#however. i think my former shrink gave up on me because this month my appointment is with some other dude whose blurb says he specializes

[californiaquail]

do you guys remember that huge wool blanket i started crocheting last april or may or whatever. well in case you were wondering it has been sitting by my bed in a state of ~95% completion for months now. also i still have not received an adhd diagnosis

[alexiss-fic-archive]

The Phantom Thieves of Hearts

Chapter 3: April 1st ~ Beginning

Summary:  Connie Agrees to tell her Story to Azul, hoping that it would untangle her memories and at the same time, save herself.

Notes: I dont know what thing possesed me to write this in less than a week, but i’m glad it did because it came out better that I expected.

Please enjoy.

READ IT FROM THE START ON THE AO3!!

It all began when I was heading home from buying some missing Ingredients for the next day's dinner.

It was pretty dark back then, and there was almost no one in the streets. Keyword: Almost.

As I made my way to the house, I walked across what it seemed to be an arguing couple. I ignored them at first, since it seemed to be a personal affair.

But when I listened to the woman scream for help, I turned around as quickly as I could. The bastard was trying to rape her.

I ran towards him at full speed, punching him in the head with enough strength for him to release her. I was pretty sure I made him bleed.

He tried to get up and looked at me with hatred. I was sure that he would've tried to hit me as well if my neighbors hadn't turned on their lights to see what was going on outside.

“You….” The man told me, his voice altered by alcohol. “You’ll pay for this… I’ll sue you for this… Damn brat…”

Then, the drunkard escaped from the scene before anyone could see him, leaving me with a very altered girl who was on the verge of tears.

I left the girl with my neighbors and returned home, where my explained my parents why I took so long, only receiving a lecture from my mom because I was too reckless.

But in all, it seemed that the incident went well and I just was in the right place in the right time.

Unfortunately for me, that wasn't the case, As It turned out that the petty bastard did sued me for assault a few days later at decided that I shouldn't see the light of day again just because I punched him.

♦♦♦

“What do you mean by Decided?” Azul asked Connie. “Are you implying that he rigged the trial?”

“Yes.” The girl said. “All the jury was hellbent on sending me to prison and he even threatened the girl she tried to rape to declare against me.”

“If the jury was so biased towards you, then how come you got away with a probation?” The lawyer asked intrigued.

“My dad was an old friend of the judge that took my case and told him the truth.” Connie told her. “However, the judge told us that he couldn't help us because the girl wouldn't testify in my favor. And the only thing he could do was to put me in probation for a year.”

“That still doesn't explain why a failed musician owner of a café would be designated as your probational officer.” Azul said as she checked the file for the trial.

“My parents met Mister Universe back when he was still a musician and my dad was his fan.” Connie explained. “They did him a very huge favor one time and Mister Universe told them that he would repay him one day.”

“And he accepted to be your officer just like that?” An incredulous Azul Asked.

“Yes.” Connie answered. “Mister Universe is a really nice person, you know? He just wanted to help us.”

“Right…” Azul Said in a rather condescending way. “In any case, that only explains why you got here. Now, tell me about the day you arrived to the city.”

“Okay…”

♦♦♦

A few days after the judge gave his verdict and Mister Universe appointed himself as my probation officer, I was sent away from my home to the city.

My mother was crying her eyes out while my father consoled her as the bus I was in was moving away from them. I tried to keep myself together, we would still see each other every month after all.

Still, I felt like a piece of my soul was ripped apart from me as I saw them shrink away in the Distance.

A few hours later, I finally reached the bus terminal at Beach City.

The sadness I felt moments ago was drowned a bit as I marveled at the size of the city. I hadn't seen that many people together in my life. Everyone was minding their own business, trying to live out their lives unaware of the others doing the same thing.

I wanted to take a picture of the crowd, so I took my phone away from my pocket and turned the screen on.

However, As i looked for the camera app, I found the Icon for an app I didn't remember to have downloaded. It seemed to be called, ‘Metanav’.

As I stared at the strange icon in my phone, the overcrowded crossing fell deadly silent. I looked up from my phone and found out that all the world Had stopped in its tracks.

“What the hell…?” I said to myself, trying to work my head around the weird event.

I turned around to see what was going on before i laid my eyes on another, strange occurrence in the middle of the crossing. There was an enormous pillar of blue flame that was calling my name.

“Connie…” It said in a voice that sounded strangely like mine. “Open your wings…”

I saw how the pillar's flames shifted in the way they danced, changing its shape into what I could only describe back then as a Demon that was reaching its hand towards me.

However, as soon as I blinked, the figure was already gone, and time was already moving again, returning the noisy crossing back to life.

♦♦♦

“Are you joking right now?” Azul said in disbelief. “Because that was the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard a convict say!”

“I’m not joking.” Connie said. “I told you that I was going to say all the truth, didn't I?”

“I know you did.” The lawyer said. “But that is just plain unbelievable.

“I know how weird that must sound to you.” The prisoner admitted. “But why wouldn't you trust it and let me continue?”

“F-Fine.” An annoyed Azul said before she let Connie continue.

♦♦♦

So, After convincing myself that that thing in the crossing wasn’t real and uninstalling the app from my phone, I made my way into the Rehoboth district, Where Mister Universe and his son live together.

The place was very different from the center of the city. Whereas in the city there were seas of people everywhere, in Rehoboth there were at least five people in the streets at any given time. It kinda reminded me of home.

I eventually found his house after asking the locals for it. He and his son lived in a house in front of a small café they owned: The Crystal Beans. Knowing that, it wasn't that hard to miss it when I walked next to a store that had a star-shaped coffee bean as a logo next to a neon sign that read ‘The Crystal beans! ★’ in the windows.

The store was closed at the moment but there was a man inside of it cleaning it up. Probably closing earlier because of me.

He was a tall man and was a bit overweight, however, his arms were rather muscular, perhaps remains of times past. The top of his head was completely bald, but its rear was covered by a long mane of brown hair that reached his lower back. His soft, sunburnt face was adorned with a thick beard the same color as his hair. He wore a plain black T-Shirt along with a pair of cargo shorts and a pair of blue flip flops.

Everything about this man Screamed ‘former Rockstar’ to me. So, naturally, i knocked on the door of the store to introduce myself.

He smiled as soon as he saw me and rushed to open the door.

“Um… Are you by any chance Gregory Universe?” I asked awkwardly.

“I sure am.” He said cheerfully. “You must be Connie. Please come in.”

I accepted the invitation and entered the small coffee shop. It was rather rustic and homey and that was accentuated by the golden sunlight of twilight that passed through the windows. It had a few potted plants hanging from the ceiling, framed landscapes on the wooden walls, a Single TV next to the bar and an entire assortment of coffee, spices, and ingredients behind said bar.

He brewed some coffee for the two of us and then asked me how I was dealing with all what happened and how were my parents doing.

I answered and asked him where exactly he met my parents.

“Well, It's a rather Funny Story.” He said. “Do you know those weird Stories about children being born in cars?”

“No way…” I said.

“Yes way.” He said nodding. “Our Van broke near your town, She was about to give birth, it was raining and we were in a place we didn't knew.”

He took a sip from his cup.

“Fortunately, i happened to knock on the door of a surgeon and her fiancé. She helped Rose to give birth without a problem and He helped me fix the van. He almost freaked out when he found out I was Mister Universe; his favorite indie musician just had crashed on his home.”

“Was that something normal for you, Mister Universe?” I asked him. “Having freaked out fans?”

“Actually, I was the one who freaked out more.” He said. To be honest, i was pretty much a nobody who at best opened shows and at worst a solo concert for myself.”

“Oh…” I said blushing. “Sorry for asking that…”

“No biggie.” He said. “I’m very grateful I was very Niche. I met Rose in a Concert where no one else came, and Steven had a healthy birth thanks to your parents.”

“I see…” I said before taking a sip of my coffee.

“After that, we exchanged numbers and I told him to call me if he needed me to return the favor.” He said. “And now you're here, under my care.”

“That was quite the story Mister Universe.” I said with a smile on my face.

“Thank you.” He said. “Now that we know each other a bit more, I think I should tell you what to do under my care.”

“Okay.” I said as I took a notebook and a pen from the backpack I brought with me.

“First, you have to go to school. We'll go to register you tomorrow at Steven's school.” He said while I scribbled his words on the notebook. “Secondly, I can't actually take care of you as I would want to because of the Judge's orders, So, you'll live in the storage room of the café during your stay and you'll have to help us here in the shop Whenever you can.”

“Really?” I said with a bit of disgust in my voice. I really wasn't in the mood for sharing a bed with spiders in a dusty attic.

“Don’t worry. Steven and I tidied up for you.” He reassured me. “We even bought you a new mattress for you to sleep.”

“Thanks.” I told him.

“You’re Welcome.” He said Smiling as he looked at the dark skies from outside the windows of the shop. “Now, Why don't you go to your room and rest? We have to do a lot of stuff tomorrow.”

“Good Idea Mister Universe.” I said before picking up my backpack.

“Well, Gotta go Now.” The man said as he got off his seat. “We’ll be waiting you tomorrow for breakfast at the house.”

And so, after a rather warm welcome courtesy of Mister Universe, I followed his advice and went upstairs into the attic. Where I found that he wasn’t lying about tidying the place up: They had left the place as shiny as a pirate treasure. There was a small fern next to my bed, which was located right next to a window made up of tiny red panels of crystal. The place also smell faintly of flowers.

After I left my backpack in a nearby worktable the Universe’s left for me, I went straight to the bed, where I found a set of keys with a tag that read ‘Welcome!!<3’ on top of it.

Before I went to sleep for the day, I took a moment to open up the window and see the nocturne skyline that Made Beach City so famous in many postcards. That was when I saw him. A boy about my age that was also looking outside his window.

He had short, curly hair and seemed to be a little tubby from where I could see him. He was also wearing a yellow striped pajama that made him look a bit cute.

He saw me as well and only smiled and waved at me.

‘He’s probably Steven.’ I thought to myself before returning the wave to him, to which he smiled again before closing his window.

I did the same as he did before laying down on my bed, where i decided to use my Phone for a while before falling asleep.

This time, that mysterious app had appeared once again in a corner of my phone’s screen, however, I was too tired to properly check it that night and resolved to do it the next day.

As I felt my eyes growing heavier, i thought to myself that maybe I could make it till the end of the year in a good way with the help of the universes. Maybe probation wasn’t that bad.

And so I fell asleep.

And then, I immediately woke up again. Except that I wasn't in the Cafe's attic. I was now inside a dark cubicle lined with velvet blue cushions and Chains hanging from the ceiling. I sat up on the wooden bench I lied upon to see what was happening and found myself bound by a pair of handcuffs and wearing a tattered prisoner's uniform.

I looked around the small cell before finding the only lightsource of the room, a barred door chained up from the outside, from where a blinding golden light came from.

I stood up from my seat to look at the light but found a heavy weight on one of my legs. I had a huge iron ball bound to my left ankle.

Nevertheless, I made my way towards the bars in front of me, wanting to know more about the place I was in.

And just as I reached the chained bars I saw the silhouette of a small kid. She sported a blue police uniform that matched with the blue of the cell. Her Skin seemed to be of a bright red color and had a maroon afro framing her face. Her right Eye possessed a supernatural Golden color, while she wore an eyepatch with an stylized V letter on it over her left eye.

She smiled at me with malice moments before another girl appeared next to her.

She wore the same uniform as the previous girl, but her skin was dark blue and her long, flowing hair was pure white. Her long bangs hid her eyes from me.

Finally as my eyes adapted to the light in the room, I noticed that a woman dressed in a pure white suit was sitting behind a wooden desk.

She let out a chuckle before addressing me.

“Ah… Trickster…” She said in a creepy monotonous tone. “ Welcome, to MY Velvet room.”

♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢♦♢

[wellnessandhealing]

I own a teacup that has the words every day I'm hustlin' scrawled around the rim. Filled with bow-shaped paper clips and other ephemera, the teacup sits on my desk as a reminder: to work hard, to keep going, to aim high, and prioritize productivity. Yet it is only at my elbow for an hour at a time at most; most days, I can only see the self-satisfied teacup from my bed. For the majority of each day, I am in one bed or another. Much of that time, I'm lying with my eyes closed and listening to an audiobook. I am not, in fact, hustlin'. I am a chronically ill woman, stuck on the sidelines.

In 2012, I became convinced that I'd developed tendonitis, or perhaps carpal tunnel syndrome. I was visiting my company's home office in Pittsburgh, where my wrists and hands began to twinge with pain. My colleagues, who also worked all day at their computers, clucked with sympathy at my discomfort; many of them wore wrist braces, and ergonomic keyboards were available to employees who requested them. I thought the pain was a natural side effect of my grueling work habits. I woke at 4 a.m. every morning to write for four hours before getting ready for work, and drank enough coffee to cause spontaneous, caffeine-sick vomiting up to three times a day. The pain in my hands, I assumed, was like the vomiting. I could put up with it. I was, after all, ensconced in a culture of creatives in the tech industry—people who humblebragged about how little sleep they'd gotten the night before and used the phrases "lean and scrappy" to describe not only our company culture, but themselves.

But other things began to happen. In 2013, the pain appeared in my feet and legs as well, earning me the diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy, or damage to the nerves in my hands and feet. Then, on an autumn trans-Atlantic flight, I unexpectedly fainted. A seizure was suspected, but never proven. I began to have trouble walking in a straight line. I developed delusions. My psychiatrist, who had never seen me so ill, suggested the possibility of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a neurological disease most notably chronicled in Susannah Cahalan's memoir, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. During a neurological exam, I was given three minutes to say as many words as I could think of that started with D—I came up with five or six and was asked to remember a series of numbers that I'd have to recite later. My husband Chris accompanied me to the elevator afterward. "She didn't even ask me about those numbers," I complained. He paused and then said, gently, "Yes, she did. You knew all of them."

I didn't have anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, but blood tests revealed the presence of antibodies that, according to the doctors, either meant cancer or a number of rare autoimmune disorders. More tests ensued, including an EEG and an MRI. Still, no one knew what was wrong with me. Too unwell to work, I left my job and went on disability benefits. In 2015, I was ultimately diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease—a controversial diagnosis in the United States, where the Centers for Disease Control maintains tightly circumscribed criteria for the disease, and does not believe that terms such as "chronic Lyme" ought to be used at all. (This is based in the belief that there is no convincing scientific evidence that a persistent B. burgdorferi infection causes so-called "chronic Lyme" symptoms.) And yet I believe that this diagnosis, which I was given by a "Lyme-literate doctor," has saved me.

I began the long, hard slog of high-dose antibiotic therapy. Despite the pills, I remained sick. On some days, I was too weak to move my arms or legs; on the worst days, I was too weak to swallow or breathe without difficulty. In late November 2015, I stopped taking antibiotics and began an experimental treatment, known as Low-Dose Antigen Immunotherapy that is designed to calm a dysfunctional immune system by stimulating the production of T Regulator cells and which enabled me to partially function on most days. This is where I am now: too sick to go back to full-time work, freelancing and building a small online business with what energy I do have, and still alive enough to know how much I'm not doing.

This is where I am now: alive enough to know how much I'm not doing.

Here are things that I can and can't do. I can, on most days, work for approximately two or three hours a day, using bits of time here and there with breaks for rest. I can't, on most days, function well after approximately 2 p.m., which is when I begin to develop fevers, moderate to severe nausea, weakness, fatigue, and a cornucopia of other symptoms that I never get used to, no matter how often they come to call. I can do some fun and exciting things, given certain accommodations. I recently traveled to Los Angeles for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference (AWP), spoke on a panel, and gave a reading to promote my debut novel, which I'd written in the five years before I became ill. However, I can't serve as the managing editor of a major media site—a job that I was recently offered—because my body and mind can't handle that kind of workload, no matter how much I long to take it on.

It's said that the disabled are the largest stigmatized population of which any person can become a member at any time. This frequently comes to mind when I see people on social media speak with a certain amount of pride about hustling so hard that they haven't slept more than a few hours in a week. When I see women that I admire scoff at the idea of self-care, I shrink because I'm often reading their words on my phone while lying in bed, engaging in the most intense self-care that I can manage.

Should things be just a little bit different, I'd be right there alongside them. After all, my work ethic and ambition haven't gone anywhere, despite my dedication to doing nothing for hours per day. It's my work ethic and ambition that call my "doing nothing" laziness; and laziness, or sloth, is cause in our go-go-go society for shame of the highest order. In "On Productivity Anxiety," writer Rachel Vorona Cote recounts her need for "ritualistic assurances" of productivity from her husband. "Did I work enough today? Did I seem productive?" are the questions she asks of him before ultimately falling asleep. In a society that holds productivity as unequivocally good, to do less feels like a moral failing.

When I see women that I admire scoff at the idea of self-care, I shrink because I'm often reading their words on my phone while lying in bed, engaging in the most intense self-care that I can manage.

While working with my counselor, I've frequently brought up the topic of whether or not I am, in fact, lazy. It's a question that I compulsively ask. As someone who used to define herself vis-a-vis her work ethic, to become unable to act upon that work ethic is nearly intolerable. My deep fear is that I'm secretly slothful and am using chronic illness to disguise the sick rot of laziness within myself. Surely I can rouse myself from this bed and bring myself to my desk? Surely I can pull myself up by the bootstraps and force myself to work? Instead of bragging online and in person about how much work I've accomplished, I post selfies from my bed, as if to prove that I am, indeed, ill. Compounding my shame is the private investigator sent after me last fall by my insurance company—a common practice in disability benefits cases—who reported that I was seen "smiling and laughing" after a doctor's appointment, clearly a sign that all was well and good. Surely, then, I could be making myself useful. My disability benefits were pulled last September. I was horrified by the outcome, but, laughably, too ill to fight the ruling.

These days, I continue to surround myself with reminders of my former self. I dream of a future self, in remission and free of illness, who uses her pink Goal Digger pencil case without self-consciousness. Though it might be better to realize my worth outside of productivity, I continue to live in a society that praises the art of getting things done over all else—including wellness and rest—and these are values I can't seem to shake.

Perhaps the solution is to view what I am doing through a different lens. My work, although it may not look like work to most, is to take care of myself. I must care for my health with as much attention as I once paid to the documents I was hired to edit, or to the long hours spent at the office on Saturdays. Aggressive pursuit of one's ambition is a skillset that, I hope, has not left me. In the meantime, I am aggressively pursuing a dream of recovery.

Esmé Weijun Wang is an essayist and the author of The Border of Paradise: A Novel, published by Unnamed Press in April 2016. Her work has appeared in Salon, Catapult, The Believer, The New Inquiry, and Jezebel. She writes at esmewang.com and tweets at @esmewang.

ESMÉ WEIJUN WANG

Esmé Weijun Wang is an essayist and the author of The Border of Paradise: A Novel, published by Unnamed Press in April 2016.

[kidsviral-blog]

My Boyfriend Loves Fat Women

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/my-boyfriend-loves-fat-women/

My Boyfriend Loves Fat Women

As a fat woman myself, I’m still struggling with how I feel about it.

View this image ›

Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed

Ironically enough, I met my boyfriend during the thinnest month of my life.

I was at a friend’s birthday party at a bar when I saw my future boyfriend Brian from across the room, talking to the birthday boy. Brian was the type of guy I spent most of high school and college and my entire adult life pining after and never getting: slim, with dark hair and glasses, his jeans torn in all the best places. He had a beautiful mouth that was excitedly saying things I couldn’t hear, but was making everyone around him laugh.

If I had still been at my heaviest weight, I never would have approached Brian. As a fat woman, I have been taught that there is an order of operations for love: First, you get thin; then, you can date who you want. Until you do the first thing, the second thing is impossible. So for many women who struggle with their weight, it becomes a fight not just for their health or well-being, but a struggle to just be worthy of the love so many people take for granted.

Most of my life, my weight has felt like a search light from above that continually hounds me, putting the spotlight on my body even when I just want to hide. My third-grade class unofficially voted me “class pig” — a title I embraced with great gusto, because the alternative meant no friends. When I was 10, my dad ripped a box of Apple Jacks out of my hand while I was pouring myself a second bowl of cereal, and told me that I was “going to turn into a goddamn pumpkin.” The summer I turned 14, I was sweating my life out every day for an hour during swim team practice. Still, when I put on a bikini one day, my mother wouldn’t stop talking about my belly fat until I just wanted to throw the bikini away and never wear one again. I have always hated my body, and in retrospect, I’m not sure I was ever given the chance to love it.

But on the day I met Brian, I had just spent the previous year slowly winnowing off 50 pounds, almost entirely due to unemployment. I wasn’t buying a lot of food, and was spending much of my free time developing a nervous running habit that led me to spend hours every day trotting in circles around my neighborhood, trying to go somewhere even as my career was jogging in place.

So I was feeling brave, the stupid kind of courage that comes from unexpectedly having a body you never thought you’d inhabit, and wondering what kinds of things it might let you get away with. And I walked that crazy all the way over to the other side of the bar, and introduced myself to him.

View this image ›

There was a three-hour period — between the moment Brian first kissed me, and the moment when I learned that Brian was predominantly attracted to bigger women — when I felt like I could do anything. In my mind, I had done the impossible. Seducing a thin and attractive person was like taking bronze, silver, and gold in the Former Fat Girl Olympics.

At some point that night, I remember lying next to him, still feeling unbelievably cocky from my victory, when Brian mentioned that I wasn’t normally his type.

My inner Douchebag Alert went off. Oh god, I thought. Is this the part where he lets me know how nice he is for throwing my chubby ass a bone?

“What’s normally your type?” I asked him, bracing myself for the part where he not-so-subtly intimated that he can usually do better than me.

I did not get the response I expected.

“I like bigger ladies,” Brian replied. “Very big ladies, actually.” He sounded as calm and as normal as if he were telling me the weather. He was not ashamed. I suddenly realized that this was not an attempt to put me down, but rather just a thing (a completely normal thing, to him) that he was disclosing about himself. In other words: It was conversation.

But the little part of me inside that had been cheering for hours suddenly got very quiet. But I am your type, I thought sadly. In that moment, I know that Brian had been saying that he didn’t consider me to be big, but I know as well as anyone that people can’t fundamentally change who they are attracted to. Brian was still attracted to fat girls, and I was one of them.

This, of course, did not take away from how into Brian I was. We started dating almost immediately, and became inseparable. When I described him to people, I would tend to use celebrities who I was currently in love with as a frame of reference:

“He’s exactly like a dark-haired Ben Folds, but younger, and with better skin.”

“He looks just like an American version of John Oliver, but with better teeth, and a more attractive nose.”

“Brian looks like Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters,” I said once during a Halloween party, apropos of absolutely nothing. “But, like, even better looking.”

It was during this time that I started slowly putting the weight back on. Not because Brian was doing anything to sabotage me — he was and is supportive of my wanting to eat well and exercise. It was just a result of being in a happy relationship, suddenly having a full-time job, and life getting in the way. Normal things.

Six months into our relationship, I found myself in a very desperate laundry situation. I put on a sundress that I thought might be a little too backless for my current weight.

“I figure if worst comes to worst, I can just find a wall to stand against, or walk backward a lot,” I said to Brian as I put it on, trying to preemptively apologize for an outfit that I was pretty sure was riding the line between flattering and gross.

Brian, however, loved the dress. Maybe even a little too much — I spent a lot of time while wearing it swatting his hands away from the open back. I felt happy wearing it, beautiful. Soon, I was wearing it all the time.

Then, I wore it to a party. Late in the evening, Brian turned to a mutual friend of ours, and eagerly, drunkenly opined: “Doesn’t Kristin look amazing in that dress?”

The silence that followed felt like the moment before someone hits the button on a dunk tank, and you know that you are about to tumble, helpless, into a frosty tub of punishment. I realized, belatedly, obviously, that to Brian, I did look amazing in that dress. Because I looked fat.

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When you are a fat person who is losing weight, people will come out of the woodwork to let you know how “amazing” you look — even my psychiatrist called me “the incredible shrinking woman” at nearly every appointment. Well-meaning people felt this constant need to make it plain that I was somehow better once I had lost weight, and it only made it that much more painful when people stop telling you how good you look, and stop saying anything at all.

For the first time since I had started dating Brian, I looked at myself and realized that my body, almost without my realizing it, was reverting to back to its former fat state. This is the real you, I thought. The other you was just a disguise. But you couldn’t fool everyone forever.

And the fewer compliments about my body that I got from other people, the more I would get from Brian. It got to the point where compliments from Brian were actually painful to hear — every time he said “You look beautiful,” all I could hear was “You look fat.”

I started trying on outfits in front of Brian in order to get his opinion. It was a good system. Anything he liked, I wouldn’t wear.

It was during this time that I started being mean to myself — really, truly unkind. I looked at myself for hours in the mirror the way a child might gawk at an ugly person on the street. I would push and pull the rolls of fat on my stomach with my hands as flat as I could, and try to imagine what my lower half would look like, unencumbered by what I had done to it. I’d meet every compliment Brian gave me with something equally cruel about myself. It was like my self-image was in a tennis match, and it was more important for me to be right than for me to feel good.

Brian’s expressions when I would rip myself to shreds eventually moved from sympathy to frustration.

“I love your body,” Brian would say, carefully. “Because Kristin lives in your body.”

Even though I was and am loved, I still didn’t feel that way — because in my mind, I had not earned it. You won, I would try to tell myself. You still earned love while gaining weight.

Then I went to an appointment with my psychiatrist, and for the first time in years, she said nothing about my body. Nothing at all.

No, I didn’t win, I would tell myself instead. I got what I wanted, but I didn’t do the work. That’s cheating. I cheated.

And though Brian is and has always been open and confident with his preferences, they started to embarrass me. Once at a party, he mentioned that Rebel Wilson was hot to a group of people we were talking to. A short silence followed, during which I actually moonwalked away from the conversation, as though trying to physically escape before a comparison between Rebel Wilson and myself could catch up to me.

Which is ridiculous. Rebel Wilson is fabulous. Why would I not want that for myself?

And what would happen if I lost all this weight? I would wonder to myself bitterly. Would Brian still feel the same way? Was I doomed to either be conventionally attractive or someone’s fetish object?

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Brian gets tired of my self-hatred. He has limits, he’s human, and more important, he’s a human who loves me and finds me attractive, and is frustrated with having to defend those choices to me, of all people.

Once, we were at a bar, and I saw a very large woman sitting at the edge of the bar. “Do you think she’s cute?” I asked Brian, in a way that clearly indicated she was not. It was a petty, mean question, and one I already knew the answer to. But I found myself wanting to hear him say it, like I could trick Brian into openly admitting that his idea of beautiful — and that his ideas about me — were so obviously, incredibly wrong.

“Yes, I do.” Brian said, not taking the bait. “She’s very pretty. What is your problem? Do you want another beer?”

One of the things I’ve come to understand is that, when you’re single, hating your body is more or less a victimless crime, if you don’t count yourself. When you get into a relationship, however, it becomes a constant referendum on the tastes and judgment of the person who loves you.

The other problem was that, the more that I poke at myself, the more Brian pokes at himself as well. While he is objectively not a very big person, he’s succumed a little bit to the 10 to 15 pounds everyone gains when they are happy and in love. But one morning, I saw him looking at himself in the mirror, grabbing the small pudge from his stomach, and agonizing about how much he felt it made him into a terrible person.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. Because it so obviously was — he was trying to grab handfuls of his tummy for emphasis, but was struggling to even get one hand full.

“No, it isn’t,” he shot back, in that angry, desperate tone of voice I have so often used. “I am just a fat person, now.”

No, you’re not, I thought, and I wondered how many times Brian had felt like this: frustrated, annoyed, and helpless as he watched me tear down a thing he loved.

The thing that I have struggled the most with understanding is that, just like I am not just a fat girl, Brian is not just someone who likes fat girls. He is someone who has made it through this life, one that is inundated with social mores about what is OK and not OK in terms of physical attraction, and he is unmoved by any of it. How he handles this attraction is actually one of the most attractive things about him. He knows that his is not a popular opinion, and wastes no time caring about that fact.

I wish I could say that I am 100% OK with myself. I still do the thing where, when people compliment pictures of myself that I hate, I will wonder just how bad I look in all the other photos they aren’t complimenting.

But I do little things. When a couple of co-workers and I published this post about “one size fits all” clothing last December, I was terrified at the types of things people would say about my body. But when people were so overwhelmingly positive toward me, it reminded me of how important it is not to be your own biggest censor. I let myself believe the nice things people said.

Two years ago, I didn’t even realize they made bikinis in a size 18 — turns out that they do. Lots of cute ones. And this year, I intend to buy one, and wear it to the beach. And I will enjoy that no one will be able to complain to me about my belly fat (without looking like a crazy person). I will enjoy how excited that makes Brian, to see me happy in my own skin. I will let him enjoy the thing he loves without tearing it down. But more importantly, I will work to earn love from me, who is the person who will always play the hardest to get. I will flirt as hard as I can, and I will win myself back.

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinchirico/my-boyfriend-loves-fat-women