Wednesday, November 28, 2012

From a king sized bed in a New Orleans Hotel…


During the wee hours of the morning before my flight back home to Chicago I was catching up on what my FaceBook friends had done over the weekend when an insomniac friend of mine messaged me. Lets call her *Gaby.

Gaby and I are co-workers in the promotional industry. No, we don’t stand outside of clubs with skimpy clothes on getting guys to come party, nor do we yell on the radio about how it’s going down tonight at club Triple X. We work as independent contractors, freelancing if you will, for various marketing companies, promoting products and raising brand awareness. I will definitely go more into the nuances of what I do for a living a later time, but for now just know that I have a lot of crazy stories up my sleeve. Gaby and I have had the pleasure of being stuck at the airport for 14 hours, working with backstabbers, digging out compact rental cars after freak snowstorms, being in scary hotel rooms with bed bugs and meeting strange men all over the United States. And that was just in January alone!

Over the past year or so Gaby and I have grown to be friends. We definitely have our spats, but she can be an extremely fun person and she’s always there to listen to you without being judgmental. Unfortunately I believe that Gaby suffers from low self-esteem. While true that she’s a great person, she’s not as thin as she was ten years ago (as seen from photos that she has shown me). She thinks her weight gain and more recently her age, has attributed to not booking jobs, not getting quality men and an overall poor quality of life.  This morning while we were FaceBook chatting I came across a photo of a bathroom scale with an inspirational message written on it and sent it to her…
           
            



Gaby: Does that make you feel better?



 LOL




Me:  make me feel better about what?




Gaby: Being curvy, silly



                       
Me: its not meant for me. It’s meant for you. 



i dont have issues with my body type




Gaby: People who are overweight should have issue with it. That's what's wrong with this county and the obesity problem



. Trying to make fat girls feel better is not the solution.



 But anywho...when do you come home



?
Me: u missed the meaning completely. I arrive at the airport at 4:30.
Gaby: I get the meaning they are sharing, I'm telling you how I feel about it




Me: the meaning was not that obese people should be okay with it. it was that obese people shouldn’t be made to feel like shit because they are obese. they shouldn’t think they cant get a man, or a job or have low self esteem. needing to lose weight doesnt change who u are as a person unless you let it. i agree fat ppl shouldnt be applauded for being fat. however i disagree with society saying fat ppl are less than




Gaby: Again, I get the message they are trying to send but I don't believe that crap




Me: u dont believe what




Gaby: Never mind. 




Me: that you are worthy of love and respect if youre overweight




Gaby: No that people should buy into that crap




Me: buy into what crap lol




Gaby: Never mind





I have had numerous conversations with Gaby about loving yourself at whatever size and being the best YOU that you can be but to no avail. She whines, complains and has an anecdote for why everything in her life sucks and the worse part is that she doesn’t think she has a negative point of view. She calls it being realistic.

>>>RANT ALERT<<< Well you know what? Here’s me being realistic for a minute. If you’re not going to do anything to change your life, yourself or your general well being then shut the FUCK up. Please?! Will you? I mean for real. I can only be in your corner for so long before I hang myself. I’m not a psychiatrist. I can give you words of encouragement until I’m blue in the face (and I have dark skin so that’s a lot of encouragement) but you need some deep self cleansing. You need to start loving yourself and I mean REALLY LOVE YOURSELF not claim that you think you’re fabulous, because until you do, you will be without a man, without friends and your life WILL suck!
>>>RANT OVER<<<

I’m not sure why I had such a strong reaction to her response to the photo. Maybe it was because she tried to insult me by asking “if that photo made me feel better.” Bitch please, I LOVE myself. Yes I’ve looked better at a size 6, but I don’t hate my life and make snide remarks to people because I’m currently a size 12. Maybe it was because I think she’s beautiful (sometimes on the inside lol) but definitely on the outside and no matter what anyone says, she’s not willing to see it. Maybe I was just PMS’ing, who knows. I do have a tendency to ‘go hard’ on people about topics I’m interested in or things I believe in. Guess I should have become a lawyer?


·     * To protect the names of people I know in real life, may be friends with or may have a strong distaste for, names will be changed. Actually sometimes I won’t change your name and I’ll put you on front street. Tough cookies.