Daddy

I can blame my weight on a lot of things. I know most of the fault is my own. No one held a gun to my head and made me gorge myself on cheese and chocolate for 30 years.

Still, like a lot of heavy people, I believe that a great deal of my weight issues have been tied to my parents. Between the bad genes, setting bad examples, rewarding us with food, forcing me to clear my plate but rarely making me eat vegetables...it's no wonder I was chubby by the time I was in kindergarten. 

My mom is the one who cooked dinner every night loaded with carbs and butter. She's the one who gave us Poptarts for breakfast and Lunchables, Capri Suns, fruit snacks, Cheetos, and Little Debbies in our lunches. She's the one who is overweight and who everyone says I look just like. She's the one who eats stacks of chocolate chip cookies for breakfast every single morning (not kidding) and then wonders why she can't control her diabetes.

But my dad is responsible for more emotional baggage than my mother could ever dream of inflicting.

I called this blog "My Weird Luck" for a number of reasons. I do have weird luck--not necessarily bad all the time, just strange. My life has taken many unexpected turns over the years. I've come through raging fires where I should have burned in my bed, and heart issues that no one expected me to survive. I've lost those closest to me in tragic and mysterious ways. I've been faced with bizarre obstacles and managed to get through one way or another. I would attribute much of it to weird luck. Maybe the stars were aligned strangely the day I was born.

But mostly, the name of this blog is an homage to Sylvia Plath, one of many poets whom I adore and admire. The line comes from her well-known poem, Daddy.

(Go ahead and read it. I'll wait.) That poem sums up a lot of my feelings for my father. He's in my life and still with my mother, but sometimes (okay, most of the time) I think we'd be better off without him. I KNOW my mom would be. 

I think he does love me. I just think his cruelty far outweighs his capacity to love.

Take this as an example: My parents have been married for 31 years. One of my earlier memories is of my dad telling me (around 5 years old) and my sister (2 or 3 years old) that my mother was like a vacuum cleaner because she would eat anything in the house. What kind of man makes comments like that to his children about their mother? That's when I started to learn how highly my father prized physical beauty and despised weakness. Fat, to him, is one of the most disgusting forms of weakness. To elaborate on the scene I just mentioned: this was when my mother was around 26 years old and weighed maybe 140 pounds. He constantly commented on her weight, and she was a third of the size she is now. Now, he doesn't even touch her. He won't divorce her, but chooses instead to keep her with him under his constant judgement. He doesn't even bother to hide his disgust of her.

When my parents were dating, my dad apparently used to sing Meatloaf's "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" to my mother. He told her every day that it was how he felt. "I want you, I need you, but there ain't no way I'm ever going to love you." I cry every time I hear that song on the radio, because it makes me think about just how shitty it would be to live with that kind of emotional abuse for 31 years. My poor mom. No wonder she loves chocolate so much.

My dad's judgement definitely doesn't end at my mom.

When I was younger, he was more direct in his scorn and derision. He would comment on my weight, on the food I was eating, on how I was dressed. He was cruel. He was violent. He scared the shit out of me. But mostly, he was just kind of a dick. Of course, I never stopped starving for his attention and approval, and I foolishly thought that if I tried hard enough, he'd eventually magically become a good guy. That obviously never happened. Like, true story: when I was 10 or so I was looking for a Father's Day present. He's a terrible person to shop for because he just buys himself anything he sees that he wants (and he still makes my mom beg for enough money to fill up the car with gas, or to pay for her doctor's bills--as sick as she is, he limits how many doctors she's allowed to see and he cancels appointments if they're going to be expensive). Anyway, I couldn't find anything for him so I bought him a t-shirt for Father's Day that said "World's Greatest Dad." I really though that I couldn't go wrong with a gift like that. HA! Not only did he make a point to tell me that it was a dumb present, but he actually returned it and used the money to buy himself a big can of cashews. Not even joking. Ugh, that's a bad memory. So his cruel comments don't stop at my mom, and they don't stop at even my weight. He can make me feel like shit about pretty much anything in the world.

Now that I've learned to assert myself, he makes more passive aggressive remarks about strangers. "Look at that fat pig over there!" or "God, I can't believe that woman is going to eat that whole meal--I'm getting sick just looking at her!" (Oh, yeah, he's fucking racist too. That's a lovely combination, right?) I've stopped even trying to keep my mouth shut--when he's being nasty and rude, I tell him so. But that doesn't stop him, and it never will.

As disgusting as his thoughts and actions are, it's his attitude about weight that's had the most impact on me personally. Everything else I can deal with in my own way--I'm proud to support equal rights for everyone, I loved how depressed he got when Obama won TWICE (!!!!), and I crushed him by pursuing a Women's Studies degree. I've marched on Washington, I came out as a lesbian at age 18, and I never back down now when he tries to pick a fight about anything.

Except my weight. Partially because I know he's right--I am a fat failure--and partially because it's embarrassing to have anyone call me out about it. At least everyone else is polite enough to quietly ignore my skyrocketing weight. But not him.

My dad has always faced his own struggles with weight. When he was in high school, he was fat. According to him, though, he basically 'willed' all the weight off. Determination, willpower, and a jump rope--he claims that's all you need to drop 100 pounds. Well, maybe for him.

When he was older, maybe in his 30s, he started gaining weight again. He had bushy facial hair and looked like a mountain man. Our neighbor called him "Big Daddy" because he looked like a large reproduction of her own dad.

Then, he got self conscious and started working out again, cut back his portions, and lost weight. Now he wears an XL shirt where before he was pushing XXXL--and he loves to remind everyone about it any chance he gets. He never misses an opportunity to talk about how little he eats, how much energy he has, how long his bike rides are.

That just pisses me off. I don't want to hear about how awesome he is or how I just need to have the determination to lose weight. I fucking hate self-righteous people, and even more so when they're such dicks about everything else.

My dad, though, really knows how to jab the knife in.

Listen, this is a person I would hate if I met him on the street. He's obsessed with Nazi propaganda, he's an unabashed racist, he's heartless and cold and cruel. But he's still my dad, and in the way that all little fat girls do, I still seek his approval more than I seek anything else in my life. It's shameful to me how proud I am when he recognizes me when I get promoted at work, and when he brags about my professional accomplishments. I feel incredible guilt every time I smile at his compliments.

He knows how much his approval means, and he knows how much he hurts me. I think in his sick way he thinks he's helping...but he's not. Not at all.