In Which I Fail to Keep My Cool

I know my next post is supposed to be pictures of the windstorm damage. However, Bee took the camera, snapped a wacamole of pictures, and then didn’t charge the battery. Go figure. So while we wait for the camera to charge let’s take a nice stroll down memory lane, as prompted by this post on bigots.

I have dealt with fat bigotry all my life – normal, since I have been outside of “acceptable weight for your age” limits since I was little. The bigots resided at school, on the bus, and in my extended family in the form of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. On both sides. Suffice to say growing up as a fat chick left me open to a lot of heartache, and if it hadn’t been for my sisters (one of whom is also fat, and the other is wonderfully loyal) and my parents, I likely would have killed myself. ‘Cause Goddess knows, it’s not like I didn’t try.

I’ve been hearing a lot about this More to Love show and “fat pain”, which is apparently the punishment all fat women deserve for NOT CONFORMING. Little did I know that for untold years I have been suffering from FAT PAIN. If only somebody had told me that it was my own gorram fault for feeling bad! Here I thought it was because of others!

If only I had been thin in grade 6, then I wouldn’t have sat down at my chair only to find out Erin had liberally scattered thumbtacks on it so she could laugh and ask me in front of the class if my ass fat had actually swallowed them.

If I had been thin in grade 7, then I wouldn’t have been lumped into an experiential open-pod classroom with 80 other kids, only to find out that I couldn’t concentrate on my schoolwork. If I had been thin, then I wouldn’t have been so terrified and on alert for abuse that I would have paid attention! And then, if I had been thin, I wouldn’t have been sent to do basic addition on the computer, thus garnering for myself a reputation not only as the fat loser, but the fat retarded loser.

If I had only been thin in grade 9, I would have been smart enough to know that when Jameela and Carly asked me to be on their volleyball team, and go for tryouts, it was only so that they could jump me in the girl’s locker room, spray me with cheap, stinky perfume, kick me in the legs and back, and then tell me that I was stupid and ugly and smelled awful. If only I had been thin, then I wouldn’t now be dealing with a punishing compulsion to shower at least three times a day for a minimum 15 minutes each.

If I’d been thin, maybe my grandmother wouldn’t have served up toast for breakfast with a side of humiliation in the form of her grabbing my hands and jabbing a needle into them in order to test for diabetes.

If only I had been thin, I would have remembered that clearly my grandmother is blind, and any presents meant for a size XL when I am in fact a 4-5X would in fact be meant for somebody else.

If I’d been thin, then none of my aunts and uncles would have had the audacity to speak about me, while I was in the room, as if I was the Worst Creature Ever. I wouldn’t have growing up realizing that I was Different, and somehow Lesser Than my cousins… of course, that wouldn’t have honed my finely-tuned sense of injustices that I use in my daily working life.

If only I had been thin, then I wouldn’t have had to listen to my mother cry and beat herself up about it when my aunt declared that Ma was a BAD PARENT that should be jailed for child abuse simply because 2 out of 3 of her kids were fat… even though kid #3 has taken after dad’s side of the family and has an under active thyroid. Clearly it it better to have a lifelong medical problem than to be fat… but wait! Isn’t that the crux behind all those who think anorexia is better than fat?

And if only I hadn’t been fat, then I would have learned that just because a man smiles and is nice to you does not give him the right to ignore your “no” when you give it.

These are the causes of my fat pain. All of these stem of issues with other people who have issues with my fat. So therefore they are not “fat pain”. Fat pain is what happens when I get an indent into my skin from pants that don’t fit, but which I am forced to wear because that’s the biggest size the local store carries, and I’ll be damned if I travel more than two hours to find clothing that fits properly. I’d rather, and I do, suffer. Fat pain occurs because I can’t find decent shoes to fit a 12W shoe, so I wear men’s shoes or crocs, neither of which offer adequate support. Fat pain occurs when doctors refuse to treat me for my medical issues (such as an extremely heavy period that last September forced me to collapse and FAINT), instead blaming it on my weight and assuring me that I wouldn’t collapse/have headaches/be depressed/have fallen arches/have extremely allergic facial skin, thus dooming me to expensive French crème for severely hypo allergic persons with extremely freakishly dry skin… if. Only. I. Were. Not. Fat.

I REFUSE to suffer just because I’m a fat woman and you think I should. I have other reasons to suffer, which don’t involve my fat – but thanks for your concern.

To the people who made my educational experience a torturous nightmare, thank you for graduating and going forward to do nothing but run through a string of endless bad decisions, thus letting me re-meet you at your absolute coked-out worst…. only to realize that YOU had gotten fat, as well. Welcome to the club, honeys! You CAN survive as a fat person! It is NOT The End Of The World.

To my family who insist that Everything Will Be Roses if only I lose weight… thanks for the optimism, but I’m sure that thin people have their issues too. In fact, I know they do, because y’all are thin, and I think anyone that believes it is okay to give 2 chocolates at Christmas to a fat 13-year-old who is already obviously unstable when everyone else has grabbed a handful and then tell her IN FRONT OF EVERYONE ELSE that “this is why you’re fat” had a problem, a serious problem, in point of fact. Especially considering that Y’ALL are a bunch of fat people too!

To Dad, who insists that he only wants to see me be healthy… sure thing. You quit smoking, and I’ll learn to handle my emotions without using food. Wait a minute… I’m learning that now…. you better stomp that cigarette out man, you’ve only got the one bloody lung.

To all those who ask me to go to the gym (without them, of course, ’cause who wants to be seen with a leper fat person)… y’all are getting in the way of my HAES goals!

And to ANYBODY WHO HAS A PROBLEM WITH ME THE WAY I AM NOW….. to you I say a giant, hearty, big-boned, ample-curved, Rubenesque, curvaceous, big fat FUCK YOU. Get the god-damned hell outta my way, because I am now old enough to realize exactly how little your bigoted, mean spirited, close-minded ideas mean to me and how fucked up your opinions really are. Do me a favor and drop off the face of the earth, assholes- you’ll be leaving more room for me.

A Rant about Wands (and other ritual tools)

It’s a standard newbie pagan complaint.  “I went online and discovered wands sell for upwards of 85.00, but the really good ones are upwards of 150.00. I was told to only use soy candles, or make my own, and that’s so expensive! A real Book of Shadows ™ goes for 25.00! I can’t afford to be a <insert pagan type here>!!!”

To which I say, bah humbug.Yeah, you can go out and splurge and pick out a whole new junk drawer of precious magickal items, not one of which was purchased for less than 20.00. Will it make you a better pagan? I personally doubt it.

The trouble with witch stores is precisely what they offer: handcrafted magickal items, uniquely made by a magickal person, and blessed with magickal energy, directed towards a magickal person. (Can you hear the sarcasm?)

I realize that this is gonna piss some people off, but I wouldn’t trust anything that I hadn’t created or discovered myself. The exception to that would possibly be things like oil blends and herbs, and even then…. it’s an iffy thing, trusting some random seller.You don’t control the energy that went into making the item, and to my eyes it’s no different than purchasing a World of Warcraft character whom somebody has already played and boosted to Level 61 – it’s a cheat.

And yeah, I think you shouldn’t cheat.

Let me give you the example of my athame. I didn’t go out and buy an athame when I first started out (although, like any newbie, I dearly wanted to) because I quite frankly couldn’t afford it. Instead I skipped over the athame, trusting in my pointer fingers and hoping that by luck or fate I would “magically” get one. And a couple of years later, my grandparents were decluttering, and my grandfather had this beautiful knife with a pewter handle. Yeah, it was kind of silly and pretentious with it’s “dragon claw holding a globe” handle, and yeah, it was kind of tarnished and unloved. But I took it because I was drawn to it, and after many blessings and consecretions, I was able to feel that the athame was “clean” and now useable. Now adays, it reeks of “me”.

Or my collection of wands (and yes, I have several), all of which have been given to me by nature as I have been walking. I have several straight and fine willow wands (in fact, I have a surplus of these because every time I find a new one, I think, this one would be even better than any I have at home!) which of course are great for love magic, moon magic, and also for water or dowsing magic.

I have a wand which came from a balsam fir, and which speaks to me of the wilderness of the Rockies and also of foundations and taking the long view of things – I use this wand for any magic requiring a long-term commitment.

I also have a rather unique wand which is made up of some dessicated wonky spiraling tree root, species unknown, which is important not for “what tree this is made out of” but for the physical pattern of the root: like a unicorn’s horn, it starts out wide and spirals ever inward. I don’t know what root this is mad out of, so I don’t use it for magic spells. Rather it is a meditative prompt for inwards-focusing movement (did that make sense to anyone who is not me?)

Or my cauldrons, which was located for free at a church of all things, as part of 2008′s multi-faith fund raiser garage sale. I have a large copper one, and a small brass one.

Candles? Go ahead and get the dollar store variety. It’s the fact that you dress it and bless it that makes the magic work. Made your own oil blends. Harvest your own herbs, and dry them yourself, and make your own ritual jewelry and your own broom. Charge it and bless it, and you’ll know it belongs to you.

I can tell the things that I have made from the things that I have bought. The things I have bought are cold, impersonal, unless I have spent time “reformatting” them. They’ve been handled and fondled by others, and not everyone has been in a good frame of mind. The things I have found tend to be wilder, more chaotic, and that I’ve never been able to reformat. The things I have made are the easiest things for me to use: they feel and smell and think like me.

So my advice to newbie pagans (or even experienced pagans) is to go au naturel. Toss the fancy 400.00 wand and go out for a walk. In short, do it yourself – you’ll be the better for it, and so will your magic (and I’m not even going to remind you of the $$$$$ you’ll save).

So heading back to my original rant. Don’t take the easy way out. Work for your magic, and you’ll learn more in the process. You’ll suffer, you’ll gain. You’ll be the better pagan for it.