Melissa A. Fabello

The list on the board filled up with words like “ambitious,” “curious,” “intelligent,” and “dedicated.” And as my professor was wrapping up the activity, I sighed and raised my hand.

I wake up hungry, but I also wake up lighter, emptier. Something about it makes me feel purer. This is one feeling that’s positive in a sea of negative.

I’m a big proponent of teaching our loved ones how, during the holidays, to be gentle with our eating disorders (both in recovery and out).

And it’s that last one that really irks me: that most people — and especially most women’s — new year’s resolutions center on dieting and weight loss as the key to happiness.

Right now, today, as of writing this, I identify as queer. But I didn’t always.

So you’re on a diet, and you’re really pumped about it. You truly, honestly believe that you’re—say—“getting your body back” post-partum (that’s a harmful concept) or improving your fitness a la the latest technological tracking device (that’s also a harmful concept). And while I think we need to throw a lot of these ideas in the trash, I’m also understanding of how diet culture makes you believe that these are good things – things, in fact, to brag about.

In my experience dating and sleeping with straight, cisgender dudes who worship hegemonic masculinity, I’ve noticed that there’s something really — umm — special about how they go about sexuality.

It might take years before you can hold a cupcake in your hand and not nearly have a panic attack.

And so I slid the scale to the back of my closet, started freely eating doughnuts when I craved doughnuts, and simply donated the jeans that stopped fitting instead of holding out hope for them.