Now You See Her. Now You Don't.

There are less than a handful of photos of me as an adult. There's a distinct lack of evidence of my existence after, say, 20 years old. When you browse through our family albums, and the 10 years of photos which await album placement, you'll find me conspicuously absent. It's probably my biggest regret and yet I've done little to change it since I discovered the lack of evidence.

It's not a complete lack of existence. I'm there. Mostly I'm taking the photos, so I was present, but not pictured. In some cases I am escaping off the edges, or facing the wrong direction, unaware a photo was being snapped. But the majority of time an exerted effort has been made to avoid being in the photos at all. I am the Bigfoot of my family photos. (In more ways than one, sad to say.)

Bigfoot???

As my family grew, so grew my clothing size. I'm not accustomed to being overweight, even after spending half my life that way. I never had a weight issue growing up, and since I got pregnant at 19, I have no real concept of what my "adult" body was meant to look like, but my theory is I was supposed to be hot. While I was never going to be a model-- the family hips were my inheritance at an early age and until I had babies the boobs were somewhere between lacking and average-- I think I had some potential hotness waiting there in that post-teen future.

In fact, it was in a photo that I realized I had gotten fat. After I had my first I weighed five pounds less than when I started, and I had tremendous knockers-- for about ten months. I remember looking through a batch of photos my mother-in-law had taken and wondering what was wrong with her camera, that I looked so terrible. I'm slow in the head so it took a bit for me to realize it wasn't the camera's fault. Somewhere I had picked up an extra 75 pounds. I carried it well, it looked like 40 but when I weighed myself I had acquired the extra weight of a small child, and it wasn't the infant I was lugging around.

Because I never had a weight "problem" I had never really paid that much attention to my weight, or the details of maintaining it. In that ten months I had found my beloved, become engaged, and moved out to live on my own for the first time (if you can call a baby and a fiancé "on your own.") We ate a lot of fast food, pizza, and spaghetti. I may or may not have eaten that way before, but my body was completely different after having a baby. Another one of those little secrets the world doesn't share with you until it's too late. And no one told me chasing a baby didn't count as aerobic activity (I have A LOT more to say about that!)

Before I had a chance to get any kind of a handle on it, I was pregnant again, which worked well because pregnancy doesn't agree with my appetite and I typically lose weight in the beginning. However, this baby was a boy and he brought the joys of arm and ass fat in the remaining trimesters. I have no idea what I weighed after he was born, nor following the third or fourth. I didn't even own a scale. In the five stages of grieving this stage is called denial.

My husband's clothes

Where's Waldo??? (hint: flag-head)

But this is where I began my disappearing act. I moved behind the camera, creating tons of family memories without me. I told myself that it was just because I was always the one taking the pictures, but the truth was I didn't want to be photographed. I made efforts to stand behind things or deliberately turn away in photos I was forced into. I hated the way I looked. Not only was I over-weight, I was haggard and exhausted. This was about the time I started wearing my husband's clothes (pants and shirts.) I wanted to hide how fat and ugly I was by disguising myself as a badly-dressed refrigerator box. There was no point in trying to dress it up, it was just sad and ugly, and I hated the way I looked. This stage is called anger.

Finally, working in the real world, I at least started making an effort to look like a human again. I dressed a little better and wore make-up. I consoled myself with thoughts like: I eat healthy, it's just my metabolism; At least I'm active; It's baby weight, it will go away; and, As long as my body is healthy, it's ok to be overweight. I even recall saying, "There's nothing wrong with being heavy. I'm comfortable and happy, I don't need to be thin. I have nothing to prove." Because I was young I was able to rationalize the weight. I made excuses and exchanged what I knew for what I wanted to believe. This stage is called bargaining.

Lost 60 pounds

Eventually I couldn't ignore it anymore. My health declined and age started catching up with me. I did pretty well on my Weight Watchers, but once I got sick-- couldn't walk anymore, I gained back everything I had lost. More importantly, I didn't appreciate what I had lost, until it was back. I had managed to lose 60 pounds, but since that was only a portion of what I needed to lose I considered myself a failure. Now I realize that missing-60 looked pretty good, but at the time it just wasn't anything. I felt lost and hopeless. I was stuck being this way forever. The older I get the harder it will be to lose, the less "hot" will matter. At this point, who cares. I started cutting me, or portions of me, out of photographs-- if I was in them at all. There are all these special moments in our lives and I can't find me in them anymore. I just wanted to erase the image of me. This stage is called depression.

I've decided on multiple occasions to get back on the ball and start doing something about it. I've told myself it's because I want to be healthy, because I can do more if I'm healthy. But the honest truth is, some part of me still wants to be hot, or at least pretty, and I think some part of me has decided that's not possible anymore, so I might as well just reach the final stage, acceptance. Only, I don't want to accept it. I want to believe that its possible for me to pull myself together. I know it's hard, and I would really rather avoid the hard part altogether, but I don't want to be this way anymore. It makes me sad, knowing there is a person trapped inside me, who would be evident if she could just get out. I know I choose to sit-out (literally) of a lot of things I'd like to do, because I can't see both of me doing them. 

I hate being fat. It sucks. I hate dieting. It sucks. I hate exercise. It sucks. I hate surgery. It sucks (although I could recover!) Apparently these are my limited options. It sucks! However, when my kids get married I don't want to be hiding in the photos. When I have grandchildren (a long, long, long, time from now) I want to be in the photos with them. Not just in the photos, but in their lives, active and happy. So I suppose I will continue down the path of most-resistance and keep trying to become the thinner, hotter, me. And in the meantime I'm just going to show up on film more often. If I discovered I was fat that way, maybe one day I'll discover I'm not.