The Fitness Troll and The Masterpiece

Turning online troll’s opinions about my body into beautiful art.

It was the start of 2018 when my wife and I were living with my sick mother. Mum was terminal with COPD, the doctors had given her 3-5 years, It's not a nice thing to hear when you’re coming up 68 in a few months. Not a nice thing for anyone to hear, regardless of their age.

Thankfully I had the stability of my job (I’m still here now). Going to work was giving me the space so I could avoid the pain of my mum’s situation for the main part of the day.

My wife has always been my rock, she has been the stability I needed when my mind was all over the place in my mid-twenties and onwards. She was feeling the strain too, my mum was demanding and often quite rude without realising it. It started to become too much for us both, but we (especially me) were weighed down by a tonne of guilt that kept us in this situation. How on earth could we leave my mother in a house on her own? My dad was in a care home with dementia, and my mum could do basic things for herself but she was on 24/7 oxygen and this limited her greatly.

Food was my other rock, it’s always been there for me. Fortunately, in our Western world, food is abundant and we have so many options in what we can eat on a daily basis, in virtually limitless quantities. I have memories of food comforting me when I was bullied at school, but I never told my parents or teachers about what happened. I’ve always had this sense that what I say is not important so I kept most things to myself. I even found it hard to read to my parents for homework assignments, as I was painfully shy, but reading to teachers felt easier for some reason.

So, during this period, I ate a lot of junk food, I didn’t exercise much and rarely walked, apart from taking our dog out for short walks a couple of times a day. I’m sure some of you reading this can relate to the temporary rush you get from consuming junk food. It is like a hidden drug, you can’t really compare it to hard drugs and alcohol, but the mechanism is the same, ingesting something to feel better.

I would overeat for comfort for a while, then talk myself around to getting healthy, but then feel sad, as I would be missing out on ‘all of the tasty treats’. It really felt like a loss of sorts. I know it’s irrational, but it felt like I could never have junk food ever again, which isn’t true, as we all know the moderation rule.

Driving home from work, it wouldn’t be unusual to buy a 6-pack of Walker’s crisps and eat them before I got home. Or I’d stop off at McDonald’s to eat a meal then have another evening meal at home. One time, I caught myself in the rear-view mirror, eating a Double Cheeseburger in my car, not really enjoying it, but hoping it would make me feel better. I felt so ashamed, sad eyes, bloated cheeks, with a mouth full of beefburger staring back at me. Then these words appeared in my mind, “I’ve got to stop doing this”.

I did what I’ve always done thereafter, declared my dedication to becoming a fit and healthy individual online. I joined a fitness app through my gym and gingerly posted my ‘before photo’ denoting my starting point in my new fitness journey.

My weight had been up and down since adulthood. I knew what to do, so I started exercising and choosing healthier options to eat. Within the space of a week, I lost 14.5lbs.

So I went back to the Bodyspace app and proudly posted my first-week’s success:

5 people commented, 4 of which were really lovely and supportive. Then there was the one message that my mind vehemently focused on:

Ew?

Ew?

Ew?!!!!

How dare she?!!!

I pretended to shrug it off as if it didn’t affect me, but I was hurt. My mind wondered why she would say that. Is she shallow? Does she use the site just to check out guys with washboard abs? It was totally uncalled for, You’d expect this behaviour on Twitter (or now X, sigh) from an anon, but not on a fitness app where it’s supposed to be supportive.

A couple of weeks later, my wife and I decided to find our own place to live again. My guilt was overwhelming, I can viscerally feel it now as I recall the memory. I was sitting on the sofa in my mum’s living room, she was diagonally to my right, wearing her dressing gown as she often did, watching TV. My mind was racing, as I had to tell her my wife and I decided to move out. Each second felt like a minute, I was rehearsing it in my mind “Mum, we’ve decided to move out”, “Mum, we’ve decided to move out” over and over, It was on the tip of my tongue but it couldn’t come out. After about 30 minutes of rehearsing, I plucked up the courage to say out loud “Mum, we’ve decided to move out”, She went silent for about 10 seconds then replied, “Oh ok, so you’ve decided to move out then?” and went upstairs into her bedroom, sulking.

I went up to see if she was OK and she did this thing where she replied in a sarcastic tone “Yes, I’m OK”, She clearly wasn’t OK. I hadn’t seen her so animated in a while, she was going through the old family photos and giving me all of my baby and childhood ones, while she ripped up the photos she didn’t want. I thought it was odd, I didn’t really understand what was happening. I wish I asked her but I felt sick to my stomach with guilt.

She was reminiscing and said to my wife “He was such a good boy” referring to me as a small child in one of the photos. Implying that I was naughty now, my wife and I both found it odd. There was no doubt in my mind that she loved me, but reflecting as an adult, she used to guilt trip me a lot. I can’t remember who said this, but I read a non-fiction book and the quote rang true to my situation with my mother. They said, referring to their mother: “She needed me more than I needed her”. It made sense because my mother had a miscarriage about a year or so earlier, sadly the child would have been their only child together. My mum and dad had children from previous relationships and wanted one of their own. To add a bit more context to the situation, who I called mum and dad, were my grandparents, my biological grandad and his wife. My biological parents had me when they were 18 and couldn’t cope. From what I understand they were somewhat pressured by my grandparents as they desperately wanted a baby. I am longing to hear the full story but my biological parents never want to talk about it, maybe I need to persist?, as I have the right to know.

I digress, but it’s a little bit of context for the situation and the attachment I had to my mother (grandmother), hence the strong feelings of guilt.

My mother passed away on 11/11/2018, aptly on remembrance day. I felt very guilty that we moved out earlier that year, but I also felt grateful that I got to spend the previous 4 years of our lives seeing each other regularly and living together for about 8 months. Before that period, my wife and I (then girlfriend) Lived in London together since 2008 and we made the decision to move closer to my parents in 2014.

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Nearly 3 years later…

I created: “Kick me when I’m down” (2020) 29.7cm x 42cm and pens on cartridge paper

Looking back through my photos on my laptop, I noticed the ‘before photos’ that I shared on Bodyspace and had the urge to express myself through a piece of artwork.

Kick me when I’m down (2020) in a window display, part of Swindon’s Art District.

Kick me when I’m down (2020) displayed at my joint exhibition with Harrie Dearing, 11th Feb 2023.

This piece has been in about 5 different exhibitions now and it’s lost its power, I just see a man who was doing his best at the time and a girl who just gave a fleeting comment on his post. There have been no negative feelings towards the situation since creating this piece.

Art is powerful, it’s a cathartic powerhouse, disarming issues through expression, staring the issue directly in the eyes and getting it out of your mind and into physical space.

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