Consciousness. Coming to. Transitioning from the cushion of slumber to the inescapable dread of day.
For me, hell begins as soon as my brain flips on. There’s a lightning fast inventory taken, a checklist that goes something like this:
-Alive? Check.
-Any noticeable, pre-motion pain? Usually nope, with the occasional yup.
-Still fat? You betcha.
Sunk into the thick mattress pillow, I feel the giant imprint of my flesh. Queen-size bed. I swear I’m half of it. Do skinny people thrive in full-size beds? If I can’t get a handle on my girth, will I have to upgrade to a king someday? Soon? Does my svelt husband have any room when we sleep? Or has he trained himself to balance on his side and work with a sliver of space for seven hours a night?
On the brave days, or the extra-self-loathing days, I actually feel the bulge of my tummy, hips, and thighs with my fingers. Poke, gloop, blop. Poke, glerp, pinch, ech. Are there really people who can’t pinch an inch of extraneous flub? What must that be like? I’ve got fistfuls to spare, all decorated with stretchmarks and cellulite.
I feel it all, and it weighs me down even before I set foot on the floor to feel it literally weighing me down. I’m in my mid-thirties, and I’m relatively healthy. Every month, every year I put on a pound or twenty, and this weight thing gets worse. I know this. I’ve tried to flip the cycle. Diets, “live-its,” trainers, exercise binges, weights, whole foods, no carbs, homeopathic pill-popping campaigns, and the worst remedy of all: HOPE.
These days, HOPE is a last resort. I’ve tried it before, and it’s always failed me. These days, the option of HOPE gets less accessible. I used to be able to summon all my strength (whatever strength I thought I had, anyway), do a “buck up little camper” like no one else, set a focused mind and a determined spirit onto the goal of conquering my weight issue once and for all, release the fact that I’ve said as much before and never succeeded, insist that the “real” time is destined so it might as well be today, and get excited about the prospect of all this “not me” stuff finally, FINALLY getting off of my beautiful, glorious, wonderful body once and for all.
But after you’ve failed so many times at the one thing that tortures you daily, hourly, and in virtually every waking moment, mustering such HOPE becomes as painful as the weight itself. By now, I’ve tried the gamut of approaches. I’ve watched others succeed so I know it *can* be done…just not by me.
Which then becomes the suckiest thing about it. People DO lose weight. People much larger than me. I see it all the time. I watch The Biggest Losers, the Oprah Winfreys, the makeover shows. Hundreds of pounds, *POOF*! All gone. And boy, do the newly-thin look HAPPY!
Then there’s My mom. My neighbor. My best friend. Eight pounds, 20 pounds, 50 pounds. I see it can be done. They’ve all done it. I just haven’t been able to do it. It’s not like walking on water, or pulling some high-fallutin’ David Blane stunt. It’s losing weight. People can do it. I haven’t been able to do it. Therefore, I suck.
Good morning, world.
And soon, I get the privilege of figuring out what to wear.
Oh, dear God, kill me now.