What is an awkward moment boys and girls?
That question has always plagued my mind. I have always been of the opinion that it was staring at the most beautiful girl for what seems like an eternity and when she finally stares back at you, you realise that you are scratching your nose, which from her vantage, looks like you are picking your nose whilst ogling her.
It would be funny if it wasn't true... and if it didn't happen today!
But as painful as that experience was for me, that wasn't an awkward moment, no, coz for a moment to truly be awkward it has to jolt you to the core, to your very being and consciousness, to what makes you function... coz I mean, who among can say that they don't enjoy the occasional scratching-your-nose-whilst-admiring-a-truly-flawless-being?
Then to you I say, cast the first stone, Judas!
Well, to be honest, you'll be glad to know that my awkward moment was as brutal as they come, if not more so. My awkward moment happened today at the gym... and bear in mind that I loooved clinging to the fact that the fatter, more weird and utterly aloof I make myself, the better the writer I will eventually flourish into.. I know what you are thinking, but I can squash that with one answer: I'm not dead YET - at least physically - so don't judge me just yet, I just might surprise you - but if we are being honest, surprisingly I won't!
Wait, were was I? Ok, so the awkward-gym experience. So I went to the gym for the first time EVER coz I thought I was grossly overweight and, thus, needed to lose a couple of kilos - 15 kilos, if we are being precise. As I mounted the scale, a smile broke the corners of my mouth. In that moment I realised that fuck it, I live in Africa and there are people starving and dying and I should be so lucky to have put on the weight that I have, to have been granted the privilege to indulge without fear of not having anything to eat the next day... Coz, in that fleeting moment of self indulgence and haughty introspection, all was right, and I had made peace with whatever weight this mountain of a scale would so rudely shout at me.
So on with the awkward moment... as soon as I stepped on the scale, it read 85kilos... and I was like awkward!
Let me explain... the moment was awkward because the 85kilos reading meant that I had only gained, count this, 2 Kilogrammes in 3years! And the awkwardness was bolstered because it immediately hit me that I wasn't a fat, disgusting, demented, midget-mud-wrestling loving genius scribe trapped in a weirdo's body, no! I wasn't overweight - ok, let me clarify, I mean by my standards that is, coz technically the BMI of someone my height, 1.70m, indicates that I'm as overweight as heck!
The truth is I had just given up on everything to such an extent that my body was shutting down on me... Imagine giving up on yourself to such an extent that you can't carry your own weight anymore... that you always feel weak, tired, depressed, and unworthy of a 2dollar whore!
The obvious question would be, how much shit am I full of that I feel heavier than I can stomach to drag around in this world?
But I guess in the stillness of this night, with Icona Pop's I love It playing in the background, I have come to realise that the most important question that I will try to uncover and face on this journey I have embarked on is, what kinda sins have I committed that anchor my soul so heavily that even 2kilos feels like a burden that will be the end of my existence?
This journey, my friends, is more than that of one man's desire to lose 15kilos and become as sexy as Taye Diggs but one that will lead to him admitting to himself the vilain he has become... because, boys and girls, not all of us grow up to be the hero.
So I hope you come with me on this journey and that you will enjoy the unraveling of The Psychitzophrenic Fat Black Man.
