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2:45 a.m. - Sunday, Dec. 08, 2002
Ms Leslie goin' fishin (wink, wink)
Today I�m glad; I�ve made a new friend online.

Today I hope: I can go buy a cheap fishing pole and then stand for an hour at the end of the fishing pier with it. If I catch a fish, I don�t know what I�ll do.

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Wow� thanks to y�all who entered your suggestions in my guestbook and to those who e-mailed me. It�s funny� Your advice told me more about you than I could have learned by asking. Beyond that, though, all of your combined comments have started me thinking and organizing just what it is I�m facing here. To wit:

This is hard to say out loud, but I think the issue of finding male friends is intertwined with my issue of losing weight. I think I�m��. scared. But then, since when is THAT news. I�m always scared about something. IN this case, though, I realize I can avoid the fear and uncertainty of putting myself out there in any real way as long as I am fat enough to feel unattractive. So, whenever I start to feel like going out and meeting people (i.e. men), I find myself consumed with cravings for food. Consumed with consuming.

There�s nothing new about any of the things people told me about where and how to find men. I mean honestly, shouldn�t I know by now where men will and won�t be? The list of where NOT to find them is shorter. Don�t look for them in Lane Bryant, Jo Ann Fabrics, or the Michael�s Craft Stores. Everywhere else is rife with them. My ignorance about where and how to start comes, I think, from my absolute terror of getting out there.

It�s not like I don�t have good reason to fear. I�m not young, I�m not thin, and I�m not pretty: all reasonable fears for any woman of my age, girth and appearance. But beyond even that, I�m not practiced as a woman and I can�t expect a lot of patience or understanding from the guys at the sports bar or the moose lodge. By exposing myself to them, I am letting myself in for humiliation and rejection at best and a lethal beating at worst. Obviously, it�s far easier to avoid fear, danger and uncertainty by seeking the fabulous solace of food and keeping myself as fat as possible.

Until now.

See, if I�m good at anything, I�m good at breaking through fear. I hate fear. I hate being afraid. I see it as an obstacle to survival and I can�t let it get the best of me. While it�s true that over the years I�ve come to avoid the little daily fears; the ones that come from all those things that trigger my hateful flashbacks, I�ve also never allowed any substantial fear to keep me from getting past it.

The most obvious last time I confronted fear was when I lay on an operating table in a third world country, about to hand my body and life to a surgeon I had never met before. By the time they finally pushed the drugs into my IV, I felt as if my life was ending right then and there. Still, even that fear couldn�t force me to yell stop� And now that it�s over, I�m happy and proud that I faced it down once again.

So, now I�ve named it. That�s a big step. Maybe it�s the biggest. Now all I need to do is decide whether and how I�ll deal with this fear. Will I let it conquer me? Will I stay at home eating brie on crackers until it takes the fire department to knock down a wall to take me out of my home? Or will I take this thing head on and run straight through it.

My decision is to run through it.

I can�t wait until I�m thin to go out there. I can�t wait until my face isn�t masculine and wrinkled. I can�t wait for anything at all. If I wait, then the cycle will never break. I�ll fight my diet forever and never know why I�m incapable of being a healthy and attractive weight. If I wait, I�ll only find more and more reasons to keep waiting, until all the rest of my days are used up with it. I�ll never really get to live at all.

You know what? That ain�t gonna work.

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