This is Me, This is Who I Am

"I feel no shame, I'm proud of where I came from.
I was born and raised in the boondocks."

--Little Big Town, "Boondocks."

January 25, 2001. 3:45 AM. I woke up in the middle of the night and rolled onto my side. I remember looking at the clock and knowing that there was no way I was going to fall back asleep before my alarm at 6:00 AM. My first ex-husband was asleep next to me. I began to cry. Deep down, I knew he didn't love me, and I would wake up at precisely 3:45 AM in attacks of anxiety for the next 4 months until I finally kicked him out... when I caught him in bed with another woman. But this post isn't about him. It's about me and about what happened to me that night. I remember it like it was... well, ten years ago.

Though it was a long time ago, I clearly remember what I did that night. I felt my stomach. It was soft, fleshy. Fat. It lay next to me on the bed, like it was a completely different entity. I grabbed a whole handful of belly, and I got out of bed.

I weighed myself in the bathroom. 205 pounds.

I went back to bed.

I held my soft, fleshy stomach, and I cried. I sobbed, that silent shaking sob where no sound comes out but your whole chest clenches up and you can neither breathe nor stop. I didn't know how it had happened. I didn't know who I had become. I didn't feel like me. Not that I had any idea who I was at age 24. That night, I vowed to make a change. For me.

I vowed that I would lose 25 pounds by my 25th birthday.

It was totally unreasonable. :)

But, I lost 16 pounds in those 2 months. I dropped 2 clothing sizes, from a 16 to a 12. I started running.

When I had a birthday party for myself, people noticed.

I ran my first 5k that April. The Detroit Komen Race for the Cure.

By the end of May 2001, I had lost 35 pounds. I also lost a 200-pound sack of cheating crap known as my first husband.

It took me another year to lose the last 30 pounds.

And... I haven't seen hide nor hair of them since. (Well, that's not exactly true: anyone who has successfully kept weight off for an extended period of time will tell you that sometimes the scale creeps up. It is in regularly monitoring the situation and never letting more than a certain number of pounds come back that is the key to keeping it off. When I see 150, I get back on the wagon.)

So, no, it hasn't been 10 years at my goal weight. Today, January 25, 2011, I'm at race weight plus 2.5 pounds. (Ha! Wouldn't you like to know!). With my first triathlon of the season 99 days away, I think that's okay. But it has been 10 years.... TEN... YEARS... since the day I made a decision FOR ME.

Happy Anniversary, Abby. You earned this day. You earned the glass of wine you just drank and the Cervelo P3C you are buying tomorrow to continue shredding up triathlon courses. You earned the amazing 7-mile run you ran today... around the Capital (yep, even up Capital Hill), down the mall, around the Tidal Basin, up the steps of the Lincoln, and back to Chinatown.

You earned every finish line. You earned those 26" jeans.

That night ten years ago, you held your belly. What you realized that night is what you have always held, and what every woman, every person inherently holds: the right to make a decision JUST FOR YOURSELF. Congratulations on learning how to exercise that power in the middle of the night ten years ago.

Ten years.

Hot damn.

Go me.