A topic was brought up on the forums at BTV that got me thinking (as they often do). I did a quick reply over there, but my brain kept on going so I thought I would try to expand on it a bit more here as well.
Basically, it started when someone posted how pre-op, they would walk through the halls at work and hardly get noticed. Now that they are losing weight, it’s changed. People are stopping them to say hi, see how her weekend was, etc. She asked if this was “normal”.
First off, and maybe this is something for a different posting all together, but I’m sorta starting to really dis-like the word “normal”. There is no normal.
There’s maybe an average… but even then…? I dunno… yea, it’s great to find out that others have had similar experiences, but even if half the people out there do have a similar experience in a similar situation… normal just doesn’t seem like the right word to be using and I think that by locking ourselves in to the thinking that there is a normal it can taint or even stunt our own progress in a situation because we’re too busy figuring out if the situation is normal and comparing ourselves to others instead of focusing on actually dealing with the situation. Yea, sorry, that turned in to one heck of a run-on-sentence. /rant-off
Ok, back to the topic at hand.
I work in small company. Basically four of us, with only two of us primarily in the office, sometimes three. When I was pre-op, we were all fairly social because… well, not like we could avoid each other if we wanted to.
So yea, there’s no difference for me in my interaction with my co-workers.
But what I do notice is I seem to get more attention from the general public. What I mean is, say I’m out shopping, the employees seem to be more open in greeting me, possibly even more friendly when they do so. Now, I know this could be all my imagination, it’s not like I’ve kept a scorecard over the years, but it does feel like it.
Thing is, even if it is true… the question is why?
Is it simply because I am a “normal” (see, there’s that damn word again!) sized now? I know there are social biases and stigmas about overweight people, especially someone like me that was over 350 pounds. Yea, my friends would always say I didn’t look that big… but c’mon.. I was HUGE. So is it as simple as now that I’m a normal looking dude, I’ve not only shed the pounds, but also the stigma.
Is how people interact with me now a reflection on my size?
Or maybe it’s because along with a change in my size has come a change in my own attitude. Was my self-consciousness about my size creating not just a large physical barrier, but a social one as well?
I am definitely much more outgoing now. While I still have a huge hill to climb in this regard, my self-esteem and self-confidences have grown to levels I never would have guessed even just a year ago.
So are these changes in how people interact with me more of a result of how I project myself to them? Am I making myself more approachable?
Of course, there’s no way to know for sure, but it is likely (hopefully?) a healthy combination of both.
