*Feeling like I was wearing 5-10 permanent leather coats, limiting my reach and mobility, always feeling hot, always feeling claustrophobic in my own body.
*Being top-heavy and sometimes falling from simply losing my balance.
*Not being able to sit at the folding lunch tables when I worked at a school.
*Breaking a chair in front of every single person my husband worked with at his boss's house during the company Christmas party.
*Pants splitting in the middle of a work shift.
*Not fitting into a booth at McDonald's and grumbling about them not catering to their target customers.
*A little girl innocently pointing to me at the store, saying, "Mommy, that lady's fat!" Which prompted the mom to harshly shush her, avoid eye contact with me, and rush away. I'm not sure who was more embarrassed.
*Going to a water show at a theme park and overhearing the family behind us laughing at me, thankful that they had someone my size to shield them from the splashing (they weren't speaking English so they assumed we wouldn't understand).
*Waiting in line with all my friends to get on a ride, and getting to watch them have fun on it from the ground when the operator couldn't get the safety harness to lock over me . . . and this was after I'd already lost 75 pounds.
*Being unable to bend over, and having difficulty getting up off the floor.
*Being told I was too fat to wear dark or bright nail polish, since it brought attention to my chubby fingers .
*Only being able to wear thumb rings or men's rings on my ring finger when it came to costume jewelry (I wore my high school class ring on my ring finger and it was a size 10).
*When my earlobes got too fat to snap on the backs of my earrings.
*Being limited to clothes that somewhat covered me, nothing flattering nor even anything I remotely liked. And super-expensive. And eventually reaching the point that not even the plus size stores carried jeans big enough to fit me.
*Incontinence, diabetes, always thirsty, always hungry, always anxious.
*Knowing I wasn't the nice girl or the good worker at one of my old jobs, that I was simply "the fat one."
*Being confused for a teacher at my high school when I was only a freshman there! My clothes, hair, and figure were all very matronly.
*Spending way too much time being a doormat out of desperation of wanting to be liked.
*Making runs to the store just for candy or ice cream; sneaking food when no one was looking. Eating frosting by the spoonful directly out of the can. Ordering a fast food meal to tide me over while I was trying to figure out what I wanted for dinner!
*Barely being able to walk across my living room because it would put me out of breath. Not going up any stairs,
just walking across my living room!
*Crying in pain the morning
after working a 9-hour shift because my feet were
still hurting.
*Pretending I was cool with wearing men's shirts when I simply did because the cute girly ones wouldn't fit me.
*Pretending there was nothing girly about me period because it didn't seem to suit my figure; I was better off being one of the guys since none of my friends found me attractive.
*Not going on my first date or getting my first kiss until I was 25.
*Staying with the wrong guy for far too long because I figured no one could possibly love me.
*Not wearing dresses because they'd emphasize my belly and make me look pregnant.
*Being congratulated on my non-existent pregnancy, and then being asked if I was
sure when I explained that it was my co-worker that was pregnant, not me.
*Pants either rolling off me, having to be fastened all the way up to my chest, or painfully cutting into the middle of it.
*Being told not to bother with dieting because I won't stick with it anyway.
*Weighing too much to be able to use a regular scale and believing that I'd always, always be morbidly obese.
*Probably my most embarrassing and possibly TMI memory (you've been warned): discovering that I didn't have enough room to . . . uh,
work with at a particular gas station bathroom stall to actually use it.
