Dear Kate Leth

Dear Kate Leth,

 

            I have only found your work recently, but I am already a big fan.  I read all of Kate or Die and I was so inspired by how honest you were in that comic.  I have been struggling with depression since I was a teenager.  In the fall of 2008, several horrible things happened to me at once and I went on a downward spiral.  I started self-harming behavior, in the form of over eating.  Instead of cutting myself, I would eat until I felt so stuffed I wanted to vomit, but wouldn’t let myself.  I gained over 100 pounds in about a year and then kept going.  I am now in therapy and on medication, but the weight is still here.  Since 2011, I have been taking steps to bring myself back from that dark place.  I went back to school to be a paralegal.  I have thought about working in the legal field since I was small, but never went through with it.  Now I work in a small law firm.  I bought myself a house.  My childhood was less than ideal and this is the first time I have ever lived in a place that has been owned.  I have great friends who are a support network when the depression comes back.  I also have two freaking adorable kittens, named Dagobah and Kashyyyk, who are the greatest assholes on the planet.  The one thing I am still really struggling with is my weight.

 

            Why is a complete stranger telling you all of this intensely personal stuff?  Here’s the deal:  I want a new tattoo and I want you to design it.  I have four tattoos now.  One is a small black star I got during a semester abroad in London.  It was the first time I was in an airplane, the first time I left the country, the first time I went that long without seeing family, the first time I lived outside of my parents’ house or a dorm, and it was amazing.  My second tattoo is a moon symbol I got during my last year of college.  At the time, I was hanging with some wiccans and I got this ink to symbolize that, and the whole finishing college, finding my way in the world thing.  Next, I got a sun symbol.  This one I got when I moved out of my parents’ house.  I also got it for balance.  All three of my celestial tattoos are on my lower back.  I call it my tramp stamp collection.  The sun also represents the male.  I have such daddy issues and dating is a joke and I wanted to improve that part of my life.  My most recent tattoo I got in 2010, when I visited Seattle and met my half-brother for the first time.  It’s a line from a Queen song called “Dear Friends” that wraps around my left arm.  In the five years since I got that ink, I have wanted another tattoo.  I decided a few years ago what I wanted:  scales.  Not like fish scales, like weighing scales.  I want a palm-sizedish set of scales between my shoulder blades.  This is to represent my job (blind Justice and her scales), finding balance in my life, and my continuing weight-related struggles.  Despite several starts with diet and exercise over the past few years, I am currently the heaviest I have ever been.  I weigh over 300 pounds.  It’s humiliating for me to admit that, especially to someone who I admire so much.  Every New Year’s Eve and birthday I resolve that this will be the year I make those changes.  Every time I fail.  But I keep trying, and for me, that’s what important.  Because I don’t always want to.  Very often I want to give up on myself.  I know, from reading your comics, that you know how that feels.  I refuse to, though.  I refuse to give up on me.  No matter how many false starts I make, I will always make another.  Even if I never get to some goal weight, I will keep trying.  Giving up on myself is not an option and I want to put that into my skin.  I want that knowledge permanently etched into my body.  So that when I forget, it’s there.  When I want to give up, I will have a physical reminder that it’s not an option, never will be an option, and that I can give it one more try. 

 

            I know that you are super busy and I doubt you even do commissions anymore, but I am asking you to do this one for me.  For a long time I have been putting this off, telling myself that when I lose x amount of weight, then I will get the tattoo.  I don’t want to do that anymore.  I want to start living now instead of waiting for some unknown future date when I have already achieved the goal.  I also have no idea what I want this tattoo to look like, other than scales.  As I said, I love your work and the tattoos you have designed and I would be so grateful if you would be willing to do this commission for me.  I’m not sure how much you would charge but I honestly don’t care. This is something I need to do for myself, no matter the cost.  Tomorrow is my 34^th birthday.  You doing this would be such an amazing gift.  But, you know, no pressure. 

 

            I hope to hear from you soon.  Even if you have to say no, I will still be a fan and follow you obsessively online.  Promise. 

 

Sincerely,

Megan Goodier

Eating Myself to Death

I have been having some health issues recently, culminating in back pain so intense that my doctor initially thought it was kidney stones.  It was not.  It was degenerative disc disease, fatty liver, and enlarged, inflamed lymph nodes.  All of these conditions are directly caused or exacerbated by my weight.  When I went to the doctor's office last week, I weighed in at 317 pounds.  That was dressed, but no shoes, so maybe I'm more like 316.  I'm 5'5", 33 years old, and I weigh over 300 pounds.  My weight is having a direct negative effect on my health and my lifestyle.  I prefer to stay in, spending far too many hours on my couch in front of the TV.  When I do go out with friends it's often food related - out to dinner or lunch - and rarely healthy.  I exercise only rarely, excusing myself with the fact that I have two jobs and little time.  I eat horrible food which I think tastes good, often in very large quantities.  I am pretty sure that I have binge eating disorder.  I never admit the amount of food that I eat to anyone, even my "tell everything to" friend.  I am prediabetic and on medication for it.  I am clinically depressed and on medication and in therapy for that.  I am single, live alone in a house I bought two years ago and now can't afford with two kittens I adopted a week after my last cat, my companion for 7 years, died of a mystery neurological disorder.  Its April now and so far this year my cat died, I had my heart checked out, found out it was slightly enlarged, was put on medicine for the prediabetes because I failed to lose weight, my refrigerator died, my furnace went out, and now I'm having my current health issues.  My life is falling apart all around me and I know that my weight is the main cause.  Of almost all of it.  I am perpetually broke.  I barely make enough to cover expenses, even at two jobs, and then I waste money I don't have on food.  Fast food, ordering pizza, buying snacks while at my second job at a grocery store.  I sometimes feel like everything in my life revolves around food and I can't make it stop.  I've done Weight Watchers twice, myfitnesspal, fitbit, Loseit, and made a couple of very brief forays into Couch to 5K.  I really don't think that program is designed for people who are very obese.   I have been steadily gaining weight for years and just can't seem to stop myself.  Several times I have looked at myself and realized I was fatter than I've ever been, only to be another size bigger a few months down the line.  I remember when I was a size 14 and thought I was fat and my now size 24 self cries about how I wish I was fat like that.  I MUST make changes in my life.  I know this, but I just don't do it.  I think there is a part of me that is suicidal and sees the food and the weight as a slow but steady death march.  Which is true.  If I don't lose weight, I'm only going to get sicker and sicker and someday be 600 pounds in an electric scooter on disability.  I cannot let that happen.  I have to get this shit together before I waste what little life I will have left as a fat lump.  Maybe having a place to get thoughts together will help.  That's what I'm hoping, at least.  Wish me luck.