I haven’t read the tale in a while, though…

But I also like to eat – and I don’t deal well with deprivation.

At our aunt’s memorial service in Spring of 2011, I was talking with my cousin who was on Weight Watchers. I mentioned that I’d tried WW, but that I couldn’t stick with it. She told me it’s all different now – there is no hunger involved – in fact, WW has set up a weight loss system measured in points in which you can eat all the fruit and (most) vegetables you want for zero points. There are weekly meetings and weigh ins, and a groovy little iPhone app, and sociability. I’ve reconnected with a college friend and we talk about WW, trading helpful tips – and I have figured something out. The meeting leaders are motivational speakers, and some of them are better at it than others. The thing I heard a few months ago that has reverberated with me is this: Losing weight requires the will to change; people resist change because it’s painful. When the pain of obesity is greater than the pain of making change, the will to change will emerge. I’ve lost 40 lbs since June – pretty painlessly – and plan to lose 20 more. I will look OK to myself at 135.

WW is not the only way to lose weight – a friend of a friend has lost 200 lbs on Low Carb – there lots of ways to skin a cat — but is my self esteem better than it was six months ago? Yes. I don’t think I discriminate against others who are bigger – I get it that some of us have genes that predispose us to efficiently store calories as fat, and that has nothing to do with whether the person is smart or good or loving. But I was discriminating against myself – and while losing weight will not solve all my problems, I will no longer flinch when I see pictures of myself that I label as unattractive.

I was lighter on my feet after losing the first five pounds – I have hit milestones that would be hard to understand for a person who has never gained weight: fitting into clothing that I had outgrown; regretting giving away cute clothes that I thought I’d never be able to wear again; obsessing over lipstick instead of sighing because I thought it wouldn’t improve my appearance.

In one way I wish I could have embraced my fat self – considered myself lovable and sassy and smart and funny — Heidi is a great role model. But that wasn’t my experience. Instead I wanted to hide out at home and focus attention away from myself – let my words online represent me rather than my image in person; have my hard work be recognized because my self esteem didn’t have anything else to prop it up.

I will be healthier, endure less pain in my ankles, knees and hips, and have greater self confidence. As I once heard, you can lose weight, but you can’t turn back the clock. I’m still old, but I’m pretty sure there is nothing I can do about that.

After years of therapy that usually only gave me tools to deal with problem solving, but never actually lifted my spirits, my daughter grabbed me by the shoulders and explained that clinical depression is treatable, and that I had to get a prescription for antidepressants. She said, pointing at my chest, you can’t even do the (therapeutic) work until the hole in your heart is closed.

I’m a firm believer in the use of antidepressants, as long as there is a series of sessions with a therapist to relearn how to live, because life is different when your brain works better. There are a few side effects of the drugs that are annoying, but I am eternally grateful for the moment that an HMO therapist, who was This Close to Retirement, happened to be the doctor on duty when I had my first session with drug treatment. Now I know that what I had been feeling for decades was not normal. I’m not exactly sure that what I feel is what Really Normal feels like, but at least I have energy and optimism, and good feelings about the future. I still experience disappointment and sorrow, but they are appropriate to the situations that trigger them, not chronic states of being.

I just thought that I was somehow unbalanced… Well maybe I am. Whatever. I am certainly touched by the Darkness.