The thin line of visible and invisible

When you're super duper morbidly obese, you get used to being invisible.  The rare times you decide to throw yourself to the mercy of the public, you accept as fact that people like furniture store sales people, fellow shoppers in a grocery store, cashiers and even the usually predatory car salesmen will not acknowledge you.  You will literally have someone cut you off with their cart to the point that you are astonished that they didn't physically run over your foot and I'm not a "fetal fattie", I will go off on a beeotch, yo...or at least let them know I know what they did with an "are you effing serious!?" turn to the Mr and say loudly "did you see that rude ass!?"  There is nothing more irritating to me that people who are blatantly rude to others in thinking their mission is any more important than yours or someone else and I am the champion of the underdog so I just say something.  Oddly, no one outside of a car has said something back.  They seriously are in their own world and you are just not important to them especially if you're fat.

When we lost over 150 lbs, we started seriously noticing a difference in how we were treated at those same places that we were shunned before.  It was both a relief and maddening because everyone regardless of size deserves to be treated with some respect.  Suddenly furniture places looked at us as though we could afford what was in their stores and car salesmen deemed us prey-worthy (that one I could do without) and we were even acknowledged a few times in the grocery with an "excuse me."  It was all enough to make us think that was no longer a hurdle but we had one of those days last weekend that made us just totally feel like we'd crossed back into invisibility.  From almost getting hit by some d-bag that wasn't paying attention (and watching he and the Mr have a bit of a screaming match side by side) to getting ignored by multiple employees at a home store except for the one obese employee who did approach us (which is fine by me because in commission based businesses, I will ALWAYS give my money to the underdog salesperson who is too shy, too shunned or too overweight to be considered competition by sleazeball co-workers) to this scrawny wench who seriously stepped INTO me at Old Navy and I said "SERIOUSLY?" (no response) and I was breathing down her neck she was so close to me.  I'm surprised she didn't think she was getting accosted by a ghost with my irritated heavy breathing on her neck until the Mr lead me away from her.  I totally got the attitude that SHE belonged there and I didn't so she was just going to step into a space I was already occupying.

It was just one of those days but a good reminder that even at almost 200 lbs down, I'm still fat by society's standards and still not worthy of "fitting in" to places they'd rather not see me.  TOO DAMN BAD!  I'm here, I'm workin' on it and I'm not going away!  I am glad for this reminder because there will come a time that getting acknowledged will happen more often than not and I never want to forget that feeling of feeling less than in other people's eyes just based on my cover.  It'll remind me to always treat others out in public the way I would want to be treated.

Have you ever been ignored and felt it was because of your weight or image issue?

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