Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury > Recent Status Updates

I hated myself for wanting men when men had hurt me so badly. I told myself I was gay.

I fell into the dangerous trap of being in love with the idea of being in love.

She is intelligent and wealthy and wears these traits comfortably but inoffensively.

The bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

This is to say, I know what it means to hunger without being hungry. My father believes hunger is in the mind. I know differently. I know that hunger is in the mind and the body and the heart and the soul.

My rage is often silent because no one wants to hear fat-girl stories of taking up too much space and still finding nowhere to fit.

Fat shaming is real, constant, and rather pointed.

It is unbearable to want something so little and need it so much.

This is the world we live in. Looks matter, and we can say, “But but but . . .” But no. Looks matter. Bodies matter.

I am the fattest person. This is a constant, destructive refrain and I cannot escape it.

I rage that they don’t have to second-guess themselves or give a moment’s thought to the space they fill. The ease with which they take up space feels spiteful and personal.

Dieting requires deprivation, and it’s easier when everyone faces that truth. When I am dieting, I try to face that truth, but I am not terribly successful.

I hate myself. Or society tells me I am supposed to hate myself, so I guess this, at least, is something I am doing right.

Before I got on the plane, my best friend offered me a bag of potato chips to eat, but I denied myself that. I told her, “People like me don’t get to eat food like that in public,” and it was one of the truest things I’ve ever said.

The weight fluctuations of famous women are tracked like stocks because their bodies are, in their line of work, their personal stock, the physical embodiment of market value.

And then I think about how fucked up it is to promote this idea that our truest selves are thin women hiding in our fat bodies like imposters, usurpers, illegitimates.

It is startling to realize that even Oprah, a woman in her early sixties, a billionaire and one of the most famous women in the world, isn’t happy with herself, her body. That is how pervasive damaging cultural messages about unruly bodies are—that even as we age, no matter what material successes we achieve, we cannot be satisfied or happy unless we are also thin.

This is the woman who brought us the idea of living our best life, of becoming our most authentic selves. And yet. In 2015, Winfrey bought a 10 percent stake in Weight Watchers, an investment of $40 million. In one of her many commercials for the brand, she says, “Let’s make this the year of our best body.” The implication is, of course, that our current bodies are not our best bodies, not by a long shot.

What does it say about our culture that the desire for weight loss is considered a default feature of womanhood?

I knew where danger really lurked—in the woods behind well-manicured exclusive suburban neighborhoods, at the hands of good boys from good families.

My true loves were and still are books and writing stories and daydreaming. Sports were merely a distraction keeping me from what I really wanted to do.

That’s what has scarred me the most. My no did not matter.

I often say that reading and writing saved my life. I mean that quite literally.

"He said/she said is why so many victims(or survivors,if u prefer tht terminology)don’t come forward.All too often,wht“he said”matters more,so we just swallow d truth.We swallow it&more often than not,tht truth turns rancid.It spreads through d body like an infection.It becomes depression or addiction or obsession or some other physical manifestation of d silence of wht she would hv said,needed to say,couldn’t say."

We don’t necessarily know how to hear stories about any kind of violence, because it is hard to accept that violence is as simple as it is complicated, that you can love someone who hurts you, that you can stay with someone who hurts you, that you can be hurt by someone who loves you, that you can be hurt by a complete stranger, that you can be hurt in so many terrible, intimate ways.

I was a daydreamer and I resented being pulled out of my daydreams to deal with the business of living. In my stories, I could write myself the friends I did not have. I could make so many things possible that I did not dare imagine for myself. I could be brave. I could be smart. I could be funny. I could be everything I ever wanted. When I wrote, it was so easy to be happy.

Family is powerful, no matter what. We’re always tied together with our eyes and our lips and our blood and our bloody hearts.

I’m living with what happened, moving forward without forgetting, moving forward without pretending I am unscarred.

"My body is a cage. My body is a cage of my own making. I am still trying to figure my way out of it. I have been trying to figure a way out of it for more than twenty years."

"The fat created a new body, one that shamed me but one that made me feel safe, and more than anything, I desperately needed to feel safe. I needed to feel like a fortress, impermeable. I did not want anything or anyone to touch me."