I Could Get Used to This

On Saturday night, the hubs and I met up with a lot of old high school friends for a karaoke party. Many people I haven't seen in a few to up to 10 years. I feel almost guilty or conceded for these thoughts but...I can't tell you how great it felt to hear peoples reactions when they saw me. Mouths dropped to the ground...speechlessness...saying some inappropriate words. I saw one old friend who was one of many girls I went to high school with who could eat anything and everything she wanted and couldn't gain weight. Well we are in our 30's now and her metabolism has slowed down a bit. She yelled at me and told me I was making the rest of them look bad.

I've never been in this place before. The place of being smaller than all of my girl friends. None of them ever had a weight problem. None of them understood what it was like for me to watch them eat donuts for breakfast, candy on our breaks, pizza and fries for lunch or dinner and be stick thin. I would be sad and embarrassed to go shopping with them. I hated how they could all trade clothes with each other but not me. I hated being the fattest bridesmaid in ALL of their weddings. They were used to me like this. I was used to me like this. My friend who yelled at me last night yelled at me back in the day. "If you want to lose weight, lose weight. Get over it. It's not that hard. Look at me. I hate being called skinny. It's just as bad as me calling you fat." My best friend would blow a gasket if someone guessed her weight to be 125. "125, I'm not fat," would be her response. I remember thinking that was the weight I would tell people I weighed when I really weighed 140. If she thought 125 was fat, what did she really think of me?

So last night, it was interesting to watch them. They were turning into the old me. They'd look at me, then look down and their tummies and start grabbing and pulling at places. I frequently heard the words, "Whatever," "Shut up" "Oh my god." I finally got a bit irritated and told them to be nice. I was always the big girl. I've worked my ass of literally. Can't you just be happy for me? I'm not doing anything to purposely make you feel bad about yourself, I'm just trying to learn and live a healthy life. Why do most of us compare ourselves to others? It's a horrible, vicious cycle we do to ourselves.

I do understand though because that's how I used to be. Just being around those skinny girls made me feel bad about myself. Again, they weren't doing anything to me, but it felt like a conspiracy. That all these girls had a trick or knew a secret and wouldn't share it with me. They were all in their thin club, humoring me because I was the funny fat girl. None of them worked for their young bodies before. They didn't watch what they ate. They definitely didn't work out, though a few did some sports. But they are doing the same things now as they did then but they're getting different results. They find it insane that I run. They've never even heard of 5 or 10K's. I hope they all will go through the learning process that I had to. I feel good that I'm small because I worked for it. I was not given a naturally thin body. I have to work everyday. Those girls never had to do it before and are having a hard time doing it now. The best compliment I heard of the night was my own hubs saying to me, "You know you were the hottest girl there tonight right?" I could get used to this :).