It is impossible to look at myself in the mirror without feeling tremendous disgust. I am totally mortified by what I have allowed myself to become. But when my fat directly results in emotional and physical pain to one of my children, my misery becomes unbearable.
Jennifer is in the seventh grade. Her teachers all love her. I am constantly getting good reports from them. She has earned straight As, and I am very proud of that. But even more important to me is the fact that she has received all E’s for “excellence” in behavioral skills: Is Courteous, Shows Self-Control, Respects Property of Others, Co-operates With Others, etc. Yet with that kind of report card, she has still experienced the year from hell.
In the last few months, a group of students Jennifer calls “The Nasty Nine” has evolved into a menacing gang. They have singled out Jennifer as their target. For five months, poor little Jenny has endured their cruel remarks, their foul names, their nasty gestures, and their daily threats to her health. For five months she has been pushed, hit, kicked, and tripped. For five months she has had her hair yanked and her possessions snatched. This kind of torment, every day for five months
I only recently found out how serious it was. I knew Jenny had been unhappy at school, but it was one of those things I put on the back burner to worry about later. Since she knew I would try to stop it, she had been afraid to tell me too much about the problem. She was terrified that The Nasty Nine would become even more violent toward her.
Jennifer was right about my trying to stop it. I talked to Jennifer’s three teachers and the school principal. They all agreed that Jennifer was a victim of jealousy. I also called four other girls at Jenny’s school. They affirmed everything Jennifer had said about the gang and added even more injustices that they had observed.
Rather than taking the advice of the police to press charges that would lead to the arrest of the gang members, I wrote a letter to Jennifer’s schoolteachers, her principal, and to the parents of the nine girls. The principal was finally forced into acknowledging the problem because I now had complaints, in writing, from five different people against The Nasty Nine.
I let the school administrators know, in no uncertain terms, that they had a problem to work out. They needed to figure out how to handle juvenile delinquents. (No one even told these girls they committed illegal, expellable offenses. The girls never even wrote Jennifer a note of apology.) My daughter deserves to be able to go to school without fear of daily physical violence.
What does all this have to do with hating myself for my weight? It is hard to explain adequately. Several months before I was aware of Jennifer’s intense misery at school, I had experienced similar crudities and rudeness from these very girls. As I was walking down the hall at school, driving home from school, or waiting in my car to pick up my children from school, these very girls yelled out swear words at me. They gave me the finger. They made ugly faces at me. Merely because I was Jennifer’s mother. That should have made me realize that something horrible was happening to Jennifer.
I am now conscience-stricken because I did not respond to the very first young brat who violated the school language code. I can’t help blaming myself for this thing escalating to such hideous magnitude for Jennifer. But when you weigh over 270 pounds, your self-esteem is shoe. It is difficult to confront young, skinny, sexy teenagers when you feel like an old blimp; I knew I was just a big, fat joke to them. And it is burdensome to lug my near 300-pound physique out of my car to nab those juvenile delinquents and drag them into the principal’s office. Even in one of my angriest, bravest moods, it is nearly impossible to march into a principal’s office to declare that certain girls called me a fat _____. After all, I am fat! Had I been thin, I would have had those girls in deep trouble long ago, but I was intimidated by them. Oh! It makes me livid just thinking about it. I refuse to be in such a horrible position again. I want my freedom back.
I am sorry that my obesity, my own out-of-control eating, kept me from protecting you from suffering those many atrocities. I am so sorry, my darling Jenny.