Hagintha Woods

I wrote this a long time ago, but have since gone back and forth with myself over posting this, again and again.

I have loaded it up, hesitated before pressing submit, lingered over the ‘delete’ button. For the experience is my own, is something I’ve gone through, but I know how large a problem it is for everyone, and how comparatively, I am near the very tip of the iceberg, complaining about how pointy my seat is whilst many people drown underwater.

I’ve always naturally had a slight physique, comprised of hollow thoughts and thin skin stretched across bones. Especially when I was younger, I was the kind of skinny you’d attribute more to starvation than attractiveness (though for modern society, that line has always been disgustingly thin, and now with modern medicine, only grows ever thinner).

As a child, I remember us all lined up by our registration numbers for our routine checks, standing on the scales as the teachers called out our height and weight- not screaming it to the room, but loud enough that it was no secret. After all, what was there to hide?

Your score was certainly no secret. Those measured as too large by their BMI (which we all know to be a terrible metric of health, by the way) were made to join the TAF club (read it backward), where they had to exercise more during our shared breaks.

Of course, everyone would say that what they cared about was health, that it was good to encourage a good weight for a growing child.

And yet, as the light-boned, fragile bird on the other side of that scale with vicious bouts of hunger, the most worry I ever got was a side-glance and the advice to eat more.

For weight was an inevitability that only went one way, something that people fought a losing battle against like the tide.

Anyone too thin would catch up, but anyone too large had started their race with a disadvantage, and it was a parent’s- no, a school’s-no, society’s- no, your own responsibility to try and bring that number back down before the rise turned from gradual to exponential.

This wasn’t to say that I was medically starving, though I certainly ate like I was.

My body was simply a product of those who came before me, my parents slender and lean. My sister’s insurance agent recommended for her to gain weight before she signed up for coverage- her weight then would have resulted in higher premiums.

I was technically counted as unhealthy by the same terrible metric, but no one pushed me to gain as much as they pushed others to lose. And I always felt that it was not fair, but also was cognizant that this was not really my experience to speak of. Not when I had not lived it.

By a strange measure of coincidence (perhaps subconsciously delighting in the one thing that I had stumbled into that was ‘right’, or punishing myself against for the ‘rightness’ I didn’t feel like I deserved or worked for), I kept getting into sports that had weight categories, where weight was something that was watched and dissected and discussed as a part of strategy.

In Judo I was 4 kilograms short of the lowest weight category, which put me at a disadvantage against the opponents I was matched up against.

When I started entering endurance competitions, the International competitions required a minimum weight of 70kg, and anything not made up by my body weight was supplemented with dead weight that would not be able to absorb the movement, and weigh down my partner unduly.

Faced with these challenges and a vague notion that I was technically unhealthy, I tried my hardest to gain some muscle.

For I was also a weak thing, my bouts in Judo often won with momentum, timing and a gift for placing each of my bony protrusions right where my opponent would find them most unwelcome, instead of any sort of speed or strength.

But even on weight watching apps where I tried to see if I could eat more nutritionally dense foods, the system could not recognise that my goal was to gain weight. This resulted in some humorous phrasings like: “You are on your way to losing -2kg!” I put in some effort to train up, but my muscles only grew tighter instead of larger, became sore and painful things that ached without showing any result.

It was in France, after two decades, that something in my body eased, and my body finally allowed itself to take up space.

There, my lips painted the dark red of the sour wild cherries I’d picked, my body challenged with the rhythmic and challenging work of the barn, my muscles were moving and shifting.

And perhaps that was what it needed- not countless sit-ups and hours spent at the leg press that just left me tense, but work that meant something.

Picking stones out of horses’ hooves, carrying saddles and buckets of water. Easy, meaningful work, slotted easily into the rhythm of living.

I’d always thought I needed stress for growth, but perhaps I’d had that in spades. Perhaps what I’d needed, in fact, was an easing. Effort used consciously, instead of for effort’s sake.

I had no scale in my cottage in the little town, but I could feel it.

I had more weight on my bones, my hands took longer to tremble when I carried similar weights, and my steps felt like they actually touched the floor instead of glancing over the earth like the fae.

My voice grew clearer, my eyes grew sharper.

In this little space, tucked so far away from the worlds I knew, I felt like I finally had space to take up. In my little abode with the creaking wood, surrounded by evidence of my existence, I felt substantial, no longer blown about by any errant wind.

And then, I went home.

And the changes I had felt were promptly made known to me.

“You put on weight.” My teammate told me, nodding approvingly. “France was good for you.” I’d beamed, but if I knew how rare this reaction would turn out to be, I’d have treasured it more.

“You got fat.” My mother declared when she met me at the airport, but I’d prepared for that. A lifetime of listening to her calling other people “large” or “big-sized” with a ring that carried the finality of a judge’s gavel had meant I’d known what I’d be walking into if I ever put on weight.

And yet, though I’d anticipated it, it was still another thing to feel the acute sharpness of the sting.

“Thank you!” I said cheerfully, endeavouring to make it some kind of a teaching moment, even as I spared a quick glance down. Was it that noticeable? “I’ve really been trying.”

She drew up short at that, a little taken aback, but her lips pressed themselves into a thin line.

When I got home, after making sure no one was around, I stepped upon the scale.

A kilogram. Two at most.

The realisation was bitterly laughable. It was expected- I didn’t even have to get new clothes. But seeing it put into numbers felt almost futile. What was I so confident about? What had I pushed back for?

I’d lost more weight when I’d gotten sick or when I hyperfixated on my writing, my ever-present hunger slipping out my brain.

And yet, apparently, as small as it was, it was all anyone could see.

“You gained weight!” Many of my aunts commented, surprise on their features even as they spoke in unison, as if it were some sort of response they’d coordinated in the lead up to the meeting.

“Yes,” I often found myself saying amongst what felt like an onslaught, “I’ve been trying for several years now.”

I can open a heavier push door with just my hands now, without using my body weight to aid me in the effort. I am closer to my goal of one day doing a push-up, even on my knees.

These were all things I wanted to say, wanted to celebrate.

But whenever I opened my mouth, all that came out were defences, obfuscations, my very self slipping away. I did not want to fight for space amongst people who already found my very existence too much.

It came so automatically that I paused when I met someone and that wasn’t the firs thing out their mouth. I would look at them, doubt in my eyes- were they just being polite?

For those special few who did not seem to have the memo, my mother laboured to make up the difference.

She mentioned my weight to me at home, outside, prompting others when they didn’t take note of it fast enough.

“Isn’t she fatter now?” She would ask them, inviting them to size me up, weigh me against the space of the memories I’d used to take up before.

“I need to tell you,” she protested when I tried to get her to stop, eyes wide in emphasis, “otherwise how would you know?”

In that, at least, she succeeded.

My world had shrunk to miniscule numbers, a simple counting game.

By all rights, I was too skinny. I wanted more muscle and strength, more presence with which to navigate the world around me, for both myself and the people I loved. If I thought back, I remembered being happy about this.

And most ridiculous of all was the fact that I didn’t even succeed. A kilogram is a drop of water in the minimum weight gain I’d hoped to achieve.

This was not a success, but an important step and milestone in the journey I’d wanted to undertake, one I’d wanted to celebrate amongst those I loved.

And yet, her thoughts cut deep. And yet, I found myself checking my weight more frequently, and when that number rose, I couldn’t help the almost instinctual tightening of my diaphragm, that felt quite a lot like fear. And yet, when I took a particularly large dump and weighed myself after to find I’d lost half a kilogram, I felt as if the physical lightening I felt was more from a pressure being taken off my shoulders.

I have the good fortune of having a body that fits the beauty standard (at least in this one measure), and I thought that meant that acceptability would not have meant that much to me- especially given how I’d seen with my own eyes how flippantly it was given and snatched away.

But I was coming to find that it was altogether more insidious, that when I did deviate from my path, there was a panic that whatever normal I happened to have would simply turn to quicksand under my feet.

It was laughable. It was enlightening. In some ways, I was now grateful for the ways in which I had never had a chance to fit in. Knowing you were facing a dead end, in some ways, was better then the ever-present hope that if you reached hard enough, the light of acceptance would find itself upon your face. At the least, you accepted the impossible, and endeavoured to build something of your own. Or perhaps, that was just how I felt because I had more experience with the latter.

Though I had never struggled with losing weight, didn’t have any personal experience of being victimised by being called ‘fat’, it still felt remarkably heavy.

With their reactions, they’d made my step forward feel like a step into a descent, one that I’d have to spend an eternity trying to claw backward out of, and I hated it.

If I found my own goals, if I’d looked at my reality and decided upon what I wanted, why couldn’t I stand firm?

Perhaps that is another reason why despite all my previous efforts before, I did not gain weight- my subconscious might have absorbed more than I thought.

Perhaps it is a fact that most wounds reopen in the home. Many times, the home was where the skin first learned it could split.

I am stronger now, happier now. I appreciate that, and I know my mother and my society can love me but only be able to see me through the lenses of what they know. I can understand this, but simultaneously know that I do not have to accept it.

There is no point in trying to change someone else’s thinking for them. The larger problem lies in whether I can truly love how far I’ve come.

Right now, I need to look at what I need to exist more fully within myself, to stretch out and appreciate my self and the world I find myself in.

And if I manage to persist in my path, perhaps the circle of influence can turn the other way. Perhaps they will look at how I live and consider how many of the rules with which they live their life are truly necessary.

And hopefully, as I do persist, I’d do so in a way that grows the lives I touch as well, for a more beautiful, compassionate and responsible world about me.

To that end, I keep living, writing and exploring.

There are definitely more intimate accounts of this monster in the dark than my own, people who find its face as familiar as a parent’s. When it comes to this, I am but a duck swimming in the shallows, really coming to terms with a hint of the depths underneath.

But if, by any chance, anyone is navigating similar waters, I hope there is comfort in the knowledge that you are not alone, the way I draw confidence from picturing you, an omnipresent reader, bringing your own soul to my own through my words.

The world is large, and it is all the more beautiful for it.

Let us look at it and experience it together, in bodies we (are learning to) love.