Moving Past the Fear

I have made a lot of decisions in my life based on fear.  In fact, it has taken me a long time to realize this fact.  Most of the fear that I had was about being judged.  I have lived my entire life as a fat person.  I was a chunky kid that became a fat teenager and an even fatter adult.  My weight as an adult has varied but I have always been fat.  Not just fat but obese.  I know this, I understand this, but like many people in my situation I ignore how bad it has been.  Looking back now, I feared judgment.  I am no different than the average person and I wanted to be liked and seen as a person.  Many people have seen me as a person but you still run across people that only see a fat person and not just a person.  I know that is their issue but it hurts.  It hurts a lot.  I hated high school, this is not saying that I don't have some fond memories of high school but as a whole I didn't enjoy it.  I never fit in, there where a lot of reasons for that but chief among them was my weight.  It is very hard to be a fat teenager.  Now this is a lot more common place now but back then, in my school, it was not.  Now this is not a cry for sympathy just something that I wanted to get out.  That hate for high school made me drop out.  My senior year.  Pure craziness now when I look back but then it was my safety mechanism.  Moving on to college, those fears came back.  I will admit they were not as bad but then again is anything ever as bad as a teenage mind makes it out to be? 

From the time I was a kid and this is no joke I was a KID, I wanted to be a lawyer.  Not just a lawyer, I wanted to be a criminal prosecutor.  Now I did ok in college (the first time) and I made some wonderful friends and I had some great times.  However, when it came time to really think about law school and everything that goes with it I chickened out.  I let that fear take over.  Now I made some really great excuses about lawyers and not liking them but I really think I just got scared.  Couple that fear with having maybe a bit too much fun and not getting stellar grades and bingo no law school for me.  So what did I do?  I turned to a job that was convenient and didn't require me to go looking for it.  My sister got my job for me.  Lame I know but it is true.  I have been at that same job for 14 years now.  I have had to opportunity to leave over the years but that fear of change and being judged kept me right where I am.  Now don't get me wrong, I have liked my job and some of the people that I worked with.  I could lie and say I have loved everyone I worked with but it would be just that, a lie.  Anyway, I think that during this time I suffered from depression.  Not deep despair depression but depression nonetheless. 

I didn't take the risks that my heart was screaming for me to take.  I didn't date, I didn't travel, I just didn't take risks, and in all of that I wasn't living.  I was existing.  It makes me sad to think about how much of my life I lived that way.  When I started on MFP (for those that don't know it is a free weight loss website) I was just finding my way out of the fear.  The year before I had taken my first risk and I think that was probably my first real strike in finding me.  MFP helped, the wonderful people that I met there helped, taking risks helped, traveling helped.  I have spent the last three and a half years finding my way back to me.  The me that I am not sure I ever really knew.  My sisters said that I reverted back to a teenager for a while and I think that maybe true.  I think that was when I really lost my way so for a while I acted like I was sixteen again, or eighteen, or twenty-one.  I flirted, I showed skin, I drank a bit too much, and in general I had a whole lot of fun.  I regret nothing.  I feel like now, I am settling into the adult me.  I have had a bit of a setback with the weight and I am trying to not let it affect me.  I still get the oh noes I am being judged feeling but I work hard to let it go.  I have a confidence that I am not sure I ever really had in my life.  I am trying new things, including writing, and just in general I am trying to make sure that I live.  Existing is for the birds, trust me. 

So for my next year, I plan on working off some of this weight, graduating from college (again), finishing my books and hopefully getting them published, learning to drive, applying to and starting grad school, taking a road trip with my best friend, and in general I plan on living life to the fullest.  I want to be able to look back and say wow, I might of started slow but I certainly made up for it.  I want to live a life that makes me happy. 

When it comes to this blog, I don't write any of these for kudos or sympathy.  I write these because it is the shit in my head but mainly because I hope that someone out there reads what I write and relates and maybe just maybe it helps them.  I know if I had read something like this in the height of my bad place it would have helped me.