Recently, I was reading a blog written by cult film icon Kevin Smith, about a girl who killed herself over the end of an online relationship with a boy she met on MySpace. The boy, creepily enough, turned out to be the 48 year-old mother of a neighborhood friend who was allegedly on an undercover mission to find out if the girl was talking shit about her daughter (for my thoughts about the supposed adult’s behavior in this, please see my other blog Sunny Spells It Out). Sadly, the girl, nor her vigilant mother, had any idea it was her friend’s mother she had been talking with for months when the imaginary boy named Josh Evans turned on her and crushed her hopes for romance. Perhaps if she had known, she may not have done so, but this turn of events was the final blow that prompted Megan Meier to hang herself by a belt in her closet.
Why? Why would this 13 year-old girl with beautiful, sparkly eyes, lovely skin, gorgeous hair, and a sweet smile (that would soon shed its metallic shield) decide that she had nothing left to live for? She lost the chance of love with a cute boy.
Think that’s silly? Ridiculous? I don’t. I think it is a tragedy of furious proportions, but hardly a shock. I’ve been where she was, and even now I wonder how I lived through it. You see, this pretty young lady struggled with her weight and as such was shocked to have found such a catch in the first place. As Smith points out, it sucks enough to be a teenager. It sucks even more to be a fat one. It sucks even harder to be a fat girl. Believe me, I know.
Of course, we all have our cross to bear. For some of us, it’s that we are too thin, too tall, can’t gain muscle no matter how we try, have no chin, or have acne that makes Bryan Adams look airbrushed. I suppose there is even the possibility that being too pretty or handsome might be troublesome to a youngster. The truth is there aren’t really that many people out there who had the “charmed” life of growing up. It’s easy to believe the opposite when we want to blame our shitty childhood for every rotten thing that befalls us today, but statistically speaking, just about everyone was in the SUCK during their teens. Yet even now, in a time if infinite information and cross-cultural and lifestyle acceptance, being fat still suffers an unending bastion of tormenters that crosses gender, race and most creeds. While it is politically incorrect to badmouth a person of color, religion or disability (at least in the US), we are still showered with permission to practically stone someone for being overweight. That’s hard enough to wrap one’s mind around being an intelligent, fairly logical thirtysomething. To try to fathom that at 13 is… well… almost unimaginable.
I won’t pretend to know exactly what must have been going through Megan’s mind when she came to the conclusion that there was no hope left in her life. After all, unlike myself at her age, She had been diagnosed with ADHD and severe depression and I suspect that if someone had given me those justifications for despair when I was 13, I might not be here to write to you today. To my mind, it is a dangerous thing to tell anyone of questionable mental state that they have been clinically diagnosed with virtually anything, because if it’s one thing people usually are looking for more than anything else, it’s something to excuse them from having to work on their problems (you know I’m right, think of how many people you have met that throw off their shitty behavior to their astrological sign!). That is not to say that there are not legitimate cases that need serious medical attention, but if you were to have run into the amount of people I have (in the last four years) that have been “diagnosed” as manic, you would start questioning the validity of these things , too. Trust me! I’m no hard-ass. People need help. But more than anything, they need to help themselves; including me. And that is rarely something that people are either expected or taught to do in this day and age. But what on Earth did this girl have to be that depressed about? Is being fat enough to warrant such drastic measures?
It feels like it, sometimes.
Unlike alcoholism, drug abuse, personal abuse (such as cutting) and other eating disorders (at least until ones bones are prominent), you can’t hide fat. You cannot quietly deal with or (revel in) your problem because it is out there for all to see. There is no sympathy because it is assumed depraved gluttony got you to that place, although it is not always the case. While everyone who judges you probably has an equally, if not worse vice, it is socially permissive to hate fat people. To that end, I am sure that there are those that behave as though they hate fat people because they the only group left to openly hate and they need someone to vent their rage to. So you feel as though you cannot lose it fast enough. Every day you do not see results, is another day when you feel as if everyone around you is disgusted by your very existence (and many will tell you they are). Before you know it, you are hating yourself for not being done, hating yourself for every slip up, every ounce not lost, every moment you’re not exercising, every date you were not asked out on, and it goes on and on. It is so easy to get into a spiral of self loathing and unless you have people around you that really know how to deal with that kind of thing, who know how to talk you off the ledge, you have to have a will of steel to not let it get you down. Toss the gasoline of lost love onto that fire and friends, I’m here to tell you, it’s a blaze that feels inextinguishable.
In my search for more on the story of this girl, I came across a video from ABC news. Something that caught my attention was that Megan’s mother is very petite, and relatively pretty (in that white-bread, mid-western, suburban way), while her father could easily have been a linebacker in college. I wondered if she had developed her own psychosis about her size or if she felt pressure to look more like her mother. So much so, in fact, I had to watch the video a second time to actually hear the interview. Mostly, I found myself looking at the subtext of what may have sent this girl over the edge. Although in all seriousness, she could have had all the support in the world from her loving parents and still felt like the loss of Josh Evans was enough of a reason. There is no way to know what could have been said, what could have been done to prevent this girl from making such a horrible decision. And ever since I’ve learned of this story, I haven’t been able to get her off my mind. I have been so sad and troubled and didn’t realize until tonight that it was this girl who was plaguing me.
You see, I have had to work very, very, very hard on myself to get to a place where I don’t feel like I would be lucky to get anyone at all to love me, solely because of my weight. It is an accomplishment I am profoundly proud of, because it meant undoing over 34 years of brainwashing by my mother, my former friends, schoolmates, co-workers, boys I admired, men I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot-pole, my brother, teachers, movies, tv, magazines and comedians; all of whom have told me that I could never find love as long as I was fat. Up until very recently, I still believed that to the world, I was bottom of the barrel, last-resort material. If you had told me I would ever reach this place when I was 13, I would have silently believed you were either nuts, or an alien. I wouldn’t have even had the courage to tell you that you were wrong. After all, I was firmly convinced by all the aforementioned influences that I was a worthless, ugly, disgusting, unlovable creature because I was overweight (and at 13, no more than 40 pounds). It wasn’t something I had created in my mind. It was a belief that was being crammed down my throat every single day of my life, coming at me from all directions. Little has changed in how often I get that message, but my reaction to it has in spades. And I think of how Megan had to have had it even worse with the internet; with all the phonies and fakes, all the pretenders that one encounters on the internet. Even with her mother keeping a watchful eye on who her daughter was encountering, the keenest of maternal instincts couldn’t have foreseen the duplicity that would end her daughter’s life. The more I think about the whole thing, the more angry, the more absolutely fucking outraged I get!
Without even going into the fact that Josh Evans was a fictional being, one of the things that struck my heart the hardest was that in the video interview, Megan’s mother made mention of how shocked Megan was that Josh was so hot. My heart ached so bad it made me sick to my stomach. It was an unexpected jolt of recollection and commiseration. How many times had I felt that? How many times had it been a cruel prank or the boy buckled to peer pressure and backed out with hateful words? So many I cannot count and the ones I remember clearly are hard enough to think of. And I wonder now how many times it crossed my mind to end my life, and therefore my misery, when the truth came out. I wonder what made Megan cross that line when I didn’t, or couldn’t.
Sometimes it feels like that’s the only option to make the pain go away; the pain of alienation, of fear that you will never shed that which seemingly makes you unlovable. The way this story played out for Megan, I cannot say that I don’t understand her choice. Still, I wish she had more strength, more courage, more imagination to think that perhaps she would overcome her loss and find someone new. I wish Megan Meier had reconsidered her options and imagined the debt of pain she left behind that her parents now pay. More importantly, I wish someone had been able to convince her that it would pass before she had a chance to do the undoable.
Trying to become the socially perceived idea of beautiful is such an ugly road to tread. To put your worthiness, your loveable-ness, as it were, in the hands of the public at large is to give up your own opinion of yourself. You will never ever be smart enough, cool enough, pretty enough, whatever enough for everyone. Ever. EVER! And that is totally okay! Really! It is! Know why? Here’s why. Not everyone out there deserves to have their opinion of you matter. I learned that the hard way. And besides, despite that which the cults of celebrity and fashion dictate to us, there is an immeasurable amount of tastes out there. Even if you don’t find them attractive (which is a conversation for a whole other day), there are going to be plenty of people out there who will want you… sometimes quite badly. But the most important thing that schools rarely even attempt to teach, and many parents aren't deep enough to think of, is to love and value your life. You cannot get that love from anyone but yourself and it is essential. When you have it, nothing will keep you down forever. Nothing will make you fear being unloved ever again. Nothing will make you believe that your life isn’t worth living because you will value that life far too highly to give it up for anything. ANY… THING.
Megan, wherever you are… I am filled with grief know that this message couldn’t have and didn’t get to you in time. It would have been such a thrill to hear how you bested your dragons, and came out kickin’ asses and taking names. God, what a story that would have been, and just think of the lives you might have saved in the telling of it.
Why? Why would this 13 year-old girl with beautiful, sparkly eyes, lovely skin, gorgeous hair, and a sweet smile (that would soon shed its metallic shield) decide that she had nothing left to live for? She lost the chance of love with a cute boy.
Think that’s silly? Ridiculous? I don’t. I think it is a tragedy of furious proportions, but hardly a shock. I’ve been where she was, and even now I wonder how I lived through it. You see, this pretty young lady struggled with her weight and as such was shocked to have found such a catch in the first place. As Smith points out, it sucks enough to be a teenager. It sucks even more to be a fat one. It sucks even harder to be a fat girl. Believe me, I know.
Of course, we all have our cross to bear. For some of us, it’s that we are too thin, too tall, can’t gain muscle no matter how we try, have no chin, or have acne that makes Bryan Adams look airbrushed. I suppose there is even the possibility that being too pretty or handsome might be troublesome to a youngster. The truth is there aren’t really that many people out there who had the “charmed” life of growing up. It’s easy to believe the opposite when we want to blame our shitty childhood for every rotten thing that befalls us today, but statistically speaking, just about everyone was in the SUCK during their teens. Yet even now, in a time if infinite information and cross-cultural and lifestyle acceptance, being fat still suffers an unending bastion of tormenters that crosses gender, race and most creeds. While it is politically incorrect to badmouth a person of color, religion or disability (at least in the US), we are still showered with permission to practically stone someone for being overweight. That’s hard enough to wrap one’s mind around being an intelligent, fairly logical thirtysomething. To try to fathom that at 13 is… well… almost unimaginable.
I won’t pretend to know exactly what must have been going through Megan’s mind when she came to the conclusion that there was no hope left in her life. After all, unlike myself at her age, She had been diagnosed with ADHD and severe depression and I suspect that if someone had given me those justifications for despair when I was 13, I might not be here to write to you today. To my mind, it is a dangerous thing to tell anyone of questionable mental state that they have been clinically diagnosed with virtually anything, because if it’s one thing people usually are looking for more than anything else, it’s something to excuse them from having to work on their problems (you know I’m right, think of how many people you have met that throw off their shitty behavior to their astrological sign!). That is not to say that there are not legitimate cases that need serious medical attention, but if you were to have run into the amount of people I have (in the last four years) that have been “diagnosed” as manic, you would start questioning the validity of these things , too. Trust me! I’m no hard-ass. People need help. But more than anything, they need to help themselves; including me. And that is rarely something that people are either expected or taught to do in this day and age. But what on Earth did this girl have to be that depressed about? Is being fat enough to warrant such drastic measures?
It feels like it, sometimes.
Unlike alcoholism, drug abuse, personal abuse (such as cutting) and other eating disorders (at least until ones bones are prominent), you can’t hide fat. You cannot quietly deal with or (revel in) your problem because it is out there for all to see. There is no sympathy because it is assumed depraved gluttony got you to that place, although it is not always the case. While everyone who judges you probably has an equally, if not worse vice, it is socially permissive to hate fat people. To that end, I am sure that there are those that behave as though they hate fat people because they the only group left to openly hate and they need someone to vent their rage to. So you feel as though you cannot lose it fast enough. Every day you do not see results, is another day when you feel as if everyone around you is disgusted by your very existence (and many will tell you they are). Before you know it, you are hating yourself for not being done, hating yourself for every slip up, every ounce not lost, every moment you’re not exercising, every date you were not asked out on, and it goes on and on. It is so easy to get into a spiral of self loathing and unless you have people around you that really know how to deal with that kind of thing, who know how to talk you off the ledge, you have to have a will of steel to not let it get you down. Toss the gasoline of lost love onto that fire and friends, I’m here to tell you, it’s a blaze that feels inextinguishable.
In my search for more on the story of this girl, I came across a video from ABC news. Something that caught my attention was that Megan’s mother is very petite, and relatively pretty (in that white-bread, mid-western, suburban way), while her father could easily have been a linebacker in college. I wondered if she had developed her own psychosis about her size or if she felt pressure to look more like her mother. So much so, in fact, I had to watch the video a second time to actually hear the interview. Mostly, I found myself looking at the subtext of what may have sent this girl over the edge. Although in all seriousness, she could have had all the support in the world from her loving parents and still felt like the loss of Josh Evans was enough of a reason. There is no way to know what could have been said, what could have been done to prevent this girl from making such a horrible decision. And ever since I’ve learned of this story, I haven’t been able to get her off my mind. I have been so sad and troubled and didn’t realize until tonight that it was this girl who was plaguing me.
You see, I have had to work very, very, very hard on myself to get to a place where I don’t feel like I would be lucky to get anyone at all to love me, solely because of my weight. It is an accomplishment I am profoundly proud of, because it meant undoing over 34 years of brainwashing by my mother, my former friends, schoolmates, co-workers, boys I admired, men I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot-pole, my brother, teachers, movies, tv, magazines and comedians; all of whom have told me that I could never find love as long as I was fat. Up until very recently, I still believed that to the world, I was bottom of the barrel, last-resort material. If you had told me I would ever reach this place when I was 13, I would have silently believed you were either nuts, or an alien. I wouldn’t have even had the courage to tell you that you were wrong. After all, I was firmly convinced by all the aforementioned influences that I was a worthless, ugly, disgusting, unlovable creature because I was overweight (and at 13, no more than 40 pounds). It wasn’t something I had created in my mind. It was a belief that was being crammed down my throat every single day of my life, coming at me from all directions. Little has changed in how often I get that message, but my reaction to it has in spades. And I think of how Megan had to have had it even worse with the internet; with all the phonies and fakes, all the pretenders that one encounters on the internet. Even with her mother keeping a watchful eye on who her daughter was encountering, the keenest of maternal instincts couldn’t have foreseen the duplicity that would end her daughter’s life. The more I think about the whole thing, the more angry, the more absolutely fucking outraged I get!
Without even going into the fact that Josh Evans was a fictional being, one of the things that struck my heart the hardest was that in the video interview, Megan’s mother made mention of how shocked Megan was that Josh was so hot. My heart ached so bad it made me sick to my stomach. It was an unexpected jolt of recollection and commiseration. How many times had I felt that? How many times had it been a cruel prank or the boy buckled to peer pressure and backed out with hateful words? So many I cannot count and the ones I remember clearly are hard enough to think of. And I wonder now how many times it crossed my mind to end my life, and therefore my misery, when the truth came out. I wonder what made Megan cross that line when I didn’t, or couldn’t.
Sometimes it feels like that’s the only option to make the pain go away; the pain of alienation, of fear that you will never shed that which seemingly makes you unlovable. The way this story played out for Megan, I cannot say that I don’t understand her choice. Still, I wish she had more strength, more courage, more imagination to think that perhaps she would overcome her loss and find someone new. I wish Megan Meier had reconsidered her options and imagined the debt of pain she left behind that her parents now pay. More importantly, I wish someone had been able to convince her that it would pass before she had a chance to do the undoable.
Trying to become the socially perceived idea of beautiful is such an ugly road to tread. To put your worthiness, your loveable-ness, as it were, in the hands of the public at large is to give up your own opinion of yourself. You will never ever be smart enough, cool enough, pretty enough, whatever enough for everyone. Ever. EVER! And that is totally okay! Really! It is! Know why? Here’s why. Not everyone out there deserves to have their opinion of you matter. I learned that the hard way. And besides, despite that which the cults of celebrity and fashion dictate to us, there is an immeasurable amount of tastes out there. Even if you don’t find them attractive (which is a conversation for a whole other day), there are going to be plenty of people out there who will want you… sometimes quite badly. But the most important thing that schools rarely even attempt to teach, and many parents aren't deep enough to think of, is to love and value your life. You cannot get that love from anyone but yourself and it is essential. When you have it, nothing will keep you down forever. Nothing will make you fear being unloved ever again. Nothing will make you believe that your life isn’t worth living because you will value that life far too highly to give it up for anything. ANY… THING.
Megan, wherever you are… I am filled with grief know that this message couldn’t have and didn’t get to you in time. It would have been such a thrill to hear how you bested your dragons, and came out kickin’ asses and taking names. God, what a story that would have been, and just think of the lives you might have saved in the telling of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment