Defining Moments 39-42

I managed to gain all that weight back during those years. I really didn’t know where I stood from one minute to the next. I was single again, and terrified of trying to find someone new. It was so much easier to eat myself happy. I reached a whopping 230 pounds before I realized what I was doing. I was used to going into public and not being noticed. But one day I walked into a busy store and was completely invisible. I honestly believe that no one could see me. No one looked at me, no one heard me, no one tried to help me. I was completely unnoticeable.


So, I watch Oprah a lot and realized (after watching a Dr. Phil episode) that I was fat not because I loved food, but because I felt so safe being invisible. I bought the book and read it to the point where I am right now. I managed to understand where the safety came from. Of course, when I went to junior high I was invisible. No one saw me and no one picked on me. I was safe and happy for the first time I could remember.

I started hiking that summer (2002) and by the end of the year I had lost 95 pounds. I looked great. But my friends at work, though they said they were happy and proud of me, turned on me. It was so heartbreaking.
I even signed up on match.com and started doing a lot of dating. But nothing lasted, and the guys were certainly not willing to tell me why. What was so wrong with me that they didn’t want to keep me?

I stuck with the running for few years and kept all the weight off. I even trained for and competed in a marathon. The marathon killed my sciatic nerve bundles and I wasn’t able to run so much. And for some reason that I have not figured out yet, I have gained back 30 pounds. Not enough to be considered fat, but certainly not enough to be noticed.

For the past couple of years I hadn’t dated. I held a torch for my son’s counselor for a while, but I finally came to the conclusion that either he wasn’t interested, or he didn’t have what I would need to be happy with him.
Because of a fellow blogger, I signed up on match.com. I immediately started getting responses, and within a couple of weeks, I met Dale. As I wrote in this blog, I wanted to believe this was “it”. I wanted to be in this relationship forever. I systematically pushed myself to the back and ignored that voice inside until I nearly exploded. He is an alcoholic and was completely unaccepting of me. He thought there were plenty of things wrong with me and apparently I didn‘t disagree with him. I wasn’t fast enough, I wasn’t thin enough, I was too emotional, and not nearly enough like Kendra. When he couldn’t accept my kids, I figured it was more him than me, maybe that’s why it didn’t kill me.

He’s an alcoholic. Just like so many other people in my life have been. I don’t really know how much of that to take personally. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m making the decision to take this book and actually do the work to find and fix what’s wrong.

There it is. Obviously, this isn’t everything about me, just the things that I really feel impacted the person I am today. I’m going to have to choose 10 moments out of 42 years as my defining moments. The moments that skewed my perception of who and what I am, what my value is to me and others. This was so hard for me to do. I hope it wasn’t as hard to read.

Please, God, let me find my purpose through this process. I need to find me so that I can be me, and fulfill my spiritual contract. I want to know what love is.