My Previous Life

  

A life spent being overweight is a life that is only half-lived. ~ Oprah Winfrey

My mysterious reader brought herself to light through email. You still havent left a comment, but I know that you are still reading. =.)

The pictures above are the most recent pictures I have of myself. I hate taking pictures. The first one was when I weighed 190 lbs. With that big tummy, you cant tell that I have big breasts! Shocking. The second and the third pictures are when I lost weight in 2003. I went down to 146, but because of continued stress from my career, from my mother, and from people who used to read my journal who were jealous because AOL wanted to feature my journal, I have gone back up to 170. The readers made me feel that I didnt deserve the honor and so I turned down AOL. What a big mistake! Since then, it has been so hard to get motivated again. It would be good if I felt I had some support, but I feel as if I continue to live through this difficult weight-loss journey alone.

Because I am only 4'11", I have always had to watch my weight. I started gaining weight at the age of 10 when they took my tonsils on Valentine's Day. Although I was blessed with beauty, beauty brought much sadness and tragedy into my life. All the stress of physical and sexual abuse in my childhood kept me overweight, and I would add to that by hiding my body under very lose clothing, because I didnt want to look attractive. I was afraid to be beautiful, because it was beauty that made boys and men from my own family want to take me sexually. Because my father died when I was three and because my mother was never home, they knew that I was an easy target with no one to defend me, and because I was a child, I was not strong enough to fight them off. I remember hearing them talk amongst themselves, saying that because I was a child that I wouldnt remember what they had done, that children forget, but I knowfrom experience that children do not forget. Add to that an abusive mother who repeatedly tells you that you should have been born a boy, who repeatedly tells you that you are and will always be nada.

Some people in your life can be toxic and I choose to stay away from them, but staying away from your own mother is hard.

When I went to college, I started jogging around the track, and it was then that I was discovered~ again, but this time it was by the Art Department, and they asked me to model. That was my first good experience with beauty, because the pictures the students painted of me were very flattering. Because I didnt drive or have a car, I learned to walk very fast. I had to, because it was a very large campus and I lived far from campus, and I also held three jobs to pay my way through college.

Life was sweet, until I had to leave college to marry the wrong man who was but a repeat pattern of sexual and emotional abuse... and unfortunately, he became the father of my children. Fortunately, the marriage was short-lived.

Being a single parent is hard, especially when you are working full-time and return to college full-time and have to take care of a household full-time with no help from welfare or anybody, but I am proud to have been a good role model to my children and I am proud of what they have become.

Children dont make you fat, ex-husbands do.

After my divorce, I kept in shape by jogging and lifting weights, and then I discovered Disco or should I say Disco discovered me. Although I didnt go dancing often, when I did go, it was hard to keep me off the dance floor, because I had so much energy. Men would always ask me to dance, because to me, it didnt matter if they were good looking, skinny or fat. I just wanted to dance and I would dance with anybody who asked. From the time I stepped into Dr. Livingston's until the last dance, it was rare to see me be off the floor, because whenever one man got tired, another one would step in and another and another and another. Yes, I would say that was the time when I was at my fittest~ lifting weights, jogging, and dancing and working two or three jobs at the same time. There was a man who wanted for me to dance with him professionally, but I was afraid of what people would think because he is black. What stupid mistakes we make when we worry about what other people will think.

It felt good to be able to go into a store and buy something off the rack, knowing it was going to fit without even trying it on.

My health began to deteriorate after my car accident in 1980. I broke almost every bone in my body and I died and came back to life after making a bargain with God. I am now 53 years old. I did not expect to live this long, because my bargain with God was only until my children were grown and on their own, but I am still here.

Being fit and strong is wonderful, but beauty has also attracted all the wrong men into my life. 

I am the beautiful woman within the walls of glass, protecting my heart from the cruelty of the outside world. I fight for lives of others and I fight for self-improvement and wisdom, but I hide behind my work and I find other things to fill my days. I am afraid to be beautiful. I am afraid of attracting yet another wrong man into my life. 

I have lived without love all of my life. I do not know what it is like to sit on my father's lap. I do not know what it is like to have a mother who loves me. If it had not been for the birth of my second child, I would have never known what it is like to mean the world to one person.

The man of my dreams will allow me to blossom in my own light. He will not allow me to become a part of somebody else's shadow. I have lived without love all of my life. If the love of a good man should find me this late in my life, will I be able to recognize it, and most important, will I be able to surrender to it? 

 

Thanks for listening,

Win =.)