Ahoy there!
Welcome to my new blog Whale Tales. First off, this is not a blog about me single handedly saving an entire species of whale--sorry. Just don't kill whales, you guys. They don't usually like it when you do that to their whale friends. There, thats all the whale saving I'm gonna be doing on this particular blog...
This blog is about saving an entirely different type of whale. Specifically, a whale with fingers and bizarre fakie red hair who likes to write. This girl right here, yo.
Now, I already know about the "don't call yourself fat names" thing because it ruins your self esteem blah blah blah... whatever. I've been overweight since I was like ten, I know the drill.
So why would I chose to call myself "The Whale", you may ask?
Good question. I'll let you know when I figure out some profound reasoning behind the name.
Will you accept being incredibly insomnia drunk at 4 in the morning and suddenly pulling it out of my ass as profound?
I suppose its kind of like being white and using "nigga" on a regular basis: you 'bout to get stabbed. Its only okay for black people and, like, Eminem or something to use it.
You live in a cul-de-sac suburb called "Mystic Pine Forest Lake Hills Majestic River Unicorn"where your giant house looks the same as everybody else's. While you may have racked up the Starbucks Gold Card points, you have not racked up enough street creds to call your brotha' "nigga". You will more than likely get a well deserved punch to the face.
Its the same with being a fatty. The only person who can get away with calling me fatty and still find it humorous is me.
What are little girls made of? Not so much sugar and spice and everything nice. More like a bubbling vats of hormones, acne, adipose and self loathing. Allow me to excite you with an anecdote of the (un)glorious high school days past....
Me and--lets call her Beeyotch (by the power invested in me and nameberry.com, I dub this a real name right behind Khaleesi on most popular names of 2014)--Me and Beeyotch were best friends since around the third grade.
We were inseparable. I mean it. I basically lived at her house mooching off her mother's delicious cooking and TiVo. The love was real--they even took me to Cedar Point once.
Well as we got older during the mandatory middle school emo/scene/goth/anothersynonym kid phase it began to feel as if she was shooting up in maturity and I was sitting still, waiting patiently for the day when I could be a dime too.
I wasn't bitter about it by any means. I stayed optimistic for myself while she skipped off to the movies or the mall with a cute boy.
She was the first to kiss a boy, first to let a guy touch her boob, first to lose her virginity, first to smoke pot and date college boys...and more than half of those I still haven't done even now in my 20s.
But the optimism stayed strong as I drank in every word of her adventures with the elusive opposite sex, living vicariously through her every time we debriefed at our weekly sleepovers.
Then one night buried among dozens of crocheted and fleece tie blankets, I cracked a joke about myself being doomed to die a pudgy, virginal cat lady. It was funny! She laughed. I laughed. Let the good times roll on.
Until she started calling me the virgin cat lady all the time. I laughed it off for a long time, thinking I was just being overly sensitive. I mean, it was okay for her to call me that now since I did it first, right? It's not considered "bullying" if they're your friends, right?
Not so much.
It made me feel just as bad as when the one butt face in middle school homeroom made truck backing up sounds when I walked anywhere. It actually almost felt worse because I knew I couldn't just ignore her and walk away like I could with the other guy. I was no dummy, I wasn't gonna go near a guy like that. But Beeyotch was my friend--my best friend! I had no idea what to make of it or how to handle it. Without telling her straight up since I hate any kind of confrontation, I tried to subtly let her know I didn't really like it. But it carried on and got worse and worse and worse until I couldn't take it anymore. It was straight up bullying at this point and it made me feel like complete butthole. Luckily by the time senior year rolled around, I had taken a chance to step out of her overwhelming shadow and find a few other friends who treated me a million times better, assuring me I was in fact a pretty nifty gal with lots to offer without throwing my cat at every dude who asked.
Finally, I had built up enough courage to tell her off........via facebook messenger. Hey, its better than nothing--I never said i was perfect.
It ended up being like a giant ticking time bomb, everything that ever bothered me about her exploding forth from my fingertips to the text box. Without any reservations, I pushed "enter" and every angry feeling I had was washed from my body. It was rather cathartic, actually. I finally turned in my wet blanket status for something better. And then Frodo threw the ring into Mordor and saved all of Middle Earth hoorayyyyy!
I kind of forgot where I was going with this...oh yeah, self inflicted fat names. Basically, the moral of the story is don't call fat girls nigga when they call themselves nigga.
I'd like to think that being able to choose a "fat name" for myself gives me the power to pick and choose what hurts me. Nobody else has the power to give me a name besides my own mother and myself.
This is something that I want to be able to embrace. Whales are big fat mammals made of bones and blubber, but they are also hella majestic, too. They are strong and gentle and intelligent--all of the things I see within myself. So if you're gonna call me a whale because you hate me and think I'm fat (haters gonna hate?) I will smile and say thank you. Because whales are cute muthafuckas.
But I am also using it as a tool to show myself where I started. Maybe in the future I can look back and see how far I've come. Maybe I can give myself a new, more fitting name that doesn't carry so much negative weight with it. I'd say "magical mermaid sea goddess" is pushing it a bit, but perhaps I can find something in between.
And also, its kind of fun to be an anonymous blogger...its all mysterious 'n stuff.
I know, this is a pretty long post to just tell you about my name, but it also tells you about the day that I decided to take control of my life. I took control over my mind three years ago via facebook. I took control over my soul last night at 4 am. And I'm taking control of my body right now for the next three and a half months...and hopefully beyond that, too.
Sounds all cool and cryptic, huh?
You'll see what I mean in the next post. For now, I will spare you of anymore of my adolescent tales of woe and we'll move forward in the here and now.
Tally ho!
~The Great White Whale
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