Phamily

I am—once again—engaged in a major struggle with my weight. Over the last few months I have been rejected by two men, one I sort-of liked and the other I seriously thought might turn out to be the love of my life. The one I sort-of liked told me he loved everything about me except the package I came in. Then he suggested that I sign up for The Forum, a personal development seminar that might "help me address the issue" so he could develop an interest in sleeping with me.

That story gets worse and I will tell it soon, but for now it's enough to know that it happened.

Remember the biblical admonition that goes something like, "Don't worry about the splinter in your neighbor's eye when you've got a log in your own"? Well, I've got a major case of that, and last night I opened a magnum.

My family and I attended a small ceremony honoring my niece last night. At dinner before the ceremony, I watched two morbidly obese family members cram bread and olive oil into their mouths as though they were preparing for famine. Two more (merely overweight) family members consumed two or three days worth of calories apiece during the 40 minutes we were in the restaurant.

When we got to the auditorium another family member joined us. From near the center of our group I watched three family members on my right painfully wedge themselves into their seats. Trying to accommodate the spillage from my immediate neighbor, I angled myself to the left, which seriously cut into that person's space. To say that all this made me uncomfortable is to suggest the Titanic developed a slight problem en route.

As I watched the three loved ones on my right doze off, one by one, I wondered what they could be hiding from under all that weight. I don't see their size day-to-day. They're my family and I love them. But somehow, squeezed into those auditorium seats they appeared to be trapped in their own flesh, and it worried me. I gave deep and serious consideration to the ramifications of all that weight on their lives and their health.

It was only as I was driving home alone that I realized I should be concerned about those issues for myself, should be looking at my Self, not others.

Although I've been every size between a comfortable 6 and a "can't-breathe-but-won't-wear-anything-larger" 16, I am now a size 12. Not my favorite number, but hardly elephantine, either. The big difference between my pre- and post-menopausal body is that I've developed what used to be called "midriff bulge" and is now known as "muffin top." I literally do not know how this happened.

I didn't gain any weight at the time this bulge developed. For all I know, in some sort of great fatty rebellion, hundreds of thousands of fat cells from other parts of my body decided one day to trade in their cheap seats in the back for center front. I do not like it but have no uniformed usher to hustle them back to wherever it is they belong.

I also do not appear to have the self-discipline to diet and exercise enough to banish them.

I start out every single day with the idea that today I will eat right and exercise diligently. That lasts until the first frantic phone call from the business I own or the first delicious morsel my mother offers me when I stop by her house for coffee. This is a daily and agonizing cycle.

Having a body this size and configuration is limiting my life. Mostly figuratively, because of the way I feel about myself, but the jerk-of-the-month mentioned above can not be ignored. He is not the only man to reject me recently because of my weight, just the most direct about it.

And now we've come to the heart of the matter. I say—and believe—I want to be in love, want to share my life with a man. I also recognize from having read roughly a gazillion personal ads and profiles on match.com that being thin and fit is the single most important factor for attracting the type of man I'm interested in (smart, funny, engaged in his own life). And yet I do not do the simple things required to move me from where I am to where I want to be (or think I want to be).

Last night I realized that I am hiding behind the fat cells that have set up camp on my midriff. Yes, I have a profile on match.com. Yes, I write to interesting looking men and respond when a likely candidate contacts me. BUT I do all this from the relative safety of the fair-to-middlin certainty that it will go nowhere.

I am afraid. I have trust issues that Ray Charles could see. In the dark.

When I get this log out of my eye, I'll figure out what to do about it.