...on being fat

My daughters hate it when I say I'm fat. It is considered self-deprecating and in all honesty, is treated like a four letter word around here. Their intentions are honorable and pure, but the truth of the matter is that I've been overweight for years. Now that my worst kept secret is out of the bag, I can get to some hard truths on being fat.

"Don't get fat. No one will take you seriously and EVERYONE will judge you, silently." -DB

My friend DB is right. I have also found that when you speak, people don't really listen to a word you say. You may think that they are, but no. Most people won't even look you in the eye. Why? My guess is that they are probably thinking that you might want to reconsider that up-do so that you look less like a pinhead. Sadly, we live in a society that judges you based on appearance. People who see me in passing will never know what an awesome mom I am, or that I am smart, talented and witty, OR that I used to be the very definition of fit. Before I ruined my body, I was training three to four days a week, was studying to be a personal trainer and had a BMI of 16.8%...but I digress, this is me truth telling about the awfulness of being fat.

First and foremost, it's not healthy to be fat. I don't care what anybody says, it's NOT HEALTHY. I had my first gut punch in 2016 when I was at the doctor because I was feeling "off" and found myself in the back of an ambulance on the way to the cardiac wing of Northside Hospital. You think that would have scared me straight, but I have an emotional eating addiction. Food is like the alcohol that used to soothe me. I simply traded one addiction for another. I used to drink my dinner when I was thin, but that's another story entirely. Onward....

FACTS: It's hard to move when you are fat. Everything you eat eventually winds up an acidic explosion burning fire in the back of your throat. Elongated toilets will become your best friend because your ass no longer fits on the baby round bowls. Everything you wear will have elastic somewhere. Tying your shoes will become a Herculean task, until eventually every pair of shoes you own are slip-ons. Your own snoring will wake you up at night. You and heat will not co-exist, and you will have rashes in unholy places to prove it. Purses will slide right off your shoulder because there is no longer a bone there to keep it in place. Showering is like tackling Everest. Tables instead of booths. Everything hurts all the time. You will hate the way you look.

I did this to myself, for too many reasons to list here, and I am the only one who can undo it. At some point, I need to make my outside match my inside and I will...at some point. Right now, insanely, I am okay with the anonymity and invisibility of being fat. This weight is a scar, the battle scar of my life. It represents all the moments and emotions when I broke under the strain. It is my silent cry for help when I felt alone and unloved. It is my triumph, that I remain. Here. Living.

Peace     

Stop. Breathe. Listen. Do.

After years of struggling, whining, worrying and turning a deaf ear to my screaming inner voice, I have surrendered. You know what happens when you surrender, when you stop, breathe, listen and do? Everything. Everything happens. The things that you have prayed for, they come. The dreams that you've dared to dream are not "somewhere over the rainbow." They are there, waiting for you, waiting for you to get out of your own way, so that they can be manifested in spades. So much energy is wasted in self loathing and doubt and all the reasons why you can't. When you finally shed that skin and are reborn, the Universe says YES, now let me get to work, let me show you. I'm sure whoever coined the phrase, let go and let God, did not intend for it to become some hollow cliché adopted by every self-help group under the sun. It is a phrase of action, of cause and effect, and it is powerful.

Work hard in silence, let success be your noise.

Big things are coming. Big! YUGE! 😄 God is good. Stay tuned...

Peace 

Unhireable

In the last year, I have made forty-six job applications ranging from maid to bridal consultant, dog walker to bus driver, cashier to editorial assistant at Random House and everything in between. 46! Eighteen just since January. I've updated my resume, I've made cover letters and I've taken all of the ridiculous mandatory assessment tests that measure my??? Intelligence? Ability? Skill level? What? Is that Myers-Briggs test really necessary to determine my qualifications to run a cash register, or to see if I play well with others? I'm fifty, not fifteen. I've been interviewed, fingerprinted, background checked and agreed to be drug tested. In thirty seven years, I've never had a job that wasn't customer service related, so why am I unhireable?

I went on another interview yesterday. The woman spent five minutes with me, five. An hour later I got this email...

Full disclosure, the job was for book seller at a major retail chain. I redacted the store's brand and location, because you see, I was told I would get a call back, not a form letter. It's an absolute slap in the face that people (me) are treated this way. I meet the requirements for this job in every possible way!! A writer working in a book store should be their golden egg laying goose for God's sake. I just don't understand. Uprooting my life and moving to a different state was supposed to be the hard part. I never thought twice about finding a job, and here I am five months without a paycheck. The cost of everything has gone up in the last year, too. Everything. I understand with flawless clarity how people become homeless, because it's at my doorstep, and nobody really cares save those who are directly affected. Sure, I try to maintain a positive attitude, walk in faithfulness and gratitude, but my Facebook friend's coffee table pic received more likes than this will get reads. I write for myself.

Sincerely frustrated beyond comprehension,

TR



  



       

My Ninth Hour

Art by Healarum @artmajeur.com

I need a healing. The kind of unspoken healing that takes place at a good old fashioned southern holiness revival. I need the laying of hands on me, a spiritual crash cart to send shock-waves through my body and soul, wipe my brain, decalcify the pineal gland and allow me to feel anything again. I need a spiritual sister to look deep into and through me, to pull the darkness from my gut. Is it God that has stripped me bare and made me indifferent to life? Is He the One who has pulled back all the layers and flogged my being so raw, to prepare me for something I cannot yet see? Like the Son at the ninth hour, I feel forsaken.

Please. Show me the way... 





   

Struggle, It Builds Character

Everyone struggles, no one is unique in this regard. To what degree everyone struggles is what makes it relative. Fleeing a war torn nation, drinking from polluted rivers, starvation, slavery and false imprisonment are all struggles that most of us will never know firsthand, thank God. Tell those people that their struggle builds character. 

Right now, a ten year old little girl struggles with hearing the words...I wish you were never born...a high school freshman struggles with being raped, but never tells anyone because she thinks it's her fault. There's a flight attendant afraid and struggling in New York because she's being beaten by her boyfriend, there's a housewife in suburbia with two babes in diapers whose husband is cheating on her and she is struggling with why, there's an exhausted woman living next door to you who regularly struggles to keep her drunken man from choking on his own vomit while he sleeps, and another stretched so thin that she struggles to decide whether to put gas in the car, or food on the table tonight.

When your life is hard, a literal living hell, character is built whether you realize it at the time or not. Alone, you travel through the storm, spirit being honed against every bad decision and consequence. The world will judge you. Let them. You can't possibly explain to anyone all the twists, turns and terrains that your road has taken. It is your miracle to be alive. It is too much for another human being to fully know you. That is for God. Use your struggles to impart wisdom to others, if they will receive it. Write it down, start a blog. Who knows what could happen? Maybe the person you're saving, is you.

Peace 


 

          

Alcohol: The Body Eating Spirit

There is, perhaps, no other beverage so insidious as alcohol. I got cold chills upon hearing the ancient origin of the word, from Arabic, Al-khul, meaning body eating spirit. It was believed that alcohol would extract the essence of the soul, leaving the body vulnerable to low frequency entities, leading to a host of questionable, sometimes immoral behavior and eventual blackout. The Body Eating Spirit and I have a long, sordid history together. She has been as much a part of my life as breath. She's been locked away going on five years now—but that doesn't stop her from rattling the cage.

I had my first drink when I was twelve. I wasn't a fan of the taste, but of the warmth that consumed my body from the inside out, I fell in love. The insecure, shy, awkward, scared, fragile little girl, the essence of my true self, was put in the corner every time I raised a glass. Drinking made me feel beautiful, sexy, confident, jovial, and free. I adopted the, it's five o'clock somewhere mentality, mostly so I wouldn't have to deal with the corner brat. Nobody liked the real me, especially me. The problem with putting your true self aside in order to be something you're not, is that those feelings of low self worth fester and grow. So, drinking eventually becomes necessary in order to avoid actually sorting through feelings.

Drinkers, tend to surround themselves with, other drinkers. That way, we don't have to admit that we have a problem with the frequency and amount of alcohol that we consume. Three out of the four major relationships I've had in my life have been with alcoholics, and the exception was an AA devotee, sober nine years when we got together. I abstained for three and a half years for him. The only other time I quit drinking entirely was when I was pregnant and breastfeeding. And now, as I mentioned, there is now.

I've had a life long relationship with this Body Eating Spirit, doing so many things of which I am not proud. I have seen lives ruined and marriages broken because of al-khul. I have finally embraced my corner brat, and we are mending many years of pain and neglect, getting to the truth of who we are and what we're doing here. Maybe this blog is the prologue for my next book. There is much to say. Perhaps that is why the cage is rattling.

To be continued.....