invisible fat girl: on my knees...

It is Sunday, January 23, 2011. At about 5:30 AM I shoot out of bed...something feels wrong, but I can't decipher what. My husband, who NEVER wakes up, jumps up with me and asks me what's wrong. I tell him that I thought I heard one of the kids fall out of the bed...but I am mistaken. It was nothing...I'm back to sleep in ten minutes. Around 6:05 AM the phone rings, and my life is changed forever.

I don't remember much from that phone call, but my husband tells me that when I answered, the first thing out of my mouth was, "He's gone, isn't he?" I didn't even say hello. I just knew...I felt it. The first man to show me unconditional love...my amazing, sweet, funny, empathetic, and loving dad...was gone forever. It has been the most soul crushing moment in my life thus far. I had never known that kind of grief and pain. I suppose it is a part of life, but nothing that one can ever prepare for.

Dad spent the last seventeen years of his life in a chair. He was a shut-in, unable to leave the house due to the physical limitations caused by the sheer size of his body. He couldn't fit in most cars or in a standard wheelchair. While I don't have an actual weight on him at the time of his death, I know that his last confirmed weight hovered around 570 pounds, and at his highest he weighed in at 620. He missed my college graduation, wedding, and the birth of my two children because he was a prisoner in his own body. Having always considered myself daddy's little girl, my dad's absence was always in the forefront of my mind at such moments in my life.

The final years of our lives together could be measured in phone calls and occasional visits, every year or so. We spoke almost daily...but he wasn't an active participant in my life, or his own for that matter. He died three years ago, but if you ask me, he wasn't really living in the years before his death. Sure, he could call and catch up with me and the kids, but it wasn't the same. How could it be?

At the time of my dad's death, I was probably close to 275 pounds. Definitely overweight, but not the biggest I had ever been (I was 360 pounds when I had gastric bypass in January of 2002). At 275 pounds, my weight held me back emotionally, always...but physically, I was able to waddle through life without much trouble. Of course I wasn't running through the park with my kids, jumping at the chance to put on a bathing suit, or hopping on roller coasters...but I could definitely kid myself into thinking that my weight wasn't restricting my overall quality of life. I mean let's face it, I could get in and out of cars without much trouble and I no longer needed seatbelt extensions on airplanes. But I still found myself studying chairs, estimating their weight capacities in order to prevent them from crumbling beneath my ass (as with most fat people, this has happened to me more than once).

I was always in a constant state of worry that my boys would be embarrassed of me. For this reason, I avoided volunteering at school. I always feared children's honesty. Kids throw around the word "fat" innocently and at times, carelessly. I once had a little boy tell me I was fat when I was bending over to tie his shoe. As much as I wanted to untie his shoe again and walk away, I just told him that it wasn't a nice thing to say and left, feeling crushed. Remembering how much my dad's size mortified me as a child, I didn't want to give my kids the chance to feel the same way...but it wasn't enough to motivate me to lose weight. It was only enough to sacrifice the only opportunity I had to spend time with my oldest son at school while he was still young enough to appreciate it.

It is sobering to think of all of the ways that my weight has held me back. Of course it hasn't done to me what my father's did to him, but at one point I was headed there. I was sitting on the sidelines....watching my life from the periphery. I just couldn't live like that anymore. I wanted my kids to have a mom they were proud of...and I was tired of being afraid. Afraid to make eye contact, afraid to get in a bathing suit, afraid to sit in a chair...afraid to get up and live my life.

Dad, 2007