Remember when.....

I am having...let's call it....a moment. I am once again a fat girl trapped inside a less fat girl's body. I am having issues, to put it mildly. I feel like a character in the movie Inception. What appears to be my reality is really only a deep sleep, and when I wake up, this will have all been the unreal-est and the cruelest of dreams. I will wake up fat and sweaty and crying and clutching a Ho Ho in one hand and a bag of Pepperidge Farms Macadamia Chocolate Chunk cookies in the other hand. I will more than likely find myself via 2009 on Southwest Airlines, with a seatbelt (and seatbelt extender) wrapped across my ever expanding mid-section, drooling on my husbands shoulder, hoping that people don't use me as a flotation device if we should crash and burn.

I am petrified of food. I am petrified of relaxation. I am terrified at the thought that a lazy Sunday will result in somehow immediately gaining back like 50 pounds. When my body aches, and my knees are burning, and my lungs are out of oxygen and I think I can't possibly push one more step, I push a little more because I can't help but to remember.....

Let's play a little game of Remember When.....

~Hey, remember when you were so fat, that you couldn't bend over to tie your shoes? Remember how you had to somehow maneuver yourself in between your legs with your knees bent at weird angles to tie a crooked bow while your face turned blue?

~Remember when you weighed 120 pounds MORE than your husband, and you feared that he might find out?

~Remember that time a rude flight attendant tossed a seatbelt extender at you in front of a plane FULL of people and the only reason you didn't jump in the aisle and go all Kung Fu Panda on him was because you were too fat to climb over the middle and aisle seat?

~Remember the day your doctor told you that you had more than likely continued to get reproductive cancer because you were a "very large woman"?

~Or the best one....remember all the times you missed out on playing with your kids, hanging out with friends, wearing that cute outfit, or living a REAL life before you were too stupid to get it and before 20 years and a lot of cartilidge in your knees was just gone?

Ah, good times. Good times.

I'm tired of being afraid. I'm tired of letting my past haunt my present and possibly, negatively affect my future. So right here, in the here and now of today I am taking control. No more fear. No more what if's, coulda been's or if I had only's. The only thing I am going to focus on is what I HAVE done to get me HERE in this very moment, and what I am going to do each and every day for the rest of my life.

I'm going to live.

I'm going to accept my past mistakes and try not to make them again in the future. I'm going to stop letting who I was define who I am going to be. I'm going to love myself. All of myself. Every imperfect, extra inch of skin. Every scar. Every stretch mark. Every part of my body that I can feel and see that reminds me that despite it all, I am still here. And I am blessed and lucky. I am going to remember all the dreams I had for myself when this journey started and I am going to work at making each and every one of them come true. And if they don't, I am going to be ok with that, and make new dreams as I go along.

Someday, instead of playing remember when I will say remember to.

As in, remember to love yourself, be proud of yourself, be humble, and be present. Remember that tomorrows aren't promised, and yesterday can't be changed, so move forward and remember to appreciate the life you have, not mourn the one you had.

I like that game much better.