I thought I knew what I’d write about as I sat down to watch The Biggest Loser this week. The show had something else planned for me.
Let’s start with my weigh-in: Pounds Lost: 2 Percentage of Weight Lost: .08%.
I was definitely at the bottom. I did feel better knowing that I didn’t gain a pound like Melissa but, still, the teams beat me. The main culprits in my less-than-stellar weigh-in were calorie counts and work outs that didn’t measure up to theirs. In this game, however, I can’t afford to allow defeat to beat me down. Why? Because it’s not a game, it’s my life.
This goes way beyond the numbers on the scale, however. In all honesty I want to tell you that, after watching The Biggest Loser at a friends, I pulled into Taco Bell’s drive-thru on my way home. I was looking for emotional release at the drive-thru window. But, in a moment of clarity, I realized I wouldn’t find any answers in a taco and drove away before ordering.
In the past 5 days I’ve started dwelling in the pain of the last 5 years and all the people I’ve lost. It’s been months since those moments replayed so clearly in my head but, this week, the memories were as vivid as if they happened yesterday. They popped up everywhere…in bed, on the treadmill…at a hockey game…
I saw Rick as he was that last night, dancing, being his usual goofy self. I saw him 36 hours later, his eyes shut, gone forever because of an aneurism at the age of 44. I saw my cousin Lori, my father and all the others that were taken too soon, without warning or cruelly. The strangest part of this is that I didn’t realize how far into the past I’d gone until I saw this weeks episode.
It was when the Purple Team’s family said that a parent shouldn’t outlive their child that I began to cry. I thought I was crying because of their realization that this loss was possible. But, as I drove away from Taco Bell, I knew I cried because of my own losses that came too soon, that weren’t fair, that didn’t have a good enough explanation. I cried for Rick, for my cousin Lori, for Chris, for my father, for Daphne but, most of all, for me. Because I still miss them. Because I still feel guilty for living when they died. Because I’ve packed on 70 pounds to insulate myself from loving and losing anyone new.
I’ve spent my whole life living for other people, for what they think of me, for what they want from me, for what they need and that has added up to a half a life for me. And, when many of those people lost their life, I lost a big part of mine, too. So, the truth is, I’m starting over again at 46 with a lot of weight to lose and a lot of baggage to dump along the way.
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