“I’m always skinny in my dreams.”

When you don’t fit into your body, and your body doesn’t fit into the world.

I am not the face of the Fat Positivity movement.

It’s not for a lack of wanting. I would give anything to feel comfortable in my body. But I don’t. I honestly don’t.

I follow folks like Your Fat Friend and Roxane Gay and Cat Pausé, and I love what they say. I respect what they say, especially when it comes to their own bodies and experiences. I am in awe of how they take ownership of their bodies, fat and hated and maligned though they be.

Intellectually, I know that what they are saying is important and necessary, and true. I know that it’s absolutely important at a societal level. I know that people need to change the way that they think about and view and treat fat people. The cultural change is necessary. But personally? I have no love for my body. None. This thing has been my enemy for as long as I can remember.

I recently read shonda rhimes’s Year of Yes, where she talks about thinking that her body is just a container for her brain — and how she eventually broke that view. But that is exactly how I see my body, have seen it for most of my life. I am not that person in the mirror. I am not that ugly, lopsided, fat, hobbled over, ratty-dressed thing. I am so much more than that. I am so much better than that.

I’m always skinny in my dreams.

The Zach that’s someday going to be a famous YA author, writing books, talking to students, flying all over the world, is thin enough to fit into an airplane without getting disgusting looks from other people.

The Zach that’s someday going to be a high school teacher is thin enough that he doesn’t have to worry about falling through chairs, or worry about his students mocking him behind his back.

The Zach that’s someday going to accept The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre is thin enough to fit comfortably into a suit, without worrying about how tight it is across the shoulders, about whether or not he’s going to rip the ass out when he sits down. (two pairs of dress pants now!). He’s thin enough to walk up to the stage without panting like a dog or needing to take a break.

Every time I think of myself in the abstract, I don’t see this body. I don’t think of this thing. I think of myself as I could have been, how I ought to have been, as a normal, everyday person who doesn’t attract stares and disgust-heavy looks and rude comments everywhere that he goes.

And the real kicker? Even though this version of myself has never existed in the real world, I know that he’s somewhere inside of me. All you have to do is look at an x-ray. Despite my grandmother’s insistence, I don’t have big bones. My bones are those of a perfectly normal-sized person, enveloped in this amorphous blob of flesh.

I’ve never actually been this mythical skinny person, not since I was a one-year old who weighed around 50 pounds, and certainly not since, but he’s in there. Obscured by unfriendly genetics, a lifetime of not eating well, an entirely unhealthy relationship with food, and a body that’s never been able to exercise without it being painful. But the proof is in the film; the film doesn’t lie.

— —

Maybe things would be different if I was raised to accept my body.

I definitely wasn’t. As long as I can remember, I’ve been raised on a steady criticism about my body and the undeniable sense that I didn’t belong.

Not like this. I don’t know when I did my first WeightWatchers meeting — sometime as a tween? — but I’ve been in and out of the program (it’s expensive, so I’ve never been able to stay in it very long). I’ve done every fad diet in the book, including just plain not eating very much. My parents have always been of the opinion that all I needed was more willpower and some goddamn self control.

My parents, and the rest of the world.

Maybe they’re right? Who knows whether or not all of the things I listed earlier — genetics, poverty, mental health, stress, screwed up circadian rhythm — are bona fide causes, or if they’re just excuses. Maybe I’ve grown good at making excuses for myself and my failure to be thin.

—

I have this memory stuck in my head. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but from the context, I’m guessing it’s somewhere around middle school.

My dad is a very thin man. He’s angry with me. I’ve just returned from a doctor’s appointment, I think. Somewhere where I’ve been weighed. For the first time, I’m over 250 pounds.

“Don’t you realize” he says “that you weigh over a quarter of a ton?”

I know that there has to be more to that conversation. But those are the words that stick. Those are the words that run through my head on a continual loop. That has to have been at least 15 years ago. I weigh over a half ton now, dad.

—

I’m tired of feeling this way. I’m tired of these memories, this grief, this shame, and this sadness. There is too much baggage here for me to reclaim any of this. I have to get rid of it. But nothing that I’m doing is going away. The opposite, in fact.

As a fat person, it’s hard for me to get employment. I got my first job in late 2014. I was put on grave. Through a combination of a revolving door and unreliable coworkers, I ended up working grave during the week and days on the weekend. I frequently went a month or more without time off. It was a home healthcare job, and I made a poverty wage.

Stress, messed up circadian rhythm. I put on the last 100–150 pounds in the fourteen months that I worked there.

It’s been two years since I quit, and that weight hasn’t gone anywhere. But it needs to go.

Surprise, this post isn’t all about me reminiscing about my weight and bad days, or complaining about something that most of the world sees as being directly my fault.

This post is about why I want to pursue weight loss surgery.

I don’t know if it’s going to happen. I’m dirt poor, and trying to get MediCare in a new state. I don’t know if they’re going to give it to me. I don’t know what kind of conditions or obstacles there are going to be, if the insurance will even cover weight loss surgery. I’m in a red state now, and they’re big on that personal responsibility thing.

But it’s my only way out of this thing, and it’s long overdue. I have to take that first tentative step. And that’s a big thing for me: usually, I don’t even bother. Nothing significant has ever really worked out in my favor. But I have to try this. If only to prove to myself, once and for all, that the deck is stacked against me in this life.

Life.

I’m never going to get the life I could have had. I’m never going to get the life that I should have had, would have had if I were a skinny person.

There’s no retroactively making middle and high school a happy time.

There’s no going back and fitting in.

There’s no going back to flirting and first dates and school dances and prom, and first love, first kisses, best friends.

There’s no reclaiming my youth, my twenties; the years that were supposed to be the best years of my life.

There’s no going back and getting the years of income that I missed out on because of the managers that decided not to hire me because of my size.

There’s no smoothing away the physical and psychological scars of nearly 30 years as a super-fat person.

There’s no going back and making things right.

It’s so easy to focus on that, to grieve what will never be, the moments and the experiences that are gone to me forever. But I can’t do that anymore. I have to hope that it’s possible for me to change. I have to hope that, even at this late hour, I can create some kind of person worth being out of the wreckage that is this body.

Querying soon? Get my Query Letter, Deconstructed.

Zach J. Payne writes poetry, plays, and young adult fiction. He’s an assistant at Ninja Writers, where he helps new writers find their voice and their tribe. He was the query intern for Pam Victorio at D4EO, and his novel Somehow You’re Sitting Here was selected for Nevada SCBWI’s 2015–16 Mentor Program. He lives in Reno, and has a plan to lose weight and travel the world. Support the adventure if you can!