The Sticky Fly Paper

The battery in my bathroom scales has been dead for quite some time.  I keep forgetting to grab a steak knife from downstairs to prise it out of its little compartment and replace it with the new one sitting on the shelf adjacent to where it sits on the floor.  At last count I was 22 stone.  My job is somewhat physical.  I puff and pant at times.  People offer to carry things for me sometimes, the shop girl who has just put my groceries through the till, my colleague from my course who I’ve met at the bottom of the hill leading up to the college as I stand there with a small stack of library books to be returned, or a nice man in the college canteen who offers to carry the tray that holds my plate and my drink to a table.  I accept these small offers of help with gratitude; however, my biggest wish is that a day will come when I don’t need them to go about my day.

They told me it would be a side effect of the medication, back in 2012 when I was seven stone.  The idea of gaining a few pounds when you have always been seven stone does not seem like a big deal.  I had no idea I’d weigh as much as three people by the time I was done.  When I say “by the time I was done”, I mean by today.  I may not be done gaining weight yet.  Stairs are my biggest enemy, not going up, but coming down.  I can feel the full force of my weight in my knees.  This is not good for a person of my age.  I feel short of breath with small amounts of activity.  I need to use accessible toilets when I’m out and about.  People make comments, they say, “You don’t look disabled”, or “The ladies’ bathroom is free”.  Red-faced and humiliated, I then have to reply that I don’t fit in the cubicle, I have to lean backwards over the toilet to get the door closed and I don’t have the space necessary for me to maneuver. 

As I go about my daily tasks, I now struggle more and more with my weight.  By the end of the day, I feel like a fly stuck to sticky fly paper.  My feet feel glued to the floor, the problem with sitting too long in the same chair is the act of getting back up again.  As I get used to the daily tasks of my new job, my endurance increases a little bit, but I am aware that I am carrying the weight of two extra people everywhere I go.  I know it’s time for a big change but my appetite is huge, my ability to metabolise fats is low and now the increasing number of my age is also against me, and so I continue on in this way feeling in both a physical and metaphorical sense like I’m living every day stuck to sticky fly paper.