This week has had me comparing myself to those that support Trump. Not because I support Trump. Not because I deny science or suggest that the reputable news sources are full of lies. No, because I was upset by something someone said about me.
I was upset that someone suggested I was fat shaming when describing my own situation, hyperbolized.... and I've since been thinking about why this upset me.
First there's the more reasonable leap of the two, which is also what, I feel, brings me closer to a Trump supporter. This is the idea that someone thinks that what I said was fat shaming when I don't agree it was. I could go into why I feel that it wasn't fat shaming, but does that really matter? And boy do I go into why it's not fat shaming. But isn't this just what those on the other side of the political divide do? Sure, they use false-equivalencies and falsehoods to support their arguments, but there's also the element of abuse is in the eyes of the abused and that the intent of the person saying harmful words isn't the key. Words can be harmful without intent and those harmed should be the ones listened to... and yet I object to hearing my words are harmful. What right have I to claim that my words aren't harmful? I toss around a couple reasons, but are those reasons valid? Is it even possible for them to be valid? Should I not just accept that my words were harmful and try to learn from that? Is that not what I'm supposed to do?
Second, there's the idea that my health-related target is invalid and shouldn't be worked on. This is the less reasonable element of it but somehow it plays out in my head. I'm struggling with my weight, trying to get it back down to where I was when my doctor gave me the good news that I had an almost-normal blood sugar level, so to hear that that struggle is fat shaming suggests to me that people saying so feel that I should give up on my health efforts. Having diabetes, not working on my health through watching what I eat and exercising has very real consequences, so feeling that someone is saying I shouldn't be working on it is akin to them saying they are ok with my encountering those consequences. Clearly this is unlikely and yet it's still a feeling I keep coming back to when thinking about how I might interact with them later.
But I digress.
Even as I type this post, I continue to feel rage, though lessened, about the insinuation that what I said was fat-shaming and all the defenses come up and all the anger boils. And I have not found the reason why my original post was fat shaming.... and yet that's still an excuse isn't it? An excuse to feel upset about having been called out for something I would proclaim as wrong.
I'm glad to say it's not overwhelming my emotional state as it was days ago... but still, there's this feeling... and depending upon when I investigate it, I either go down the self-pity / anger path or the route of questioning whether I'm just someone of privilege being called out and then becoming self-defensive with no actual defense other than those like "but how can I be shaming people like myself?".
It probably doesn't help that I'm frustrated with my efforts to improve my health and that we've seen that COVID cases appear to be back on the rise in MA (as well as many other .... while these aren't directly related, they muddy my mental waters with other areas of distress and anger towards others and myself.
I'm writing this both in an effort to help myself further my self evaluation as well as to identify that it's ok to do such self evaluations. None of us are perfect and we should all strive to be better.
