The Beginning

I'm no Quentin Tarantino.  I am not the skilled storyteller who can begin at the middle of the story.  I can, however, try my best to embrace the notion of being succinct and cause only minimal damage to your psyche.

So here's where it begins: a little girl grows up in a relatively idyllic setting with 3 siblings. Somewhat lacking in social skills, with a propensity for sticking her foot in her mouth frequently, a sort of desperation develops - that need to "fit in" becomes all consuming. Through the years all sorts of poor decisions are made with regard to choosing friends, what sorts of things will be done to keep the "friends" she has, and what sorts of sacrifices will be made to gain the affection of the opposite sex.

With each disastrous encounter with friendship, love, trust, and betrayal, simultaneous comfort and punishment occurs in the form of secretive binging.

While I could recount many of those encounters in vivid detail, they're not quite the point of this blog... well, not yet anyway.  We all (more or less) have those experiences; it's part of being human - and I agree with Shakespeare: It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.  But I digress.

When I was 13 years old I weighed about 120lbs.  At 1/4" shy of five feet tall, that's about the most weight my frame should support outside of pregnancy.  That was the last time I weighed 120lbs.  As a senior in high school I weighed about 170lbs.  Then I got pregnant.  When my son was born I topped the scales at about 218lbs.  Giving him up for adoption was the single hardest thing I have ever done in my 38 years.

Not being a quick study in the ways of the world (or, apparently, birth control), during my senior year of college (at 215lbs) I became pregnant with my daughter.  She is now 12 years old, and even though life as a single parent isn't always easy, she makes it so much easier than most kids would.  She is a fantastic kid; I totally lucked out.  However, I weighed about 240lbs after she was born... and not much changed in the past 12 years with regard to my weight.

Every now and again I've tried dating, but the long and the short of it is this: I wasn't ready to be honest with myself.  I don't like the way I look.  It's not an accurate representation of who I am.  I don't want to date anyone who wants to date someone who looks like me.

For years I have hidden beneath a more-than-cozy layer of adipose tissue designed solely to keep the world at bay.  When the world is held at bay, there are fewer conflicts.  Unfortunately, holding the world back also means isolating yourself from really meaningful relationships.

In my next post, I'll regale you with stories of a friend's hospitalization and how it inspired me to take control of my own health.