No More Skinny Mini - Hello "Adult Weight"

"You look skinny - but I don't know why I bother to say it - you don't believe me anyway".  That's the first thing Diana said to me yesterday after not seeing her for a week.

She means well.

She's right.  About the not believing her part.

I'm one of those short girls (5ft) blessed with "curves" that are cute at 17 and then fast foward almost a decade and suddenly curves become muffin top.  

I know it's an obsession.  When I was in grade school I was one of the biggest girls in the class. Eric Flores told me he liked me for my personality but the fact that I resembled a baby elephant was apparently his deal breaker - that didn't leave me.  I hear that Eric Flores dropped out of high school and was part of an Asian Mafia in Queens.  Karma.  A bitch.

I'm working on this.  I haven't been a baby elephant for years.  I think I actually settled into my "adult weight" recently.  The weight that means - I don't drink in place of meals, I stopped the diet pills that were pretty much legalized speed and maybe one day my adult body has enough adipose tissue to get pregnant and have a baby.  Adult weight means that no matter how often I like to fool myself into thinking I will ever be a size 2 again - it ain't gonna happen.

I think I might be ok with it.  I have a sick obsession with Celebrity Gossip mags and I see all the thin celebs and all the supposed pics of cellulite and I know that is what to blame.  Lucky for me I have a boy who is genuine and he swears he loves my body - curves and all.  He's the same boy who thinks Jennifer Aniston looked better in the early episodes of Friends before she lost the weight.

I'll keep him.

Words....

Even on my best days, there are times that my nemesis Anxious and her sister Insecure come to visit.  And while you've done wonders to placate my fears, nothing can stop them once they're inside.  When you say "forever", they whisper that "forever" is pretty vague.  They want hard proof.  A date, a limb, a shared lease at least.  I assure you they aren't who I am anymore.  But sometimes the past comes back unannounced.  And I'm helpless to accommodate.

You've done wonders to calm most fears though.  I know I'm safest when I'm asleep in your arms.  I know you mean words like "gorgeous", "never" and "forever".  I know you are one of those rare souls that were born minus the deceit gene.  And I love you for that.  

Sometimes I resist.  And you putter on through.  You fight my pig-headedness and you prove over and over again that you are not any of the "thems".

Today was one of those days.  I felt Anxious knocking again.  She wanted to remind me that you're still there while I sleep.  Insecure reminded me of the five pounds I swore I'd lose by now.  Sometimes I want to beat them out of me.  But how do I beat up myself?  I mean, don't I do that enough?  So I try to come up with concrete evidence to the contrary.  And I win in small defeats.

I get better everyday.  I believe the "I love you" and I am getting very used to "forever" (sometimes you add two "evers" and I know you mean business).  

Past musings

I think back now to that day he moved out.  "I just need to get away for now.  I don't want this to be for good"; I didn't believe him then.  I knew it had to happen.  Hell, I moved out myself just a week before.  But I was only bluffing.  He, the well seasoned gambler he had grown to be, called my bluff.  He left with most of his stuff (the stuff I hadn't thrown out or given away to the local homeless in a fit of anger just weeks before).  He left his ties - I held on to them as a tiny smidgon of hope.  Months later I would use those ties as fashionable belts.  Break ups make me lose weight.  I was a size 2.

That day, he forced me to grow up.  Before that I lived in a world where I payed $400 a month for rent on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (unheard of), I shopped online like a fiend looking for her next fix.  I was living like a kept woman.  Those sad cases you see on the reality shows where you wonder "how the hell can they live like that??"  I was fixated on a diamond ring but terrified the day I found the Zales bag in his nightstand.  I knew deep down that I didn't want to live like that.  I just didn't know any other way.  

Today, almost four years later, I want to thank him.  For being an online pervert, for the cheating and the lying.  For the life experience he gave me.  I would thank him if we were speaking.  But that would involve me giving his ceramic Buddha back - and I destroyed that months ago when I moved into my new apartment.  I wanted no mementos.  NYC studios do not accommodate tangible memories.

I look at the woman I've become - I found my funny side, my artistic side and yes - my rent has increased significantly but I pay it.  So, maybe one day, when you're searching the Internet for some cheap porn/hookers (like you did in old times) you'll come across this post and know I just really want to thank you.  For making me the best grown-up I can be.