Friends (or folks, I hope to one day call “friends”), I have
no idea what my actual weight is today.
I’m sure it’s hovering somewhere between 330 and 340 pounds. I feel completely complacent, depressed,
overwhelmed, saddened, frustrated, and angry (amongst other assorted emotions)
over my weight. No need for anyone else
to beat me up over it all, I do more than enough of that on my own. I can’t help but going back 3 ½ ish years in
my mind to when I was really feeling strong and closer to my goal than ever
before in my life. And then came the
great fall from atop the summit…
I was vegetarian at the time and had decided to vegan
challenge myself. I was working out 45
to 90 minutes a day. I’d lost 89 pounds
at that point in my life (I now weigh pretty much exactly, if not more, than I
weighed at my highest weight when I started), I was embarking on all sorts of
new, scary, and exciting experiences.
Then I did something stupid and mishandled a crate of water bottles and
herniated two discs in my back.
Now if I had really been the strong person I thought I was,
I wouldn’t have let it deter me. But it
did deter me. All I could do for close
to a year was go to work, come home, eat something I didn’t really have to
cook, then go to bed around 5 PM, because even sitting on the sofa was too excruciating. As my mom very succinctly put it one day a
few months into that experience, “D, I think you’re eating your pain.” Yeah.
That’s exactly what I did. There
was the physical pain and the emotional pain that came along with all that was happening. Now these 3 years later, I’ve become a statistic
with what I affectionately (and denially, if you will allow that to be a word)
refer to as my “sciatica weight”.
At the conclusion of this sob story, I could now launch into
the entire history of my issues with weight and food, but I’m not going to do
that right now. If you stick with me, it’ll
all come out in good time, but for now I’m going to leave it there.
And I say all that to say this….
I’ve had it.
I don’t want to turn 40 nearing or surpassing 400
pounds.
I don’t want to stand after a couple of hours of sitting and
feel like I’m a 90 year old who has to take a few tentative steps to get going
again because my body is so ravaged.
I don’t want to dread all the times my sweet little 2 year
old niece asks me to get on the floor to play with her, because it’s so awkward
trying to arrange this large body in such a small space and then to get myself
turned around well enough to the point where I can get back up again without
the screaming pain in my knees.
I don’t want to dread getting on an airplane to see my
girlfriend in Ireland, worrying that the person next to me will complain that I’m
taking up too much of their space; worrying about getting the seat belt
extender out of my bag and across my lap before anyone sees what I’m doing;
worrying about the searing discomfort I will feel from being crammed into a
seat too small for 10+ hours.
I don’t want to be terrified of going to a bar or nightclub
with my girlfriend or friends, because I’m so worried that someone will make fun
of me or call me names (oddly enough, I think bars and nightclubs are one of
the only remaining places I haven’t had someone make fun of or comment on my
size).
But as much, if not more than all of those things, I don’t
want to feel unworthy of living any longer.
I feel less than human. I feel
less than a woman. I feel inconsequential.
I have an amazing girlfriend who loves me just as I am. I have the most incredible family a person
could ask for. I have good friends. I have a job I love most of the time. I have a roof over my head and a driveable
car. I am very blessed and fortunate.
But I still don’t feel like I should be allowed to be
happy. Is it the cause or a result of my
weight? I don’t know. But I am ready to find out.
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