You ok, fatty?

I'm feeling crabby today and managed to remember this day sucked last year, too. Because even medical people can suck when it comes to their lazy assumptions.

Today has been really, really bad for more reasons than seem possible.

And it's weird how your mind handles things. I don't know how to process the rest of the bad yet, so I'm focusing a bunch of rage at an orderly right now.

Here's the fun thing about having been not fat, being borderline, and being fat all in the same lifetime - you get a front row seat to how blatantly obvious people are about the fact that they see you as fat before the see you as anything else.

I was in a waiting room for a couple of hours today for a reason that didn't include me hurting myself. While there, I watched a couple of orderlies pushing people around in the wheelchairs taking them here or there or wherever they needed to be. They had families in tow and were chatting about various things along the way. I probably know too many of those various things because I people watch a little too closely sometimes.

Eventually, it came time for one of those chatty orderlies to come for me and my waiting partner. They decided he needed a wheelchair and loaded him in. Mr chatty orderly didn't have much to say this time, and while I thought he was walking a little too slow, even for someone pushing a wheelchair, he kept slowing a little more every 20 steps or so to look at me and ask, "are you ok?"

By the third time he asked, I realized this jackass thought he was maybe pushing the fat girl too hard. I mean, he had no way of knowing that I have a couple of crippling diseases, I had no issues with my gait or with my hands or any other problems that might have stood out to someone dealing with patients all day, hell, I'm on steroids, I feel pretty flipping good right now in that respect. Anyway, I let him ask two more times before I stopped smiling and said, "yeah, I was hoping you'd pick up the pace a bit" in my impatient, I'd rather be anywhere but near you voice.

He glared for a split second then checked himself. Almost like he'd never been busted in his ridiculous assumptions before. And really, he probably hasn't.

I know full well there are a lot of fat people who are just lazy but there are plenty of skinny people who are equally as lazy who just got lucky enough to take a swan dive in the gene pool. But it sucks that for more people than not, when they look at a fat person, their first thought is, "well, this bitch hasn't moved from the couch or put down her bag of chips in at least three years, she obviously can't walk an 1/8th of a mile without passing out cold."

Because some of us are out here fighting off the effects of seven medications at a time, going to the gym three and four times a week, and are depriving ourselves of our favorite foods to celebrate losing four pounds in just under two months knowing full well it's a stupid fucking celebration but it's the first time in months the scale has decided to move in a downward direction. Some of us aren't diabetic and don't have high blood pressure or cholesterol...we we were unlucky enough to end up with a shitty immune system, some bad genes, and the inability to walk like a normal person for a couple of years until we finally happened upon a doctor who said "maybe we should run some tests." And some of us may be going to the gym multiple times a month celebrating every time we get a little stronger even while it devastates us that the weight isn't dropping because we know that's a *huge* part of the reason we are still able to function. And I passionately despise the people who make me question the significance of that for no reason other than the fact that I don't fit their definition of acceptable.

Six years ago, it was a good day when I didn't need help brushing my hair. I still have a hard time admitting to that. But hey, the scale reads the wrong numbers.