Self-Image

Saturday January 3

Target was pretty dead tonight, it was a nice welcome in lieu of the chaos that was yesterday. There wasn't anything too out of the ordinary tonight. I mean of course apart from the occasional rambling crazy person about God only knows what, questioning my credibility, which in retrospect is actually pretty common. It's almost like some customers only want to start problems with me simply because I'm giving them the answer they don't want to hear so obviously I must not have any idea what I'm talking about right? Right. On the opposite side of that spectrum however, a kind Canadian man gave me some words of encouragement once he heard about my academic pursuits. He said: "You are very bright, for you to be able to handle all that you do, don't ever settle; your better than that." I didn't catch his name, but I won't forget his words anytime soon. 

The song of the night was one of my most favorite songs ever and so my ride home probably made it look like I was having an epileptic episode to other drivers. That song is.... ready for it? Sexyback by Justin Timberlake. Nobody will ever understand my love for that song; hell I don't even understand it. There was one other thing I was doing that might have been incurring the looks I was getting at the red lights. I was throwing one dollar bills around my car and dancing with them. Honestly, this is semi-embarrassing and I can't believe I'm writing this, except that I can because my level of shame is almost nonexistent but one of my big dreams in life is to be a stripper on a stage for just one night where they play all the good jams and I just have a good time in my underwear and women and men (if they're into that) throw singles at me. It's such a bad dream to even have but I really just want to see what it's like, but I definitely feel like I would start giggling uncontrollably in the middle of my routine.   

Which brings me to the big thought I have had all day today: I have to get into shape, and quickly. My mom told me a few days ago that we as a family are all going on a cruise in the beginning of May. The timing is perfect since I'll just be wrapping up the semester. The cruise is leaving from Orlando and going to Costa Maya, Mexico, Cozumel, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras. So that gives me four solid months to turn my flab into abs. Challenge accepted. It's gonna be hard but hopefully I can stick to it, honestly I've had to tone up and get into shape for years and this cruise is the perfect incentive. Growing up, my weight was always an issue. It was an issue to the point that my childhood pediatrician who I will refer to by her first name Usha ( Pronounced Oooo-SHA) because it's fun to say, referred me to a nutritionist whom I never saw. Usha would tell me visit after visit that I had to switch my habits and that I was on the track for diabetes, and then one day I was about 250 pounds. At age 15. I was in XXL shirts and 40 waist pants. I had to have ultrasounds done on my heart and blood taken because my cholesterol was so high that it was effecting the way my heart was working. I was 15 and I was terrified. And so I decided to make a change at all costs. Being a young, stupid kid I took what I thought was the easy route: I started to starve myself, and run/walk on one of those Gazelle workout machines we had in the basement. It was the summer before my sophomore of high school by this point and I would sleep all day, wake up at night and work out on that stupid machine, and barely eat enough to get by. I would usually chew gum instead of eating.  So I started my sophomore year like this. At this point in my life I would often be made fun of for a number of reasons. Reason number one: there were always rumors circulating that I was gay because I never had a girlfriend. This was because of my extremely low self-esteem. Due to this I often questioned myself and it made my teenage years all the more confusing. I was made fun of because of my weight, and I was made fun of because of my race. I went to a predominately white high school so the kids were generally insensitive towards what I was. They would make little jokes about my skin color or say something about black people and then say "oh sorry! I forgot you were there,"'or "I forgot you were black!" I blame the parents. I mean I'm only half-black, but damn! There's a whole list of things I could write about what people said about or to me leading up to my junior year, but that is something for another day. Tangent over, sorry those happen extremely often. Where was I? Oh yeah, so I noticed that I wasn't losing or gaining anymore weight, I was stagnant. I realized that this was because of my extremely low level of physical activity. I lost the weight by playing sports for the first time in eight years when I joined the rugby team at age 17. I joined rugby specifically because it was a "tough sport" and slowly those nasty rumors started to die down and the reinvention of myself began. I've been steadily losing weight since, (aside from a brief stint in my freshman year of college where I was eating fast food daily as a result of acute depression; but again, different story for a different day.) and am now a size M shirt and a 32-33 waist in pants.  Now the time has come for me to tone that shit up.

If you're still with me, I really appreciate it. Somehow my basic notion of getting in shape became this tirade about days long past. It's just that people are constantly asking me how I lost the weight, well that's the ugly truth. I realized what I had to do, I went about the wrong way, then the right way for the wrong reasons, and ended up where I am now. There isn't a lesson to be learned here, nothing is that black-and-white, but this is the truth.

Sitting here now as today becomes tomorrow, I'm watching my little brother Eli play his video games and I see so much of myself in him it's surreal. He'll be seven in a couple of weeks and I hope he'll be one thousand times stronger than I was and I'll definitely be here for him to help him along the way.