12/31/2001

As 2001 comes to a close, all I can think is, What if I hadn’t given up after two days? What if I’d stuck to it like Fred did? I could have lost 100 pounds or more by now…

How was I supposed to know that this time it was for real, for him? That he wouldn’t give up after a day or two like he always did – we always did?

Now he looks incredible, and I’m a fat fucking blob. I think I’ve gained weight, even, but I’m too afraid to get on the scale, because deep down, I don’t want to know the truth, not really.

Sometimes I see how he looks and feels, and I yearn to feel like that, to be able to walk upstairs and not gasp for breath for ten minutes afterward, to be able to shop at normal stores, to wear sizes that aren’t the absolute hugest sizes out there. To wear something pretty instead of oversized t-shirts and stretchy pants. But at the same time I resent and am jealous of him. It seems so easy for him, and I’ve heard his earnest "It is easy, Bessie. You just have to think differently" ten thousand times, and I don’t get it, I don’t understand, I don’t know how to make that happen. How is it that so many people online can draw so much motivation from him, and yet it all goes right the fuck over my head?

All he can talk about is exercising and eating right, and this weight-lifting program or that one, and every time he starts talking about how he thinks he’ll try lifting weights this way, or that he ran longer than he ever has before, I feel like he’s going somewhere I can’t be, and he’s leaving me behind, and I start to withdraw. I know that’s not good, I know it’s not good for our relationship – or our friendship – but I’m helpless to stop. I feel sometimes like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, and one day he’s going to look at me and realize how much better he can do, that he deserves a woman who can keep up with him, who won’t sit, a lump of fat, on the couch and read or watch TV, who can actually walk as fast as he can, and he’s going to push me over the cliff and walk away without looking back.

I can’t bring myself to eat junk food in front of him, and so I’ve started hiding Little Debbies and candy bars from him – he never looks in the back of my desk drawer, and so that’s where I keep it all. And I eat and eat and eat while he’s off exercising or taking a bath or gone to sleep, and I feel so fucking guilty, like I’m cheating on him or something.

I’ve started and stopped at least ten diets since last June, and when I talk about starting, he gets so excited and offers to help, and then when I go off my diet after a few days, though he’d never admit it, he’s disappointed as hell, and I just can’t stand seeing that accepting, loving, disappointed look on his face. How can he keep believing that I can ever do what he’s done? And yet, every time I start talking about it, he’s completely there, totally believing that I’ll do it, that this will be the time, that in a year I’ll look like a completely different person.

We went to his parents’ house on Christmas Eve, and his sister and stepsister made a fuss over him, about how good he looks, and their eyes just slid past me like I don’t exist.

I feel like I don’t.

I’m so tired of feeling like this, both physically and emotionally, I just can’t take it anymore. This is it – I have to do this, I have to lose the weight, for myself more than anything. I’m tired of being fat and tired. I have to do it for real this time, I have no choice. There’s no turning back – my life and my marriage depend on it.

I’m going to start January 2nd.

This was written for the December collab. December’s topic was the “sliding doors” premise – inspired by SecraTerri’s September 19th entry. I chose to write this entry as though I had given up on losing weight after only a few days, instead of sticking to it. Which I didn’t, as my 120+ pound weight loss (so far) shows. To clarify: this entry was written as though I had NOT spent the last 18 months working out and eating right. Which I did. —– ]]>