Changing the mindset

Fat women are different from thin women in more ways that just the obvious. A fat woman is more apt to say yes when everything within her is screaming to say no. A fat woman will smile while shaking with frustration. A fat woman will bite back her words and make nice when she wants nothing more than to give vent to her rage and be heard. Fat women sublimate. Fat women seek numbness, and they find it in the cool recesses of their refrigerators and in the silken textures of cream-filled pastries, and they fill the aching void left by self-inflicted insignificance and invisibility with anything and everything that will provide a moment of comfort, that will come through and deliver for them without asking questions or making demands.

I am beginning to think like a thin woman again. I am beginning to find my voice. And my family doesn't know what to make of it. I no longer accommodate. I no longer enable. I have become my own advocate, and I rather suspect that my children miss the old me more than they'll ever admit. They are cleaning up their own messes now, both literally and figuratively. It is not my job. Even Allen is discovering that, when he hesitates to do something with me or for me, I have no compunctions about doing it by myself. And I will not ask more than once.

This is my time now.