful to see. To quell the growing inner panic of my fatness, I prevent any view of the rising reflections of my naked grotesque in full length mirrors. I can only bear viewing my face in delicate rounded powder compacts or truncated shoulder length mirrors. In these I can smile back my prettiest expressions. I have banned the other scolding mirrors to the garage of my mind and have chucked them out on the sidewalk to be picked up by NYC sanitation. Of shiny, reflective elements like store windows or polished, flat surfaces? I toss my head and stare at another scene. I never acknowledge the excessive pouches of flab around my butt and hips. And if anyone ever discusses their diet successes or "fabulous" weight loss achievement, I outwardly smile and plaster warm "interest" on my face while I shudder and weep inside. I am alone. I am the other. I cannot feel my body. I pass through life like a mist.

The mind's genius is ever creative. Like me, I imagine other obese folks adopt oblivion, embrace blindness. Fat is the target the heavy must destroy at will obliterating the 5 senses' notification of it. All this must be done so that in the imagination a thin body emerges from the refuse heap.

This transformation that evolves as my girth grows damns my movement toward wholeness. Like all walking-dead-obese, I shield myself from the truth by fabricating a double person-hood. Though the fat is ever-present and presides, the intellect denies. For example I become a fantastic duality of the thin inner, the obese outer. I am a phantasmagoria who responds and interacts as if there is a screen or window separating myself from all aspects of my being. Candid open relationships with others through this barrier are difficult. The fat is too dense for the light to penetrate.

The fantasy is maintained but always shattered if another objectifies my fat to me; it is a tearful humiliation. But I am clever; I choose perceptive, instinctual friends who do not dare to cross the line. They, like me, are the other. I cling to friendships with the ridiculed, the insecure, the obese, the alienated, the damaged, the unloved. We give each other strength. We intuitively know that only the weak who are dualities themselves, ridicule and objectify in a feeble attempt to  rid themselves of their own destructive fantasies. I watch these vapid brutes and respond to their "witty" humor as an expressionless cipher. They are unaware of my canniness as I allow them to project upon my blank scrim with ignorant roughness. Inwardly, I smile at the irony of their pretentious "superiority." Their aggression projected outward never vanishes; it intensifies and eventually, when there is no target like me to hurl against, they will turn against themselves. It is a horrific woe for the arrogant to self-destruct. I pity them. I yield to karma and allow them to spin rapidly the cycle of their own misery within the lie layers.

But my knowledge of their weakness is leaden. And I am in excruciating psychic pain because their pristine barbs prick the blimpy bulls eye. Their penetrating, taunting reminders of my elephantine condition poison my creative imagination and set the dial to defense. The monstrous and fantastic creature that is gaining fat and thinning inwardly grows in the direction I have programmed. The dual beings increase independent of me, their own creator. As the outer bins of flesh increase, the soul  withers.

I use a technique to calm this panic and tension between the two persons of duality. I deny the fat flattened truth. I switch off awareness of feeling my body's needs. I eat. Then I overeat. Whatever food is most beloved, I become a covert operator: I search and consume. The food industry has made it facile to float the phantasmagoria by supplying the toxic allurements to add weight quickly. The gambit continues. I, like many obese, become alienated from others who view my appearance and miss the "big" picture of my failing humanity. I become disassociated from self, not suborning the protections I have crafted in defense. Losing weight becomes impossible. All the tools and evocations which encourage health and weight loss, my soldier walls obstruct like the battlements of a fortress. The only way to secure access is a siege. But that would mean I have to starve the other who lies in wait, like a princess praying for rescue.