Fat Girl

Finished January 15
Fat Girl by Judith Moore

This memoir is not a happy one. As this author says, it is her story and her family's story. It is about the food they ate. It is about their unhappiness. As she says, "This is a story about an unhappy fat girl who became a fat woman who was happy and unhappy." She found her story difficult to tell, and at times it made her ill to write about it, but it also gave her relief to get the experiences out. She doesn't want people to feel sorry for her, as she doesn't feel sorry for herself. But I have to say that at times I felt sorry for the child she was. Children have less control over their experiences than adults, and her child self tried certain strategies, but always seemed an observer of her own life, wishing and dreaming of different lives but never able to understand what she could do to get there.
She says that while her childhood lacked love for the most part (her uncle seems to have provided the only consistent positive adult presence in her life, with his many friends, pet names for her, and general kindness. She did have the occasional other adult or child in her life who was kind, a neighbour who took an interest or the girl Glenda in her hometown who made sure she had people to sit with at lunch and got introduced to others. But she seems to be unable to know what to do with this kindness and it doesn't seem to have made a difference in her situation.
She calls herself a solitary and I think she is right. She seems the type of person who doesn't make connections either through her own actions or taking advantage of others' actions toward her. I think it is that that makes me feel sorry, sorry for a life without true connection to others.