Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin…Every Inch of It by Brittany Gibbons Page B
Authors: Brittany Gibbons
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and isolating. Andy’s attempts to visit went from every weekend to every four to six weeks because of his class load and work commitments. It was becoming difficult to talk my friends into making the trek so far from campus to visit, and many of them didn’t even have cars. Instead they’d beg me to come to weekend-long keggers in their crumbling apartments located just steps from campus. I’d want to go and have fun, but the emotions swirling in my head every minute of every day had been making me so increasingly tired, and maneuvering my car through the overcrowded streets and around burning mattresses and strangers having drunk sex next to dumpsters pushed my anxiety to its limits. I was angry, frustrated, and spent hours crying into my phone each night, begging Andy to come home, and with each excuse, no matter how valid, I evolved from being angry at being alone, to being scared to be alone.
I couldn’t tell if I had just outgrown all of that youthful nonsense, or if the exhaustion, worry, and heaviness inside my brain were signs of something else, something hereditary and unavoidable and waiting inside me like a time bomb. I stopped seeing my friends, and I sent their calls straight to voice mail until one day, they simply stopped calling.
AUGUST 19, 2003
I got halfway to class today and I turned around at the stoplight. I couldn’t remember if I’d triple-checked the door lock or unknowingly bumped the stove knobs with my backpack and turned on the gas. When I got into my parking lot, I also realized I may very well have left my curling iron plugged in. Thankfully I walked in to find Lucy lying in her bed unharmed and licking her crotch, and all the electronics were unplugged. But for good measure, before I leave the house each day, I’ve decided to stick my finger inside each socket hole and count them to double-check they are empty. There are 90 holes and I was only zapped 12 times. On the plus side, if I am ever worried I didn’t unplug anything, I can just look down at my red, throbbing, electrocuted finger. Living alone is mentally exhausting; I never realized how much work Andy had to do to keep us alive each day.
Admittedly, sticking my finger into a socket sounds a little fucked-up. But the truth is pain is a tool I often use to offset my anxiety. I had my very first panic attack my junior year of high school. It came from out of nowhere. I was sitting on the couch having dinner next to my mom when suddenly it was as if I’d forgotten how to swallow. My heart sped up, my chest throbbed, and my breathing was erratic. Terrified, my mother threw me into the car and drove me to the emergency room, worried I was having a heart attack or allergic reaction. An EKG confirmed I was not, in fact, dying, but instead was having an anxiety attack. It was themost real sense of finality I’d ever experienced. Have you ever tried to put a sports bra on after getting out of the shower, and that split second where you’re stuck with your arms up in the air and you think you’re going to die? That is what my first panic attack felt like, and it lasted twenty minutes. I later was diagnosed with GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) and put on various types of medication. I have since spent a large portion of each day passing off my suffocating worry and doom as an adorable case of social awkwardness.
I envision my mind as a plot of grass full of sheep, surrounded by a perimeter of electric fence. If I’m not constantly vigilant and aware of my thoughts, the electric fence shuts off, the sheep jump out, and my panic gets away from me. The chance for an attack is especially bad just before bed or when I’m distracted and lost in thought in the car, causing me to slap myself in the face as hard as I can, or bite the inside of my upper arm. If I can feel the pain, then I am still alive and can begin to focus on rounding up the sheep again. See? This makes perfect sense in my head.
August 20, 2003
Executive decision
I couldn’t tell if I had just outgrown all of that youthful nonsense, or if the exhaustion, worry, and heaviness inside my brain were signs of something else, something hereditary and unavoidable and waiting inside me like a time bomb. I stopped seeing my friends, and I sent their calls straight to voice mail until one day, they simply stopped calling.
AUGUST 19, 2003
I got halfway to class today and I turned around at the stoplight. I couldn’t remember if I’d triple-checked the door lock or unknowingly bumped the stove knobs with my backpack and turned on the gas. When I got into my parking lot, I also realized I may very well have left my curling iron plugged in. Thankfully I walked in to find Lucy lying in her bed unharmed and licking her crotch, and all the electronics were unplugged. But for good measure, before I leave the house each day, I’ve decided to stick my finger inside each socket hole and count them to double-check they are empty. There are 90 holes and I was only zapped 12 times. On the plus side, if I am ever worried I didn’t unplug anything, I can just look down at my red, throbbing, electrocuted finger. Living alone is mentally exhausting; I never realized how much work Andy had to do to keep us alive each day.
Admittedly, sticking my finger into a socket sounds a little fucked-up. But the truth is pain is a tool I often use to offset my anxiety. I had my very first panic attack my junior year of high school. It came from out of nowhere. I was sitting on the couch having dinner next to my mom when suddenly it was as if I’d forgotten how to swallow. My heart sped up, my chest throbbed, and my breathing was erratic. Terrified, my mother threw me into the car and drove me to the emergency room, worried I was having a heart attack or allergic reaction. An EKG confirmed I was not, in fact, dying, but instead was having an anxiety attack. It was themost real sense of finality I’d ever experienced. Have you ever tried to put a sports bra on after getting out of the shower, and that split second where you’re stuck with your arms up in the air and you think you’re going to die? That is what my first panic attack felt like, and it lasted twenty minutes. I later was diagnosed with GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) and put on various types of medication. I have since spent a large portion of each day passing off my suffocating worry and doom as an adorable case of social awkwardness.
I envision my mind as a plot of grass full of sheep, surrounded by a perimeter of electric fence. If I’m not constantly vigilant and aware of my thoughts, the electric fence shuts off, the sheep jump out, and my panic gets away from me. The chance for an attack is especially bad just before bed or when I’m distracted and lost in thought in the car, causing me to slap myself in the face as hard as I can, or bite the inside of my upper arm. If I can feel the pain, then I am still alive and can begin to focus on rounding up the sheep again. See? This makes perfect sense in my head.
August 20, 2003
Executive decision
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