The Weight I Was Never Meant to Carry

I’ve always been told I ‘carry my weight well,’ but the truth is, what I carried - quietly, constantly, and all on my own - was shame. Shame layered and suffocating. Shame passed down like an heirloom. Shame written into medical charts before I could speak for myself. Shame that taught me my body was a problem to solve, not a home to live in.

I was taught that fat wasn’t just a descriptor or a size. It was a failure. Not just of health, but of morality. Of self-control. Of being worthy. Fatness was a warning: don’t end up like that. Don’t eat that. Don’t wear that. Don’t let anyone see you want, need, or take up space. Don’t be comfortable. Don’t even look comfortable.

So, I learned to contort, to starve, to apologize for existing before anyone else could make me feel sorry. I learned that hunger was holy and fullness was sin. That discipline meant suffering. That control was the only currency fat people were allowed to trade in. And that if I could suffer enough, maybe I’d earn the right to belong.

I can’t count the diets, the “lifestyle changes,” the weigh-ins, the shame spirals, the spreadsheets, the apps. I can’t count the times I was congratulated for disappearing. For having “such willpower.” For being less.

I was told I looked amazing when I was absolutely falling apart.

Weight loss didn’t save me. It stripped me. Of joy. Of instinct. Of any chance I had at trusting myself. It made me punish hunger, ignore pain, and treat pleasure like failure. And every time I lost weight, I was rewarded. Smiles. Compliments. Doors opened.

…as if I had become a more acceptable version of myself.

But no one asked what it cost me.

No one asked about the spiral when I couldn’t maintain it. The dread of gaining weight and knowing what would be taken from me. The terror that my worth was conditional, and I’d broken the contract.

That’s the weight I was never meant to carry.

Not the pounds. But the impossible expectations. The erasure. The exhaustion of performing “progress” just to be seen as human. The pressure to always be working toward thinness, as if my existence required a permission slip signed by someone else's comfort.

I no longer believe that my fatness is a personal failure.

But I can still feel the echoes.

I still brace in public spaces. I am still tense at doctor’s offices, preparing to be blamed. I still feel the sting of chairs too small, stares too long, and compliments too conditional. Because even when you’ve unlearned the shame, the world keeps throwing it back at you.

And I am tired.

Tired of apologizing for a body that survives, that carries, that feels. Tired of shrinking to fit a world that will never meet me with the same care I give it. Tired of pretending that weight loss is some holy grail instead of what it’s always been for me: a trauma dressed up as virtue.

So, I’m done performing.

I’m choosing to feed myself, not punish myself. To wear what I love. To move for joy. To rest without guilt. To take up space without asking first. I’m done measuring my value by someone else’s scale.

Fatness is not the burden.

The burden is the belief that fat people must suffer to be seen as worthy. That we must earn love by erasing ourselves.

So, that’s what I’m putting down.

And if you’re reading this - tired, aching, questioning your worth - I need you to hear this, too: You are not broken. You are not a cautionary tale. You are not a failure. You are a body, a person, a pulse, a story. You are allowed to take up space, fully and without apology. You are worthy, exactly as you are. We were never meant to carry this. Not for them. Not for the mirror.

Not even for the version of us who believed the lie.

Let it go.

You deserve better.

We all do.