Two weeks ago, on Super Bowl Sunday, I slipped on a patch of ice and wrenched the bejesus out of my lower back. It's mostly better now; still a little stiff when I first get up in the morning, and still giving me some sciatica-like pains down my legs, but so much better than at first. The first couple of days I could hardly walk. Made working really interesting, let me tell you.

A consequence of this is the fact that stairs? Really not my friends. If I really, really, really had to, I could climb the three flights of stairs to my first class every morning. And I can manage to go down them now. So that's progress. But I choose not to aggravate my strained muscles, and so I've been taking the elevator up in the morning.

I never took the elevator before, even though the stairs hurt my knees a little bit; it wasn't necessary. And back in the day, before I stopped hating myself, I would never use an elevator when there were stairs, specifically because I was afraid people would look at me and think, "Well that's why she's such a lardass!" That thought entered my head again as I started using the elevator because of my back; the one time somebody else was on it I felt ashamed. (It's kind of tucked away in a corner of the building, most people probably don't know it's there. I actually didn't originally either.)

Luckily, I was able to nip that in the bud right away. If somebody wants to think I'm fat because I use the elevator, then fuck them. Fuck them with something hard and sandpapery. I'm not going to cause myself more pain just to avoid some ignorant stranger's thoughts about me. I wish it hadn't taken me the first, oh, 23 years of my life to achieve that attitude. But I've also learned that those insidious kinds of thoughts can creep back in to my head--it's not something you're ever just done with, this whole process of accepting yourself and withstanding societal pressures and opinions about being fat.