Making friends as a fat anti-capitalist
Patrick and I have been staying on BLM land at the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park for about a month and a half now. It is dispersed camping, meaning there is no camp host and no amenities. It can feel pretty lonely sometimes. There aren't many people around, the closest grocery store is forty five minutes away, sometimes it is so windy we can't even go outside.
But we made some friends, well they really made friends with us, inviting us to their campfires and offering to help us fix things that are broken on our van. We have been so isolated the last few years it has been nice to have a group of friends, I feel like I am back in college in the dorms with everyone living close together and hanging out on the weekends, inviting people you meet to be friends.
And it has been nice to belong to a group, people who want me to be around, to be friends with me. They seem sad when I can't make it to hang out and seem happy when I arrive at their gatherings. I am wanted. I belong. And I feel even more lonely than before I met them.
There are two reasons for this. One, they are actively anti-fat. I have heard more conversations about "feeling fat" and losing weight in the last few weeks than I have heard in the last few years. I am just over here with my cute fat tum and wiggly double chin trying to hide the fact that I write a blog about how I have accepted my fat body (or at least am working on accepting it).
Two, they are very capitalist. Like poor people should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps kinda capitalists. At first, I kinda brushed it off because I mostly just noticed it when they talked about their own methods of surviving capitalism. But the other night, someone told me a story about a family they met who was living in their sedan with their young kids and waiting on a stimulus check from the government to get some financial relief. They were saying that they would never just wait around for the government to help them if they were in a bad situation. I just stood there, shocked.
Sometimes people go through really hard things that we can't see and it is not their fault. Right?! I truly believe that people who are going through a hard time deserve compassion and support, not judgement. The universe can be so cruel to the very best of people. (For example, me *winkey face*)
So I finally have friends again and I feel even more alone than ever. I am hiding who I am and what is important to me, like fat liberation and community care. What would they think if they knew I love my fat body? What would they say if they knew how much we are struggling to meet out basic needs and that we believe we deserve community care as a result?
I don't think they would understand. And it would be too painful to be rejected. So I keep quiet. I feel my heart break every time they talk about the best way to lose weight or judge another person for how they are surviving capitalism. I weigh which would be more painful, my heart breaking from hiding who I really am or my heart breaking from being rejected for speaking up about what I believe.
So I keep quiet and struggle silently under the weight of a loneliness no one should ever have to carry by themselves.
Let's be friends! Have you ever been in a situation where you were surrounded by people but still felt lonely? What are some things that are important to you when you are looking for friends?
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