madermouse's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reflections of the older me May 10th, 2004 �All my life I thought I could just ignore my weight problem. I accepted the fact that I�d be hauled out of my house by 16 beefy firefighters after they broke the wall down. I accepted the fact that I could never change, because I loved food too much. I accepted the fact that I would be forever limited by my size. I accepted that I would always be unhappy. I accepted the fact that I may never be able to fly home to see my family again, because I can�t afford a wider first-class airplane seat. I accepted the fact that the world I lived in was getting smaller and smaller because I was scared to be seen in public and I frankly couldn�t fit places anymore. I accepted the fact that my knees would probably fail me one day and my husband would have to wipe my ass and wash me. Why? Why did I do this to myself? Why did I just accept this as the �normal� for me? Laziness? Fear? Security? Habit? None of these reasons are good enough for me anymore.� - written by me, July 10th, 2001 I�ve been reading my older journals for a better part of the day. Originally, I started reading them to find something to give to my writing group to critique. Naturally, I expected something to catch in my throat. I expected to swallow a lump when reading about the pounds I lost, the goals I had met, about how proud and happy I was then. I predicted I�d feel alienated from those words, who seemed to be written by a stranger that I knew very well. I just never expected this particular passage to be the one that got me. Have you ever caught your reflection in a store front window, and you didn�t recognize yourself? This started happening to me all the time when I first lost weight. I would see a woman approaching the building at work, and not realize it was me. This was one of the simplest pleasures of losing weight and being thinner. The mirror was finally starting to be kinder. Those reflections that caught me off guard caused me to smile within myself, to well up with pride at my accomplishments. I looked forward to those happy accidents. But this passage served as my reflection today, and it caught me off guard. It took my breath away, because I recognized myself completely in it. I am becoming a hermit again, the way I was becoming a hermit before. It is getting harder and harder for me to go out in public. I have accepted the fact that I�m meant to be fat and unhappy. I�ve accepted that I can never change because I love food too much. And as I tore through my journal, I found lots of other paragraphs that described me now too. I found this happier, thinner Heather describing some awful thing that sadder, fatter Heather used to do, and then claiming how she�d never be that person again. Yet here I am. That person again. My storytelling has come full circle and I have become what I was in the beginning. I have transformed from worm to butterfly and back to worm again. I know I�ve slipped. I know I�ve fallen and broken something inside of me that I cannot seem to fix. But even so, I cannot help but hold on to this thread. I read my older journals and although I don�t identify with most of it, although I don�t feel most of it, I still logically know it is ME who wrote and felt all those things. I still know that it is possible for me to be that person again, in the same way that I have become this person again. And if life is truly a cycle, then the pendulum must swing the other direction too, right? 2:53 p.m. - May 10, 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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