Limitations
I apologise for ‘stay home or buy a second seat’ at the end of Opera and Handbells the other night. It was unnecessarily inflammatory—and tactless.
But that’s as far as my apology goes. The underlying protest remains the same: It is not okay that the woman sitting next to me ruined my evening because she couldn’t help being too large for her seat and therefore was also sitting on mine.
One of my mods wrote me a heads up that ‘stay home or buy a second seat’ was going to get me some flak. I said that if there were at least three complaints on the forum, I’d respond with another blog entry. There have now been three.
The third protest includes this line: ‘The argument that people who can’t fit into one seat should buy a second would effectively keep me from travelling, attending any function where seats were limited, or otherwise doing anything that might impinge on others because it would cost me twice as much, and I don’t have that kind of money.’ Can’t travel? Don’t have that kind of money? Really? Tell me about it. I have ME. [Blogmom explains: ME stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis, the British term used in preference to the American usage Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)]
I haven’t been back to the States since the SUNSHINE tour—because of the ME. I haven’t been on a book tour since SUNSHINE—which is a bad thing for my career, you know, the thing that earns me the money to live. I’ve missed seeing Hannah’s kids grow up because I can’t travel. All my old friends are three and four thousand miles away, and I can’t travel. Problems with hellhound minders (and worry about my 82 year old husband) are contributing factors to my staying at home. But the bottom line is: I have ME. I can’t even drive more than about half an hour because the stress of that split-second attention you must have behind the wheel does me in. I haven’t been to see Luke because it would involve two long days on a train, and I can’t do that either. If I could afford first-class, maybe I could do it. I don’t know. I don’t know because I don’t have the money. I don’t go to social events because I’m a cranky, cross-grained cow—but also because social events are way too expensive in terms of energy. My digestive troubles at this point are so extreme as to be (almost) funny; but as a result we almost never go out for a meal any more because it’s just so much frelling effort—unnecessary effort being the thing someone with ME most wants to avoid. And then there are all the other allergies, intolerances and sensitivities that tend to be a part of the ME package.
I don’t ring quarter peals (forty-five minutes without a break on the end of a bell rope) any more because I can’t. I’ve given up riding because of the ME—my favourite animals my entire life have been horses, and I had to quit riding when, for the very first time I had a lovely horse at a price I could afford, a lovely place to ride her, and a lovely instructor.* This sucks very big time.
That third forum commenter also says: ‘But I do think that someone here ought to have some Green and Black’s and calm down’.
‘Buy a second seat’ may be a hot button for fat people. ‘Calm down’ is a hot button for this ME sufferer. I imagine that ‘if you would only calm down’ sounds a lot like ‘if you would only eat less’. If it were only that easy. Do I believe I’m implicated in the fact that I have ME? Yes. I’m a wired, intense, overrreactive, anxious person. Not every wired, intense, overreactive anxious person has ME, but I would guess it’s a risk factor, like high blood pressure is a risk factor for heart trouble. I don’t know what the risk factors for fatness are—aside from an inconvenient metabolism rate—but I doubt that very many of them are under anyone’s conscious control, any more than ‘calming down’ is under mine.**
Life’s a bugger. Given. But the stuff you didn’t have (much) choice about, you have to deal with, as best you can. I have to deal with the ME. I miss a lot of stuff I would like to do. I do manage to do a lot, but in the first place it’s carefully chosen not to press too hard on my weak places. In the second place, as I’ve often said, as ME goes I have a mild case. And in the third place . . . for the purposes of this blog, I lie by omission a lot. You have no frelling idea. You’re seeing the swan, not the frantically paddling little legs under the surface of the water.***
Yes, I am thin—and yes I am proud of being thin because I do have to work at it—but I’m thin because it’s something I can do.† There are many things I can’t do—like calm down—and I am not pointing any fingers. You don’t necessarily get the choices you want. You can only make choices about the stuff that you’ve been given.
I’m not pointing any fingers until someone behaves in a way I consider irresponsible. I object to SUVs bulldozing down the middle of the road. I object to aggressive off lead dogs. And I object to being sat on at the opera.
Did I react extra fiercely to my opera evening being wrecked because of the other restrictions of my life? Possibly. But the fact remains that I believe my neighbour behaved selfishly and irresponsibly. The way she behaved is not okay and it is not okay that she ruined my (expensive, much-looked-forward-to) evening.
And this discussion is now closed. I’ve asked a mod to close the forum thread to Opera and Handbells, and there will be no thread to this post.
* * *
* Not too long ago there was a big kerfuffle in the British Horse Society about fat riders—that no one over x weight should be allowed to ride a horse. Interestingly it seemed to target women, or maybe it was only women who were willing to speak up about it, or maybe it was only the women’s letters to the BHS journal that caught my eye. My reaction was, What? As a blanket veto this did seem to me sheer anti-fat prejudice. If you have a horse up to your weight, then why not? And yes, the essential, crucial thing is the suitable horse, but I’ve seen absolutely gigantic men out on the hunting field, with absolutely gigantic horses, cannon bones so big I can’t get my hands around them, as I had cause to discover once or twice when I was putting tendon boots on them. I don’t feel the horse is the real issue. And if you can handle your own weight safely around and on your weight-carrying horse, then why ever not? There’s also the well-known fact that sheer avoirdupois is a somewhat mutable thing from the horse’s point of view: there are good heavyweight riders and bad lightweight riders. I’m also aware that gravity is increasingly not your friend as you get bigger, and falling off is never a good time, but I would have said that is your choice: to ride and take that risk.
** And yes, I pray/meditate/attempt to plug into the higher power, whatever it is. Somehow I don’t stay calm very well when I reinterface with the real world.
*** Very, very, very small tasteless joke: at least fat is clearly real. Nobody tells you it’s all in your head and you just need to stop malingering.
† And, it seems to me, as a thin person who has to work at it, this society is so set up to make you fat if it possibly can—and then to make you feel bad if you are fat. As a thin-end-of-normal person I think I’m in a good position to say that fetishizing the anorexic-eleven-year-old look is weird and unhealthy—as is the automatic condemnation of the fat for being fat. Now can we just be practical for a minute? There are a lot of fat people. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to cope with that? Like more extra-wide whatevers? I’d much rather my tax dollars/quid were spent on bigger bus—and theatre—seats than on bombs.
But that’s a long complicated rant for another evening.
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