Requiem for a Life Misspent

Being fat isn't always the misery The Daily Mail, soulless glossy magazines and Lorraine Kelly would have you believe. I know. I'm still fat, but I was, three and a half years ago, dangerously obese. I weighed over 22 stone (nearly 141kgs or 310 pounds) moved as little as humanly possible and ate the equivalent of a small european principality (women and children first, naturally) And until that golden moment when I looked at myself in the mirror and didn't recognise me anymore, when I saw the grey faced, heaving mass I'd become instead of the blonde, merely chubby cheeked girl I'd once been and still believed I was, I'd been having a bloody ball. Make no mistake, eating whatever you want and not worrying about it? Drinking to excess (and then a little more) and having the odd crafty ciggie (but not realising you'd started to smoke every day) without once considering what it might be doing to you? It was Bloody Marvellous. I couldn't have cared less.

Of course, we all suffer the odd moment of doubt, especially when other people are wonderfully unkind and prejudiced with their snarky off the cuff remarks in the name of "honesty" - listen, you want to be honest with me? Don't be a fucking pussy about it. Come out and tell me, don't pretend later that you "tried to tell me" - when we both know you're full of shit - because all those sly remarks and helpful hints? They're about as fucking honest as a politician and as useful as Henry's bucket. Put your cock in your hand and use the fucking thing, metaphorically bien sûr. I digress.

Being fat and oblivious is genuinely blissful. Body hang ups? Not me. What a waste of time! Let's just crack on! And it really didn't matter, not for long anyway, what anyone said or implied, my ignorance was as sturdy as my tree trunk legs and my behemoth duck's back.

But that golden moment ... ah, that golden moment. It changes everything. That swirling vertigo of disbelief coupled with a smack in the face that turns out to be reality is quite something. I am grateful for it every single day, but I can't turn my back on the oblivious, self-centred and really rather mad creature that I was. To do so would be foolish. She's part of me, she always will be, so to forget about her, to tell you I'm an entirely different woman, would be disingenuous. It would also be unfair to me. I've worked hard to battle ocd, depression and some really rather nasty anxiety problems - all of this part of the reason I'd become so overweight in the first place; my arse was my shield, so to speak - my battle with my seemingly endless lack of self-esteem is an ongoing project, but I no longer punish myself daily for the mistakes I made years ago. I've fucked up friendships, I've allowed "friends" to fuck me over, but where once I would have slapped that hurt onto the other layers of regret and misery, I take the lesson I need, turn my back on the rest, and keep on moving. Because I've learned. I really have. I'm different from how I was one, five, ten, fifteen years ago, I am an improved version, a happier version - but I could not have done it without accepting who I was, who I'd become and then set about doing something about it.  The sins of the past can go fuck themselves, because now is all I have, all anyone has, and right now I'm better, I'm stronger and, almost impossibly, I'm faster.

So instead of a dirgy old Requiem, let's call this an Ode to a Lesson Learned.