Massive Mistake

I had to do a personal essay for my journalism class. I procrastinated on my first draft, and wrote it on the bus ride to school. However, upon reflection, I decided that there was much more to the story, and radically revised it. In my final draft here, I let the world know how I really felt about the situation. Here is it.

Massive Mistake

I know I am fat, and I try to not bring this fact to other people’s attention. XXL shirts cost a few dollars more, but who looks at me and seriously considers how much I paid for my clothes? It is hard to find belts my size, but who knows by looking at me how much time I spent looking for an adequate belt? My feet are a bit wider, but who notices that I never wear those narrow Converse shoes? My point is, I do not wear a sign that announces, “Fatty.” I do not wish to be different, and I do not want attention brought to me and my weight. Yet, on the other hand, I do want this attention.

This is the insecure contradiction of man. On one hand, we wish to be unique. If we are not doing something radical and singular, we give into the notion that we are dull and throwing away our golden years down the ever flowing river of time. On the other hand, we do not like being treated differently. Many suspect being treated differently as being treated as an inferior. Words like “discrimination” and “intolerance” usually follow. However, when you apply thought to the idea, what exactly is the matter with being treated differently if you are ipso facto different?

Under that intoxicating influence of love, I decided to go bungee jumping with a girl whom I thought I might marry one day. Though I was quiet and reserved, finding excitement in my books, she was more adventurous, studying animals as her passion and going hiking whenever she could. Our ideas of a good day were different, but our idea of a good partner, at the time, was not, and that was all that mattered. When she expressed to me that she wanted to go bungee jumping with me, I understood that meant a lot to her, and so I happily obliged. 

We arrived at the rendezvous with all the other jumpers, and there I learned that our weight had to be taken.This made me nervous. I know I am fat, and I do not like to be reminded of it. In most cases, like you see on television and those sensational videos of stunts gone fatally wrong, only one bungee cord is necessary. When my weight was taken by the bungee company employee, he had taken me aside. I must have felt the way a criminal feels when he realizes the authorities at the airport found the cocaine in his suitcase; busted. They found me out, they caught me fat-handed. I am fat, and he was going to tell me that I was fat. The walk ten feet over felt as though I was walking to the gallows, and my sympathetic executioner looked around to make sure no one was listening, hushed his voice, sank his head into his shoulders, as to brace himself for an explosion and said, “You’re too heavy for just one cord. You’re going to need two.” My face flushed red with humiliation. Having experienced this before, the employee graciously offered me a refund if I did not wish to put myself through the embarrassment. My date, a girl so thin she would not need half a bungee cord, did not seem to realize I just experienced the most humiliating event of my life, and did not see what the problem was.

I did not want to disappoint my date, so I carried on my shoulders the heavy label of “Big Fat Fatty.” I hated her, not because she made do it anyways against my will, she did not do that at all. No, I hated her for her ignorance of how deep it hurt my soul and her ignorance of the humility on my part to go through with it anyways. If she had said, “I know this is hard for you, but I want us to experience this together” I may have done it with joy. But she did not say that. She just asked what the big deal was. Apparently, I was. 

I did not ask to be treated differently, but that is exactly what was being asked of me. After being weighed, the employees of the bungee company emphasized how strong their cords were, and cited their entire existence as a company as having no accidents as proof. They said this to ensure us how safe we were with bungee cords, and settle any fears the crowd may have had lingering. This made my humiliation complete. If their bungee cords were indeed so strong, why are two necessary for me? Their efforts to puff themselves and their product up, and then tell me I need two bungee cords for safety reasons, made me feel worse. Their invincible cords had met their match. Clearly, they underestimated the gravity of my situation. 

Though I would like to think I am a victim of this contradiction, that I insist I be treated like any other person in spite of my differences and simultaneously demand my date that she recognize my feelings for being different, I am not. This was a habit that was unrelenting since, and has destroyed any possibility of being with the girl who graced me with garden of her adventurous turbulence. Though she had her shortcomings, after three years, I finally am willing to admit, the dictatorial incoherence of my emotions overpowered the relationship and it was all my fault.