Is Being Beautiful Worth Dying Over?

Recently, I was reading a blog written by cult film icon Kevin Smith, about a girl who killed herself over the end of an online relationship with a boy she met on MySpace. The boy, creepily enough, turned out to be the 48 year-old mother of a neighborhood friend who was allegedly on an undercover mission to find out if the girl was talking shit about her daughter (for my thoughts about the supposed adult’s behavior in this, please see my other blog Sunny Spells It Out). Sadly, the girl, nor her vigilant mother, had any idea it was her friend’s mother she had been talking with for months when the imaginary boy named Josh Evans turned on her and crushed her hopes for romance. Perhaps if she had known, she may not have done so, but this turn of events was the final blow that prompted Megan Meier to hang herself by a belt in her closet.

Why? Why would this 13 year-old girl with beautiful, sparkly eyes, lovely skin, gorgeous hair, and a sweet smile (that would soon shed its metallic shield) decide that she had nothing left to live for? She lost the chance of love with a cute boy.

Think that’s silly? Ridiculous? I don’t. I think it is a tragedy of furious proportions, but hardly a shock. I’ve been where she was, and even now I wonder how I lived through it. You see, this pretty young lady struggled with her weight and as such was shocked to have found such a catch in the first place. As Smith points out, it sucks enough to be a teenager. It sucks even more to be a fat one. It sucks even harder to be a fat girl. Believe me, I know.

Of course, we all have our cross to bear. For some of us, it’s that we are too thin, too tall, can’t gain muscle no matter how we try, have no chin, or have acne that makes Bryan Adams look airbrushed. I suppose there is even the possibility that being too pretty or handsome might be troublesome to a youngster. The truth is there aren’t really that many people out there who had the “charmed” life of growing up. It’s easy to believe the opposite when we want to blame our shitty childhood for every rotten thing that befalls us today, but statistically speaking, just about everyone was in the SUCK during their teens. Yet even now, in a time if infinite information and cross-cultural and lifestyle acceptance, being fat still suffers an unending bastion of tormenters that crosses gender, race and most creeds. While it is politically incorrect to badmouth a person of color, religion or disability (at least in the US), we are still showered with permission to practically stone someone for being overweight. That’s hard enough to wrap one’s mind around being an intelligent, fairly logical thirtysomething. To try to fathom that at 13 is… well… almost unimaginable.

I won’t pretend to know exactly what must have been going through Megan’s mind when she came to the conclusion that there was no hope left in her life. After all, unlike myself at her age, She had been diagnosed with ADHD and severe depression and I suspect that if someone had given me those justifications for despair when I was 13, I might not be here to write to you today. To my mind, it is a dangerous thing to tell anyone of questionable mental state that they have been clinically diagnosed with virtually anything, because if it’s one thing people usually are looking for more than anything else, it’s something to excuse them from having to work on their problems (you know I’m right, think of how many people you have met that throw off their shitty behavior to their astrological sign!). That is not to say that there are not legitimate cases that need serious medical attention, but if you were to have run into the amount of people I have (in the last four years) that have been “diagnosed” as manic, you would start questioning the validity of these things , too. Trust me! I’m no hard-ass. People need help. But more than anything, they need to help themselves; including me. And that is rarely something that people are either expected or taught to do in this day and age. But what on Earth did this girl have to be that depressed about? Is being fat enough to warrant such drastic measures?

It feels like it, sometimes.

Unlike alcoholism, drug abuse, personal abuse (such as cutting) and other eating disorders (at least until ones bones are prominent), you can’t hide fat. You cannot quietly deal with or (revel in) your problem because it is out there for all to see. There is no sympathy because it is assumed depraved gluttony got you to that place, although it is not always the case. While everyone who judges you probably has an equally, if not worse vice, it is socially permissive to hate fat people. To that end, I am sure that there are those that behave as though they hate fat people because they the only group left to openly hate and they need someone to vent their rage to. So you feel as though you cannot lose it fast enough. Every day you do not see results, is another day when you feel as if everyone around you is disgusted by your very existence (and many will tell you they are). Before you know it, you are hating yourself for not being done, hating yourself for every slip up, every ounce not lost, every moment you’re not exercising, every date you were not asked out on, and it goes on and on. It is so easy to get into a spiral of self loathing and unless you have people around you that really know how to deal with that kind of thing, who know how to talk you off the ledge, you have to have a will of steel to not let it get you down. Toss the gasoline of lost love onto that fire and friends, I’m here to tell you, it’s a blaze that feels inextinguishable.

In my search for more on the story of this girl, I came across a video from ABC news. Something that caught my attention was that Megan’s mother is very petite, and relatively pretty (in that white-bread, mid-western, suburban way), while her father could easily have been a linebacker in college. I wondered if she had developed her own psychosis about her size or if she felt pressure to look more like her mother. So much so, in fact, I had to watch the video a second time to actually hear the interview. Mostly, I found myself looking at the subtext of what may have sent this girl over the edge. Although in all seriousness, she could have had all the support in the world from her loving parents and still felt like the loss of Josh Evans was enough of a reason. There is no way to know what could have been said, what could have been done to prevent this girl from making such a horrible decision. And ever since I’ve learned of this story, I haven’t been able to get her off my mind. I have been so sad and troubled and didn’t realize until tonight that it was this girl who was plaguing me.

You see, I have had to work very, very, very hard on myself to get to a place where I don’t feel like I would be lucky to get anyone at all to love me, solely because of my weight. It is an accomplishment I am profoundly proud of, because it meant undoing over 34 years of brainwashing by my mother, my former friends, schoolmates, co-workers, boys I admired, men I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot-pole, my brother, teachers, movies, tv, magazines and comedians; all of whom have told me that I could never find love as long as I was fat. Up until very recently, I still believed that to the world, I was bottom of the barrel, last-resort material. If you had told me I would ever reach this place when I was 13, I would have silently believed you were either nuts, or an alien. I wouldn’t have even had the courage to tell you that you were wrong. After all, I was firmly convinced by all the aforementioned influences that I was a worthless, ugly, disgusting, unlovable creature because I was overweight (and at 13, no more than 40 pounds). It wasn’t something I had created in my mind. It was a belief that was being crammed down my throat every single day of my life, coming at me from all directions. Little has changed in how often I get that message, but my reaction to it has in spades. And I think of how Megan had to have had it even worse with the internet; with all the phonies and fakes, all the pretenders that one encounters on the internet. Even with her mother keeping a watchful eye on who her daughter was encountering, the keenest of maternal instincts couldn’t have foreseen the duplicity that would end her daughter’s life. The more I think about the whole thing, the more angry, the more absolutely fucking outraged I get!

Without even going into the fact that Josh Evans was a fictional being, one of the things that struck my heart the hardest was that in the video interview, Megan’s mother made mention of how shocked Megan was that Josh was so hot. My heart ached so bad it made me sick to my stomach. It was an unexpected jolt of recollection and commiseration. How many times had I felt that? How many times had it been a cruel prank or the boy buckled to peer pressure and backed out with hateful words? So many I cannot count and the ones I remember clearly are hard enough to think of. And I wonder now how many times it crossed my mind to end my life, and therefore my misery, when the truth came out. I wonder what made Megan cross that line when I didn’t, or couldn’t.

Sometimes it feels like that’s the only option to make the pain go away; the pain of alienation, of fear that you will never shed that which seemingly makes you unlovable. The way this story played out for Megan, I cannot say that I don’t understand her choice. Still, I wish she had more strength, more courage, more imagination to think that perhaps she would overcome her loss and find someone new. I wish Megan Meier had reconsidered her options and imagined the debt of pain she left behind that her parents now pay. More importantly, I wish someone had been able to convince her that it would pass before she had a chance to do the undoable.
Trying to become the socially perceived idea of beautiful is such an ugly road to tread. To put your worthiness, your loveable-ness, as it were, in the hands of the public at large is to give up your own opinion of yourself. You will never ever be smart enough, cool enough, pretty enough, whatever enough for everyone. Ever. EVER! And that is totally okay! Really! It is! Know why? Here’s why. Not everyone out there deserves to have their opinion of you matter. I learned that the hard way. And besides, despite that which the cults of celebrity and fashion dictate to us, there is an immeasurable amount of tastes out there. Even if you don’t find them attractive (which is a conversation for a whole other day), there are going to be plenty of people out there who will want you… sometimes quite badly. But the most important thing that schools rarely even attempt to teach, and many parents aren't deep enough to think of, is to love and value your life. You cannot get that love from anyone but yourself and it is essential. When you have it, nothing will keep you down forever. Nothing will make you fear being unloved ever again. Nothing will make you believe that your life isn’t worth living because you will value that life far too highly to give it up for anything. ANY… THING.

Megan, wherever you are… I am filled with grief know that this message couldn’t have and didn’t get to you in time. It would have been such a thrill to hear how you bested your dragons, and came out kickin’ asses and taking names. God, what a story that would have been, and just think of the lives you might have saved in the telling of it.

If The Shoe Doesn't Fit Try Another One

A reader’s comment on my last post got me to thinking about fitting in and we all know that once I get to thinking, it's hard to stop. So, I'd like to share some honest reflection on the matter. As always, I welcome your thoughts. As you can see, I pay attention.

When I was a very little girl, I distinctly recall being utterly disinterested in being “normal” in any way. For the first several years, I was convinced that I was extraordinary in some fashion or another. Perhaps I might possess magical powers or a hidden ability to fly. Even now, I could swear that I can feel wings furled against my back and in times when I need comfort or protection, they enfold around me like the soft arms of a protective parent. And as to my magical powers, well, I’m still not convinced that I don’t have them. Of course, I don’t think of them as hocus pocus, Merlin-esque kinds of powers; but rather the kind of natural powers all animals are endowed with but as humans, we lose as we are socialized while growing up. So obviously, I hadn’t the faintest desire to slip submissively into the dull coma of supposed normality. It wasn’t until every abnormal thought or action or perceived weirdness (good and bad) was picked apart, ridiculed and squelched by someone whose acceptance was paramount to me, that I lost my way. I stopped knowing who I was and became who I was told I was. I began to want desperately to be as normal as possible and always failed because my heart wasn’t in it. While I believed for all that time that I wasn’t allowed to fit in, I know now that I made sure that I didn’t. Somewhere inside, that little girl still had her hand on some of the controls (bless her weird little heart!).

I’ll be honest and say that when I deeply respect, admire or am attracted to someone, my first instinct is to try to fit in with them. I try to maintain who I am, but if I feel they are not accepting me, it gets harder and harder to hold on. A reason for that may be that I have only just started to allow myself the freedom to live as I feel and have spent most of my life trying to squeeze myself into a proverbial shoe that never fit … namely, my family.

I have always felt like a satellite floating around outside their world, always making sure that everything was running smoothly, but never really getting to come in for a landing. Ironically, there are a lot of people out there who feel like they don’t fit in with their families. Maybe, on some level, it’s an unfortunate normality on my part; one of the few places I am exceptionally ordinary. Maybe it’s a good thing. Sometimes, knowing others are in the same boat, feeling just as alienated and ostracized as you, actually manages to offer some comfort. Still, if I’d had a choice from the get-go, I would never have signed up for that club.

Please, don’t be frightened of a public unloading of scary family details of an alarmingly over-personal degree. I really don’t have any desire to make you all uncomfortable. It is embarrassing to admit that it wasn’t that long ago that I would have had no problem in doing so, however. I have grown up and learned enough that I look at that part of my life now and see that some of what I have suffered is not really respectable and reasonable to broadcast and I no longer feel the need to campaign for yes-man sympathy. So I will just say that my family was very adept at using their love and acceptance as a bargaining chip for my silent and unwavering servitude. It wasn’t their only transgression, but one that definitely created a version of me that I work every day to bid adieu. And in the spirit of fairness, I have learned (though a hell of a lot of listening and observation), that like everything else they do in a desperate attempt to not be “found out” to be flawed and odd, they are not unusual in that sense. I don’t blame them, really. They just don’t look that deeply into themselves and their motives. I doubt they will ever fully understand how they lost me. But, it was the realization that I had done everything they had asked up to a point of literally giving up my life for them, and they still treated me like the token freak. When I finally grasped that and let go of ever wanting or needing their acceptance and unattainable love, I felt free.like an animal let out of a cage after a lifetime of captivity… as if I could fly.

There isn’t a group or sect or religion or belief that makes me want to be in that position ever again.

Now here I am, on a quest for something that I named “Journey to Hotness”, but it is about so much more than the title bespeaks (as I’m sure you know). It is an expedition to uncover a life where I am not being controlled by anyone or anything but my true self and that includes a body that was built on lies and pain. It is a mission to look in the mirror and recognize what I see as being me… Sunny. To be able to put on the clothes that make me feel comfortable and beautiful and happy. To be able to dance or walk or run or make love or fuck in the way my heart and body aches to do such things. I want to not worry so much about being easy prey for muggers or rapists because I can obviously not run, even if for my life. I want to know what it’s like to lower myself on top of a lover and enjoy the experience without worrying and wondering if I am crushing his bones. These are trifles to some, but they (and others) are and have nearly always been my most profound yearning . And the thing is, when all of these desires (which are reasonable to expect) come to fruition, I know I will feel more genuinely like myself than I have felt since I was a very little girl. And I know that it will make me beautiful. Maybe not to you and maybe not to your best friend or your boss or your doctor or your pot dealer or your ex-girlfriend and that suits me fine. I want it for me. Just… me. And if it makes anyone else happy in the process, well that’ll just be a bonus.

If there is some group out there that seems to fit me, the *real* me, then I’ll be okay to fit in. I feel that way about the people I love. And to all others, they most certainly will get either a physical or spiritual flipping of the bird as my thoughtful reader suggests. My life is not to be spent trying to fit in with or to fall into line with anyone; not any more.

I’m excited. The more I see who I really am, the more I feel filled with joy and the more I remember the seedling I once was. I want to know what kind of amazing things that little girl who wished on stars and wrote songs about cartoon characters and didn’t care if her outfits were like everyone else’s grew up to be. I just know it’s gonna rock tits when I finally do. ;-)

The Eye of The Beholder

When I moved to the Los Angeles area from Silicon Valley almost seven years ago, my main purpose was to work for a specific entertainment company that I had been a fan of for my entire life (and I achieved that goal, thank you for asking). However, one of the perks of moving to a place like LA was that I had it my mind that I would be far less likely to be bandying about with romance. The idea was to literally set myself up in a place where it was almost ridiculously difficult to get a date due to the image issues for which the area is renowned, and therefore would force me to concentrate on more important things; things like developing a real career, perhaps finishing school, doing some respectable performing and maybe even finding out who I really am now that I would be away from those who spent my lifetime telling me who that was.

For the most part, LA didn’t fail to deliver the absurd constraints of image related judgment that I had expected. Conversely, I do get hassled less here than I did in Silicon Valley, about my appearance, but it is obvious that most of the people I run into wish I fit the “beautiful people” stereotype of the community a bit better.

Case in point, when I was reviewed for a show I was in a couple of years ago, the reviewer gave me high praise (the highest of the cast), but couldn’t help but inject a comment about my weight. “Sunny brings life to the evening whenever she is onstage, throwing both her considerable physical and psychological weight into each of several hilariously fleshed out characters…” When I sent out the entire review to my friends and family, very few were not fiercely upset as to the fact that my size was so brazenly insulted. I had to remind them that in a place like this, for that reviewer to find a fat woman entertaining had to have been somewhat of a surprise and therefore more respected. I didn’t find his comment to be insulting so much as to say, “This big woman kicked ass and took names. I didn’t need her to be a size 2 and perfect to find her work exciting.” Maybe that’s putting a sugar coating on it, but I’m okay with that if it is.

Going to the gym in LA has its lion share of image weirdness, particularly the one CB and I frequent. Unlike the 24 Hour Fitness (that closed at midnight, oddly enough) up North, our gym is packed to the rafters with sweaty, panting, young and hot entertainment industry folks. Considering that the gym is located within five miles of several major studios, this was hardly unexpected. But unlike a good deal of my experience with Los Angeles, this is one of the places that borders on the comically stereotypical of what you would expect of a gathering of Hollywoodians to be. Every conversation somehow turns to industry networking. Being about as little of a “player” in the entertainment business as one can possibly be, it is always funny to listen to people make themselves more important than they really are, in hopes that if they keep talking, their audience will somehow lend them a hand in making their fantasy a reality. This particular brand of the LA cliché is often amusing, but mostly just sad.

The other night, sitting in the Jacuzzi after a particularly brutal but rewarding work out, a man who could have been in his late thirties, but obviously had done some “hard living” and looked closer to fifty made his way into the tub with his hyper-clingy (and I believe heavily drugged) girlfriend. The nauseatingly oversexed pair settled in with CB, two young gentlemen and myself and he immediately began schmoozing while his moll made sure to smother him in PDAs to ensure that CB and I don’t get any crazy ideas about her “catch”.

Now, this incident was certainly not the first of the schmoozing kind, but it was certainly the most transparent. It was clear that whoever this man was (he looked familiar but not familiar enough to place) hoped to do some serious networking. Too bad he wound up in the hot tub with an attorney, a newbie of two weeks to both LA and the biz, an animation color stylist and an ex-secretary. As he made his way around the circular bubbling brew of potential connections, I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for him. I would be the last of the tubmates to interrogate and I assumed that I had the least to offer in terms of what he seemed to be seeking. Apparently, I was wrong.

After a quick couple of exchanges, he actually managed to size me up fairly well as someone who enjoys wordplay and suggested that I quit doing whatever it is that I have been doing for a living and try my hand at writing. I said, “I am a writer. In fact I’m writing a one-woman show about being a big woman searching for love in a place like Los Angeles.”

I had expected, based on his friendly demeanor, for the schmoozer's response to be something supportive without being condescending and for the subject to be dropped. Instead, the response he delivered up, as his lady friend smothered his head in kisses while sitting with her legs wrapped around his neck, was, “I’ll take you on!” About that time, a young, handsome black man was entering the Jacuzzi and settling in where the attorney had vacated. Picking up on the conversation, he chimed in, “I love big women! The bigger the woman, the bigger the love.” The two men began waxing poetic, in earnest, about the joys of large women. So much so, in fact, I actually felt uncomfortable and I could see that CB was more than a little miffed when words like, “I hate skinny women” began to fly. She is, after all, a very thin woman.

I politely laughed off the advances and made a foolhardy mistake in attempting to point out the folly of their assumption that all big women are big lovers. I have known too many big women who are just as selfish and steeped in angry insecurity as a starved starlet may be. They were disinterested in hearing that the stereotype, albeit a wobbly attempt at being somewhat sycophantically approving, was wrong; even if it was coming from the horse’s proverbial mouth. It was about that time that I noticed CB’s temperature rising from the anti-thin sentiment brewing, and with my fingers and interest in the conversation growing more clammy by the minute, I motioned to CB to go.

Once we were safely out of earshot, back in the locker room I turned to CB and said, “You know what I find funny about that entire conversation?” Still angry at being inadvertently ostracized, she shot me a sharp, “What?!” To which I said, “Even though they fancied themselves to be fans of the fat chick, they still assumed that I had not found the love I was seeking. I never said I didn’t find it, but they assumed I hadn’t. Interesting isn’t it?” She agreed, but I could tell that her feeling of having been insulted was of more interest to her at the time.

As we were leaving, the black man who had been extolling the virtues of big women happened to be standing by the reception desk. I shot him a brief smile and made my way out. When we were clear of the door, CB pointed out that she shot him a dirty look and wagged her finger at him in disapproval. It hurts her just as much to feel judged about being model thin, as I have for being the exact opposite. I try to soothe her spirits when these instances arise, but her anger is bigger than me. She has not yet reached a place where she accepts that practically everyone suffers from some sort of stereotyping. She hasn’t fully absorbed the calming knowledge that almost everyone has had some reason to be alienated, ostracized and / or ridiculed and that she can choose to blow off someone not finding her attractive as nothing more than a matter of taste and leave it at that. I understand how she feels. It took me over a decade to get to a place where I am not engulfed in rage every time an attractive man looks at me like I am a mountain of rotting meat.

Beauty, sexiness, attraction, hotness and even disgust… it is all very much in the eye of the beholder. That leaves me to wonder... whom do I wish to behold me as hot other than myself? When I think of wanting to be sensual, sultry and lovely, should I also concern myself with who my audience may be? Maybe so… maybe so.

This Ten Pounds Looks Familiar

There's something funny to me about the idea of "losing" weight. It's not so much the practice (which I consider to be about as hilarious as prostate cancer), but rather the wording. Yes, I know it is the process of ridding oneself of the weight and therefore, in this case, losing it is a good thing. But to me, when one loses something there is always that possibility of finding the very thing you lost (whether you lost it on purpose or not). Wouldn't you agree? So I think, in the spirit of making this a permanent change in my life, I am going to call the weight reduction portion of my journey to hotness something more determined and solid like "Weight Eradication" or "Weight Abolition." Why not "Weight Reduction" you say? I see where you're headed with that, but again, the idea of reducing something still sort of implies that it can be regrown and we don't really want that. Do we?

Being a fan of the thought process that is currently being marketed as "The Secret", because it works like a freaking charm, I am realizing more than ever that my thoughts determine a lot of what goes on in my life. And yes, for those of you readers that are skeptical I hear your rationalization of why you believe that concept to be bub kiss. Maybe it works for some people and not for others but I have tested it, tried it, and found little but success in making sure that my thoughts deliver me what I want. In that vein, I have decided that I need to re-tool my thoughts about getting rid of my excess fat in order to succeed. Because, let's face it, I've lost plenty of weight. The thing is, I always seem to find it again... and all its' friends and a few extra.

Stepping on the scale at the gym on Wednesday, and realizing that I had to drop down to a lower increment of fifty pounds to measure my weight, was thrilling. Still, I've lost this weight before and I stood there feeling like I had no real right to get excited. Ten pounds (which I have lost in the two weeks since I started, and largely - I think - due to the stress and activity from my heinous move) is not that big of a deal for me to lose. Three years ago, I had seen the underside of 300 for the first time in my life since I was in my early twenties, and even that didn't manage to keep me on the straight and narrow. So my latest accomplishment was met with pleasure and dubiety. I've lost that ten pounds so many times, it's ri-goddamned-diculous. So this time, I have decided that instead of having lost it, I have dispatched it, dispensed with it, fucking destroyed it. I won't ever see that ten pounds again. Ever.

To all you other pounds that await your demise, I bid you a bittersweet farewell. You provided an exceptional service of a blubbery buffer between my vulnerable heart and others for many years and that was exactly what I had intended you to do. Bravo. But after you had been gone for a while and I invited you back for a return engagement when I needed your protection, you slacked off just when I needed you most. I got more dates with you around than I did when you were gone. So clearly you have lost your effectiveness, your power, your ability to serve your purpose. Firing didn't do the trick. You just found your way back. No, death is the only way and my little friends, I shall enjoy executing you. I really, really will.

Soreness Means My Journey Has Officially Begun

It is hard to know whether going back to the gym just before moving from my apartment (to a shared condo) was a phenomenally excellent idea, or fantastically retarded one. Despite the knowledge that having done so means I have a bit more stamina for this epic event, at the moment, I'm leaning toward retarded. Nevertheless, I know that all the soreness I feel is the precursor to what? That's right! HOTNESS!

Oh yes, I know I have a long haul ahead of me fraught with peril and antiperspirant and constantly parading naked chicks that bring me back to my "dressing in the gym bathroom" days of high school. If I thought my teenage classmates' bodies were intimidating then, going to a gym in the heart of the entertainment industry is, well... well it's just fucking worse! The other night as I peeked in the door of the sauna on the way to the jacuzzi, this was the thought that crossed my deeply heterosexual mind, "I've never seen so much tit and muff in my fucking LIFE! Can these women not put on a fucking TOWEL?!?!?!" Maybe if I thought I was the shit, I wouldn't wear a towel either. I would, however, ensure that my purr fur was in check, unlike one of the naked broads in the sauna that night.

What makes this adventure more fun and interesting, is that I am doing my workouts with my friend CB who is the kind of thin most of the people we are working out with wish they could be and for her it's virtually effortless. The two of us together catch a lot of attention as we make our way to the workout area that overlooks the 101 and while I would love to think it's because all the fine Hollywoodians are revelling in our beauty and happy to see us amongst the sweating masses, I doubt that's it. We look like "before" and "after" gone EXTREME, which as most of you know, is something Hollywood is pretty famous for. While eyes seem to be appreciating CB's taut, perfectly flat stomach, flabless thighs and minimalist chest, as they make their way to me, the looks change from ones of appreciation to almost abject horror. Once upon a time that would have been enough to make me feel uncomfortable and sad and would be my excuse to not want to go. Now, it inspires me to keep going, to keep forging my own view of myself and to base my actions on that view. It's nice to have roomfuls of hot, sweaty, young Los Angelian hunkybutts look at me as though they wish I'd go back to Bally's, and not feel daunted... to not really care. Frankly, that drives home the fact that my journey really isn't about them, some imaginary guy that will reap the rewards of all my labors or even you (much as I value your opinion!). It's about me and what I think of myself. And as I sit here, revving myself up to go do the last big push of moving out of my apartment, feeling sore and achy, I feel good. I feel stronger. I feel happy to be doing something to move forward. I may not feel like a smoldering love goddess, but I feel like I'm on my way. I'll feel even more so when I can finally take a shower again.

Moving is not hot.

My moving is going to be a good idea in practice, when all is said and done, but the process is causing me to be decidedly unhot. Jesus, I didn't even realize I could go in reverse from where I started!

Having lived at the Howard Street apartment for almost seven years, I have come to realize a few things about choosing one's living arrangement for optimal hotness. First, have a parking space. This is essential to getting your beauty sleep and reducing stress. Don't believe me? Fact: when I recently threw out my back, I had to sit in my car for four hours waiting for a parking space within four blocks of my apartment. Have you ever thrown your back out? That was my first time. It was deeply unpleasant and unfamiliar and truly stressful (especially considering I had to evacuate a hotel for a fire during the worst of it). Stress, as we know, is not good for one's skin. Ergo, no parking? Pimpleface, puckermouthed sourpuss. SO NOT HOT!

Location, location, location. I solemnly swear to never, ever have a bedroom that is right next to someone's kitchen and a few short feet from a laundry room. Nothing like waking up to Filipino barbecue wafting into your window and realizing that you might actually be getting some fat deposited on your face. Then there's the thick layer of fuzz on virtually EVERYTHING in the room. Dusting is shitty enough. But as I have been unburying my things from the layers of dust AND lint, I find myself wondering how much of this stuff I've swallowed and conversely, how much of it was sitting on my skin all night, baking in while I slept in the unbearable summer heat. I wonder if lint and dust are fattening. Hmmmm.

Air conditioning is essential. I think that might help dust from baking into my skin. Just a hunch. Also not sleeping due to heat sucks hard. Having to sleep in one's car when the power goes out and it's so hot you cannot breathe, then being eaten alive by bugs is not exactly a recipe for being a penacle of beauty the next day.

Now it's three in the morning, I've spent several hours trying desperately to make sense of all my stuff. I want Niecy Nash (from Clean House) to come in and rescue me from my mayhem and foolishness, but she's nowhere to be found. I also need to shower and I can't because I've not yet purchased a shower curtain for my new place and cleverly removed all the towels from the old one. Not hot.

I think the next time I'm going to move, I won't put off packing until the last effing moment. I feel certain that would make me more attractive. Maybe not to anyone else but me, but hey... that's okay.

The Journey Begins

I've been fat pretty much my whole life now. Even when I wasn't fat, I was being convinced that I was. I've been through varying degrees of "screw it, I'm tired of trying", to "this is someone else's fault not mine" and finally to, "if I don't do something soon, I'm going to fucking die... literally" and everywhere in between. I'm sure there have been times when I even invented places to take my mental state about my body that I shouldn't mention on the Internet. Whatever. The point is that my body started to shut down on me this year (after 50 plus hours nailed to a desk sending people on overpriced vacations) and I panicked. I couldn't walk. I could barely breathe walking from the car to the office. It was bad. Really, really bad.

The closer I am getting to forty, which is wicked fucking quick, the harder I find change to be. That will shock people who know me because I've always been one to make changes pretty easily. Of course, my weight situation has always been one that's changed and changed back a thousand and a half times. But for some reason, in virtually all other areas of my life, if I wanted to make a change, BAM!!!! I made the change. Now? Not so much. If I don't put some serious focus on this, I'm going to never know what it would be like to be me entirely. Not just in personality but in physicality. Because friends I am here to tell you, that in my mind, I run. I run like the wind. I hike. I go for walks instead of sitting down to watch yet more television. I am limber and healthy and bouncy and fun. In my mind, that is.

My body doesn't match my mind and heart as it once did. The lumbering mass I became was a fitting visage to the carefully cultivated self doubt and well placed blame that permeated my life. Yeah, I have a few people who helped build this monster, but admittedly, I became the zombie-esque tubby butt that the frightened villagers chased after with the pitchforks and never looked back.

The funny thing is, I wanted to be this way. I had lost over seventy pounds when I was with my ex. When it was over, I wanted nothing to do with romance, sex and therefore men and I made a conscious decision to pack it back on. I never knew it would careen out of control. I never knew I would end up getting on a scale at a doctor's office and not have the scale register my weight. It never occured to me that my back might go out, and I would have to sit like a blob in a scooter to get around Disneyland (where I normally power through like a coked up camp counselor) and endure the looks of disgust and disapproval from practically everyone I encountered, including the cast members. When I took the job I took last February, I was in desperate need of an opportunity. What that potential opportunity did to my body is absolutely, bar none, the worst thing I have ever done to myself. By the end of my time there, I was hollowed out, exhausted and most likely forty to fifty pounds heavier than when I went in.

I believe in myself. I believe in what I can accomplish. I also believe that I have convinced myself that I cannot lose the weight. It was stuck in my mind that I would never get this done and I kept listening... kept believing. But I have tested out some of the methods I plan to use and know they work. Now is the time of believing in what I can achieve when I put my mind to it.

What exactly am I trying to achieve? It's not a number. It's not a dress size. It's a feeling. It's a state of mind. I want to look in the mirror and say to myself, "That bitch is fucking HOT!" There. I said it. No, I know it's not a noble pursuit. I know it's probably not even really the healthiest. But there it is. I know that all the important stuff will fall into line with that goal like stamina, healthier lifestyle, etc. But I'm tired of being surrounded by women who have what I've only dreamt of in the way of physiques and looks, and being angry with them for doing nothing with it. The only reason I feel that way is that I can't just do it myself. That sucks all the way around.

If you choose to go on this journey with me, all I ask is that you just go along for the ride. Don't try to take the reigns. I want to share this with you, but if there's one thing that shuts me down it's too many people trying to direct the journey. I know what to do. I'll do it or not do it. I know what works. If I need help, I promise I'll ask. So just sit back, relax and come with me. Enjoy the ride. It ought to be an interesting one.