“I’ve received criticism recently that I am too deep, that my revelations and take on life are not welcome. That is fine. I have no issue with that. I am what I am but my writing allows me the chance for some cathartic release, it allows me to face my own demons and often conquer them.
There is no element of ego massage, no desire to impress a third party who may or may not read any given article. It simply allows me to face the world each day with both a smile and a purpose. For the dark tone of my writing, there is a typical Gemini at heart. That dual personality that allows me to assimilate to almost any situation. Whilst my writing may be ‘heavy’ it does not reflect who I am truly, only a part of me that I keep under control, and well. So with that said, this next article will make for very uncomfortable reading for some, a laugh for others, and a ‘what the fuck is he going on about’ by the majority but after writing it, I know I will have healed, even if only temporarily, a part of me for the foreseeable future. If one or two people can relate to it, all the better.
As a child I was bullied, not horrendously and certainly not badly enough to make me need help, but enough to make me think too deeply for a four year old child. As a result it shaped me in ways that would and still do to a lesser extent effect me. I was incredibly shy as a result. I think in essence that my future problem were all attached to those early days being bullied. I have always felt an outsider to any social group that I have become attached to, paranoid that my presence is a negative to the group rather than a positive. The irony as I have become an adult is my size and bearing. I’m a large man, I have a voice deeper than walrus’ fart and I stand out. When I walk in a room I draw attention, not out of choice I assure you, I hate that feeling so much, but it does happen. Arrogance? No, a fact that those closest to me will testify to. I am expected to be the life and soul of the party due to the way I look, but you know what, I am not comfortable to ever fill that role.
If I go to a party, a very rare occurrence, nothing makes me feel more uncomfortable than turning up late and making an entrance. Once I travelled three hundred miles to attend a function, I was late. By five minutes. I turned around and drove home. Crazy I know, but you’re not me. I simply didn’t have the confidence to walk into a room late and feel those eyes judging me.
Judging? Am I that arrogant I think anyone gives a shit? No, but I am or have been that insecure that I felt a laughing stock, an object that would draw ridicule. What could have happened to make me feel this way, other than an episodic spat of bullying. Cumulative aggregation of emotional stresses, and events that led me to a very dark place.
I found my release through sport, notably football during my school years, and it papered over a lot of cracks, but also increased the strain in other areas. On the sports field I had no shyness at all, I was confident that I was the best and I was. I could captain a team on the pitch and bark orders, ignorant to the supporters. I could go head to head with anyone, physically and mentally I could destroy any opponent. But the moment I came off the pitch, and even before I went on it, the shyness would not so easily dissipate. As part of a very successful team we would win everything, and inevitably there would be presentations. I loathed them, that moment when the eyes were on me as an individual collecting a trophy. I hated the dressing room in equal measure, as that is a place you need your wits about you. I was the quiet one, people took my reticence to join in with the banter as part of my pre match ritual, focussing instead on the match ahead. All bollocks. I was just too scared to be me. I felt different and thought if I opened my mouth for anything more than football related talk I would be exposed as a fraud.
The real downside though was that through success in sport I became known. In school I was an A lister, and I knew that. I hated it. I had developed a phenomenal physique through my dedication to sport, I was a face, and people would want to talk to you. I wanted to discuss books and philosophy, but was being drawn into conversations about who fancied who, who was caught smoking behind the bike sheds and things I didn’t want to be a part of. The feeling of not belonging was there at the forefront of my mind. At every opportunity there would be someone who inadvertently said or did something to reinforce that self judgement of mine was correct.
If I went out with a girl in school she would compliment me. So what you say? I should be grateful? Perhaps I should have but the compliments were always about my physique, never about me as an individual person. The number of comments made about my thighs in particular were really getting to me. A woman who gets attention because of her breasts could probably relate a bit. Why would someone talk to your chest when it was your face that they should be looking at. It was clear the attraction was nothing on a level that mattered to me, only a physical thing. I couldn’t handle it. During school I went out with a lot of girls, most of them for three days because by that point they would say something or do something that put me off. It could be something as simple as touching my thigh, that would be enough to scare me away. So I put even more into my sport, and then it happened.
My leg snapped. Sport was no longer the safe haven it had always been. I tried different sports but the drive I once had had gone. There was no chance to redeem this situation, I started smoking and that didn’t help, and then I found food. That did help. I fund my solace in literally stuffing my face. Because I was so active I still burned off enough calories that I didn’t get fat, I just bulked up. A lot.
The moment it all changed for me was in one comment in high school common room. In fact it wasn’t even a comment. It was a look. There was a rugby match between the boys from Upper Sixth form against their counterparts in Lower Sixth. In the corner of the common room was a notice board and on it was a team sheet. One of the boys motioned me over and I went, feeling incredibly nervous and self conscious. The lower sixth girls were gathered in that corner and I had a few three day relationships with a couple of them so avoided that corner like the plague if ever I could.
This sounds ridiculous to those who perceived me as being so confident, but so intimidated was I that I would often leave the common room through the back door just to avoid having to make eye contact with them, the judgemental eyes. But that day I had to go over as I wanted to see this boy who had called me, he was a good bloke and unlike the majority of the boys in that year didn’t spend all day living up his own arse. The team sheet had been defaced. That group of girls had written nicknames down against the Upper Sixth boys names and mine was ‘beefcake’. I had never heard that expression in my life and assumed it was an insult so questioned him and he explained it was a compliment that I was ‘hunky’, for want of better words. All of this was played out in front of this group of girls I had affectionately named ‘The Coven’. One of those girls looked at me with such an utter scowl, as if I had been fishing for a compliment. I hadn’t, that was so far from the truth. That look actually killed a part of me stone dead that day. The very fact someone would assume I was fishing for a compliment about my body, which I was so, so unhappy with for the attention it had brought made me realise I could never be me, and accepted for me, with the frame I had.
That night I went home and I ate, and I ate. I didn’t train. I felt good. Over the next few years this habit would repeat itself, the eating offered me a release and the training lessened. My weight had been around the thirteen and a half stone mark as a fifteen year old but that body was as cut as it could be. I had muscles on top of muscles. By the time I was twenty I was eighteen and a half stone but, other than a softening of the exterior there were no obvious bulges, I was weight training as this required less effort than jogging or beasting myself with hill runs and stamina training. I was stronger than I had ever been, harder, but inside I was really starting to unravel to an alarming extent.
By the time I met my future wife, I was up a further stone but the settled environment of family life and less takeaway food, combined with a more balanced diet saw me lose weight. Even so by the time I applied to join the RAF as a 24 year old I was in for a shock. I needed to lose four stone to meet the requirement’s. At least that was the doctors initial assessment. Having been instructed to take my top off he saw that my muscle structure was going to make that an impossibility. He offered a compromise. Lose a stone and a half and he would apply for a waiver to be put in place. I was beasted by my fiancé’s father, an ex boxer. I was made to run, something I hadn’t done for years and sit in a shed on a boiling hot days, dressed in black bin bags. Two weeks later I had dropped the weight and a week after that the waiver was agreed. I was joining the RAF.
Now you would think that this would be the making of me physically but it wasn’t, it served the complete opposite. Any issues I now had with my body had gone. I wasn’t worried about how I looked. Well, that’s not true, I was, to the same extent, but by now I had learned to disguise my inner self very convincingly. Years working as a doorman, where size was an advantage, had seen me develop a razor sharp and lightning quick repertoire of one liners and put downs. I could banter with the best of them. A simple deflection technique but it worked. If my weight was ever brought up I had an answer.
I stole this line from an infamous cricket sledge, but when an annoyed club patron once enquired as to why I was so fat I just answered in my, by now standard, dead pan emotionless expression ‘Because every time I f**k your girlfriend she gives me a biscuit’. Not happy with that answer my size prevented him from doing anything.
So to the RAF anyway, and basic training. I found it incredibly tough. I hated the physical element by now. My level of fitness was awful, my stamina non existent. At one point I wanted to quit but my recently wed wife had signed over her council flat and I couldn’t. I had to go on, so I did. If my physical strength was no longer a factor, I knew what was right and it takes a lot to stop me fulfilling my word. Pure determination saw me through, but it nearly ended in disaster. We had an overnight exercise and about four hours before dark on that evening I felt my knee go. It was more than a sprain, I had the experience to know that. This was a bad one. I had two options. Crack on or give up, only giving up would mean me being back coursed, delaying my graduation, and the time until I could see my wife by about six weeks whilst the injury repaired.
My wife had a daughter when I met her, Shani. She was my eyes. Still is though she won’t accept that. I told a boy from Bridgend who I had struck up the usual mutual military Celtic friendship, that I needed a word. I told him that I was in rag order, I was spent, but I couldn’t give up. I must get through this. In the cold hours that followed he never left my side. He swore at me, he told me what a terrible dad I was if I couldn’t get through this, if I couldn’t blank out the pain for the sake of my family’s future. I got through. I had no choice.
That night we were given a night off. I couldn’t decide whether to have a McDonalds or a KFC. I had both, and a big bar of Galaxy. Why not? I’d earned it.
When I graduated I was in agony. The parade, which should have been a highlight was an ordeal. By the time I had leave and got down to trade training as a linguist, my knee was patched up. We had to attend three PT sessions a week, sandwiched between intensive language training. On my first two sessions I got through ok. They were circuit sessions and my upper body strength has never dissipated. The third session was a shuttle run session. I knew I was in trouble. I asked the PT instructor whether I could sit this out. I didn’t have a sickness chit however, and there was no way he was going to take pity. On the third shuttle as I looked to begin the fourth I felt a crunching, then the pain. My knee was gone. I sent the next three months in a leg brace from hip to toe.
So that was that then. My knee completely shot, and it has never been the same since. I managed to keep the weight down, not off, but no massive gain. This was down to a settled family life, regular mealtimes and such a poor wage through those trade training days that takeaways were simply not an option.
Fast forward two years and I received my first posting order, in the flat, mind numbingly boring landscape of Lincolnshire. I was there for only nine months before a posting to Cheltenham to work for a Governmental organisation. From a work perspective this was an exceptionally good move and gave me 18 months of stability, an hour from Cardiff. The downside was that by now I was earning decent money. There was no fitness testing, not then at any rate, and I was not required to wear military uniform. This was a bad thing. My weight didn’t balloon but it certainly didn’t stay static.
Then I had a rather fortunate, though terrifying turn of events. Eating an Admiral’s Pie one night I felt sick. I remember it vividly, as Shani’s dad was staying with us, and with the kids in bed we all settled down to watch American History X. I got half way through the film before making my excuses and going to bed hoping to sleep of the nausea. I had thirty minutes sleep before managing to crawl to the toilet to be sick. Assuming it was just food poisoning I then collapsed in the downstairs toilet. After a call to the NHS helpline, I was seen by an emergency doctor and was diagnosed with acute appendicitis and rushed into Cheltenham hospital, where I underwent emergency surgery. A burst appendix resulted in a far larger incision than was initially thought.
I signed myself out twenty four hours later. I had been told I could not leave until I passed a motion but I wasn’t having that, I managed to get out by farting, proving my intestines were still working. I was off work for one week and on my return thought things would be ok. I got pulled into the toilets by my then boss, who asked me if I felt alright. I stated I was and then he pointed at my shirt. There was an ever growing claret patch radiating across my white shirt. The incision had reopened and I was bleeding out. I was off work for eight weeks and in that time I managed to pick up a nasty infection which led to a course of heavy duty antibiotics. This in turn led to thrush. I was far from impressed. I lost two stone in weight during this period.
I never really settled back into work after that, so volunteered for a further language course, and was accepted. This led to a posting to Lympstone, in Devon. What should have been a brilliant posting turned into a personal disaster. We moved when my youngest daughter Grace had just turned a week old. It was no way to set yourself up for a language course, and my eating became out of hand as I struggled with the course, the commitments of a young family and the first signs that my marriage was on the rocks. I ignored these signs and carried on regardless, despite hating every second of my time on what should have been a great posting. I worked at most four hours a day in Exeter University, who were contracted to teach my group.
I also had the misfortune to meet the most irritating person, bar one of my entire military career. He was a phenomenal linguist but was no friend of mine, seeking every opportunity to ridicule me and make my working day, however short, a misery. What made it worse was that he was the senior rank in my class. After eighteen months I couldn’t have been happier to leave with a second rate qualification and the horrible prospect that this man, who was the biggest yes man I had ever encountered, would be my new boss. To further compound this I had broken my leg during a three week classified course, and so I was arriving on unit at a much later date than my classmates. So began the worst five years of my working life.
I was castigated for even the smallest offence, offences that others committed to a much larger degree and with regularity. I was constantly overlooked for professional development courses, and training courses overseas that were seen very much as not only essential, but also a huge perk. My mind was nowhere near as strong as it had once been and I had that awful gut wrenching feeling you have on the night before the summer holidays ended as a child, and you had school the next day. I was getting to the stage where I actually was beginning to hate life. If my phone went I was scared to answer, fearing it would be my boss getting on my back over some imaginary misdemeanour.
My marriage also ended, and with it the security I had known for the best part of my twenties. I moved out from a four bedroomed home into a barrack block. I had my own room, with a sink, but no cooking facilities and my bath was at the end of the corridor, a communal bath that any of the 15 new neighbours I had could use. I was beginning to change from a sometime sociable person to a complete loner. I no longer trusted anyone, other than a very select few.
At the same time my father was dying, terminally ill with stomach cancer. This was the worst of times but also the best. I took a months compassionate leave to be with my father. I was entitled to that. I originally asked for my shift pattern to be reshuffled as although it was clear my father was on his way out, there could be no guarantee when he would finally succumb to his illness. As my boss was such a deeply caring man, he made things impossible so I was forced, quite literally to take the leave in one go. This was going strictly by the book, but it was also totally lacking in compassion and not the way to manage an individual.
As my dad had been selfish enough to die over the Xmas period I was castigated in certain quarters for letting the team down. I have always put the needs of the team before my own, service before self, so that hurt. In the last week of my fathers life he was taken to a hospice, the nature of his illness proving too much for me to carry on caring for him at home. On the 28th day of my leave, my father without caring about my leave had not died. I was forced to get a letter from the hospice stating that his death was imminent and deliver it by hand to my boss. I did so. Two days before he died I made the 420 round mile trip to pass over a blunt letter that stated simply, my father would be dead within the week. I will never forget that treatment, nor the person who made those days so incredibly difficult. Our paths will cross again, of that I am sure, and when they do, we can sit down over a glass of sherry and discuss in a civil manner what a huge mistake that was.
With the break up of my marriage and the harrowing illness that took my dad away, I lost three stone, through stress alone. I was suffering, but then it all changed. I was now single and answerable only to myself. I did not embark on a series of sordid encounters, I just became a slob of epic proportions. With nobody to reign me in, my self destruction was in full flow.
I refused to eat in the junior ranks mess. I was thirty and had no desire to eat my meals with eighteen year olds. Besides which, I still had some level of pride left. I will not go into any detail on the break up of the marriage, those there at the time know the truth of that, but an RAF camp, especially one as small as the one I was based at had that village feel. My life had become everyone else’s gossip. With all my previous insecurities now taking over completely I ate. I ate very night until I hated myself as much as I could. Then I would eat more.
If I went to the Chinese my meal would be two pancake rolls, special fried rice, sweet and sour king prawn and if I was really self loathing that day, a portion of crispy aromatic duck to wash it all down with. That was just the Chinese. If I had a chippy, it would be gargantuan. Three battered burgers, large chips and mushy peas with a nice steak and kidney pie. All eaten in the confines of my self imposed prison sentence. I worked and then I ate. I piled weight on. I looked hideous. My uniform looked awful on me, I was the camp tramp.
My ex wife moved back to Cardiff and had it not been for the release of playing golf, I actually think that could easily have been the end of me. I missed my children so very much, and even though I was delighted they went on holiday to Florida with my ex wife and her partner, it crucified me nonetheless. I just wanted to be with my family and now I was stuck. I had to stay in the RAF to provide maintenance and the luxuries I wanted them to have but I could no longer see any future for me as an individual.
When I finally had a break in work a year later, I took it. Whether I was pushed or jumped will always be open to conjecture but the chance to work in America for four months gave me both an escape from work in the UK, the sometimes still bitter recriminations from a failed marriage and the chance to maybe, just maybe heal the part of me that was so clearly broken. It very nearly worked.
A four month stint turned into a year, with just two breaks back of ten days each to see my children. Whilst I missed them more than I can even describe, I was unfit to be a father, such were my own issues. The downside to the move to the States was that my old boss would now be my new boss. Couldn’t make this up could you? Fortunately he was returning to the UK so his leadership skills or complete lack of them, could be overlooked. His sidekick, an odious little shrimp who was the antithesis of me in every way, a very sly, devious little shit who would say yes to his mothers own death for an extra stripe, was in control. For four months. Such was his obvious lack of managerial competence the reigns were handed over to me, when he breached national security and could have been thrown in jail. That would have been funny.
In the following eight months I realised I was actually a very, very good manager. I thrived on the responsibility and the pressure. I can never reveal what we did, not for the next 44 years at any rate, but what we did was so important, so huge, that when we were later awarded Queens Commendations as a group I was disappointed that only the illustrious leader back home who had little to no say in how well we did, received individual recognition. I didn’t want, nor expect any personal glory but one lad with me on that tour did deserve it. What he did was nothing short of heroic, working eighteen hour days, over and over, and saving so many lives by doing so. Mr M, I know what you did and so did those who lived that time with you. You will always be a hero in my eyes. You don’t need to face down bullets or RPG attacks in the safe haven of an air conditioned room as so many did ‘in theatre’ to earn respect.
I played golf at every opportunity, and my handicap went into plus figures. I ate well and I mean well, not the disgusting way I had before. I lost forty pounds in that year. A glorious year under the Georgian sun and when I came home I had healed.
Or had I? The next year saw me working with the same pair of idiots I had worked with before, the boss and his tail, aptly nicknamed ‘Ankles’ now, as that was the only part of him you could see hanging out of the bosses arse. Added to this elite hierarchy was the archetypal woman boss, the one that feminism looked over. The one with a chip on one shoulder and her bollocks on the other. Nothing you could do would please her. She delighted in being the old school Sergeant Major.
On one occasion my team had just finished a sixteen hour shift, a shift in which they worked their socks off, dealing with life and death decisions. At the end of that they were subjected to a level of man management that I still, to this day, struggle to believe happened, but it did. Rather than a thank you, or a well done, fourteen of the hardest working people I knew were ushered into a room and tore apart. The phrase ‘dripping like a septic fanny’ may have scored well on Bad Lads Army, but this was real life, not a faux TV programme. ‘Dry your eyes cupcake’ was another oft used phrase that served to lower team morale to breaking point. It was hideous, a charade played out by the devil to punish us surely. If ever you read this I remember the night in America that you broke down in tears that I could show so much commitment, so much drive and so much leadership. You broke your heart and I let you cry on my shoulder. It wouldn’t be there for you now.
My weight ballooned again, and with it any last vestige of self respect. I went to the doctors and got a sick chit to allow me the luxury of not shaving for two months, unheard of in the RAF. On one occasion I was sent home as we had a General visiting the unit. I was an utter mess. No matter how good I was at my job, and I knew I was bloody good at it, promotion would never happen now, I was too much the anti role model for all the up and coming youngsters.
Now the thing is, you can be fat as a civilian, you don’t stand out. In the military it is different. I was surrounded by the fittest of the fit. This made me feel so alone, so abnormal that I suffered with insomnia, such was the intimidation of going into work every day. I endured eighteen months and then I met a man who changed the way I saw everything. He looked like Touche Turtle, was Scottish and was the best manager I ever worked for.
We hit it off straight away. He was so far up his food chain that he could not get promoted any further. We were a dream team in management. He would listen to me and I would learn all I could from him. Perhaps he was my Mr Miyagi, but I love the man to this day. He taught me that to say the truth was not a crime, to wear your heart on your sleeve over the rights of those you managed was exactly how it should be. For three years I was allowed to run the section the way O saw fit, he would be the face, the man whom senior officers would talk to but I would do everything else. I selected who worked for us, I selected the hours they worked and I backed them, unequivocally. If they needed something I made it happen, if they needed a kick up the arse, they got it but they also got the hug that they needed, the time off to deal with issues and the respect they deserved. I was fair, I was uncompromising in many ways but they knew me to be honest. I never once promised something I couldn’t deliver but they also knew that I would go into battle with senior management on their behalf and tell it exactly how it was.
I recall one incident where I had found out one of my Corporals had failed to gain a very much deserved promotion. I didn’t have to out of official duty, but moral obligation made me go round his house. I spoke to him and his wife and what was said will always be between me and them, but he had the right to know the truth about things, that I was gutted to my core that he had been shit on by weak willed superiors who couldn’t care for anyone but themselves. I have often been told I don’t care. Rubbish. I care more than I am capable of at times.
All things come to an end. After three fantastic years, my boss got a posting order. Just prior to this I had, unsurprisingly, been diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. This coupled with the same unhealthy regard for food saw me at 23 stone. I made a huge decision. I handed in my notice, one year, with immediate affect. I had to. Even though I had only seven years to push for a full, and immediate, military pension, I was going to die. I knew that as sure as I know my own name. For all the pride I had in my work, as a person, I had descended into a farcical, almost comedy caricature. Whilst I could perform the duties of a Warrant Officer with my eyes closed, it was grotesquely ironical that I was the fattest person not only on my unit, but quite possibly in the RAF. I wasn’t, but I felt it.
I had no chance to stave off the demons and would have eaten myself to death. If I had been covered in batter I quite literally may have done just that! Every weekend I came home to Cardiff and every time it became harder to leave and head back up North. I would leave at 3am on a Monday morning and then go straight to work. I crashed my car once, luckily coming out of a layby, but the number of near misses, the number of times I would zone out on an empty motorway and lose track of time completely, it was a matter of when, not if, I would die at the wheel.
Then there was my love life or lack of it. I had very few encounters let alone relationships. The thought of someone looking at me or worse, touching me, sickened me. I sickened myself so it was hardly surprising. I did dabble very, very occasionally but always sought an excuse to prevent a fling turning into a thing. Then two things happened. My new boss, and a woman who I fell in love with.
The woman first. She loved me. She doesn’t now and that is ok, I can live with that. She did however make me believe in me. That I was not a fat mess, I was actually a really nice man. My heart, although pumping too hard to get blood around a bloated body, was definitely in the right place. I was honest, decent, I regained my sense of humour and for the first time in nearly twenty five years, truly believed in myself. I began to lose weight because I wanted to live beyond fifty. I wanted to make up for lost time.
Work however was to end on a very sour note. The new boss was a total loser, in every sense. Devoid of any motivational skills, any leadership skills and with the emotional awareness of Pol Pot, we hated each other on first sight. He actually looked like Mrs Brown but did not possess either the charm or the balls of the Irish matriarch. In those last six months I was sidelined back onto shift, made to work my seventh Xmas day in a row and was nearly once charged for calling him a selection of names that I daren’t repeat but am still proud of. The sort of man who buys a t-shirt with lycra tattoo sleeves. The sort of man who deals in lies as his everyday currency. I never had a leaving do, I didn’t want one. What I had devoted five years of my life into building he managed to destroy in months. The reputation my team had tarnished by his managerial incompetence. So incredibly sad.
So I came back to Cardiff. I spent eight months out of work and I lost my home. I lost my work colleagues, and in some quarters I have been castigated as an unfit father, unprepared to work for his family. That obviously wrankles because whatever anyone may think, whatever their version of the truth is, I know the facts. I know how close I came to making them fatherless, but I had done something I never thought I would. I had broken the chains of self doubt. I’m not amazing, no matter how many times a certain woman said that to me. I am just an ordinary man, living the most ordinary of lives. I’m grateful for that above all else. I see a future.
I still have days where the lure of lard and cholesterol has too much pull and I give in, but I fight back now. I may lose the odd battle but I will win the war. I will because I love the fight. I have something to fight for. There are still times I want to lock myself away, where going out brings anxiety and stress. The only thing I will say from my experience, and I speak only for myself, though I am sure it will resonate with many, is that a fat person knows they are fat, it is impossible to hide from. It is impossible not to notice when your clothes don’t fit like they used to, that fashion was not designed for a fat man. If you see a person who you think is fat, whatever you think of them, however scathing your look may be or harsh your comments may be, they are aware. They hurt, and they cry and they eventually die. Don’t be too harsh in your judgement, it isn’t your place to, we do that to ourselves every second of every day.
I ate because it was my way of hiding me, a very real disguise that was impenetrable. You would never see the real me so I could live with the judgement as I knew that it was not the person being held to account, only the façade, the cover and not the book. My story is now there for the world to judge though. I am too strong a person now to fear anything other than not being true to myself. You can point fingers, turn up your nose in disgust or whatever you choose, only I will pass judgement on myself from this juncture.
I have joined a club, Slimming World and every last person n there has a story, similar perhaps or hugely different but we are there for the same reason of that I am sure. To regain something we had once given up on.
Reading over this you may feel I am looking to blame others. I am not. I became morbidly obese because of just one person, myself. My choices, however arrived at, and regardless of cause, were MY decisions. I hold nobody accountable for my pain and I look for nobody to ease it because with each passing day I realise that is not only my responsibility, but one I can meet.
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