A while back, I made a promise to share some details about what has finally motivated me to get off my ass and drop some pounds.
In my circle of friends, we do a fair amount of abuse to one another. We insult, we snark, we deal with it pretty well most of the time. Not long ago, it got ugly. I was never particularly fond of fat jokes, but with most of my friends, whether the have spelling issues that lead me to call them “illiterate” among other names, or dance like the worst cliche of “White Man’s Disease” you’ve ever seen, or have something else going on that is “fair game” for the rest of us, I’ve learned to deal with it, and not let it bother me too much.
That all changed the day one of my friend’s kid said “Kevin, you’re fat.” and started laughing.
If this had been an adult and not a 6 year old child, I would have broken his jaw. I was so mad, I was literally shaking. I can’t really hold it against the kid, he’s 6. He doesn’t know better. I guess I could hold it against his parents, but I’m reasonably sure that they would be mortified had I decided to make an issue of it. I let it go, figuring that I’d get over it.
I didn’t. Every time my friends even get close to that particular topic of discussion, I went silent. The kind of silence that screams to anyone who knows me. “Don’t go here… You really don’t want to go here.”
In fact, several months later, it makes me just as angry today as it did then. So much so that my friendship with this little boy’s father has suffered. So much so that I am loathe to speak to him, lest I say something unkind about a child who had no idea what he was saying, or how much it hurt.
What it has also done, is motivated me. Not because I’m trying to impress anyone, but because 10 years ago, it would have taken a bold man, indeed, to make such a comment in my presence. The idea that my own friends don’t respect me because of this problem is nearly unbearable.
I’m seriously pissed about it, enough that I am shutting myself away from my own friends in order to do something about it. I guess, at the end of the day, I’m most mad at myself, and that’s as safe a target for my anger as anyone. The hell of it is, most of my friends talk often of their own struggles with losing weight, but for some reason, I wound up as the punching bag. I can take it, that’s not the issue. The problem is that I have enough pride not to want to even be mentioned in such a discussion. Anger and pride can be a powerful motivator if used correctly.
And *that’s* where the drive comes from.
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