Chapter 37
Appendix U—Blog Post
The One with the Deep Dark Secret
By: Emmett Truesdale
I feel like a liar. Over the last year of writing this blog, I’ve let you in on my lifelong weight struggles, my relationship with food, even my hCG blunder in college, but there’s one subject I’ve been circling for months. Years, really.
I don’t like to talk or even think about it, but what happened over the course of those few days—what my stepdad did—isn’t just an event from my past. It’s a part of who I am.
I’m not saying every fat person has a story like this, or needs one to warrant compassion and understanding.
I know some people reading this will be disappointed, even angry, with me for talking about it now.
They’ll say I’m perpetuating a narrative of “fat trauma.” Those advocates, the ones who campaign for fat acceptance, will want me to say it’s not who I am but something that happened to me.
They’ll want me to make that part of me smaller.
Everyone always wants me to be smaller.
I guess that’s a pretty good place to start.
In October 2006, I was eleven years old, a sixth-grader at Meadowbrook Middle School. I didn’t have many friends. I played baritone in the school band and had an unhealthy obsession with Pokémon. I was fat. Kids bullied me and adults said they were sorry about it.
Mom and I still lived with my stepdad, Hank. My older sister Abby was in her second year at UC Santa Barbara and rarely visited. I understood. Life at home was turbulent. Mom and Hank were always fighting. Mostly I approved, hoping that meant they would soon get divorced.
Hank was spending a lot of time around the house.
He was looking for work after losing his job.
Mom told me there’d been a big scandal at his work, something about unauthorized testing, and he had taken the fall.
This meant he had all the time in the world to fixate on my eating.
Ever since the cupcake incident, he’d been picking on me even more than usual, threatening to put locks on the pantry door, on my jaw.
Mom announced one night that she was going away to visit Abby for Parents Mom was usually the one who snored.
I padded downstairs, getting sloppy as I neared the bottom. My bare feet met the cold tile with a slap.