I’m feeling a bit lost and lonely and I don’t know what I’m doing that creates this. Except for Marcus, I don’t have any real live friends. I have acquaintances, but no true friends. I have some friends on the Internet, but they can’t come hang out with me. I don’t know why I can’t connect or stay connected to people. Most people my age have kids and I can’t relate to them. I’m always the odd man out, the last to be chosen, if I’m even remembered at all. Lately all those old high school memories of being left out have come flooding back and I’m hurting. I try to reach out to people and I’m ignored. I feel invisible once again.

It’s when I feel like this that I realize why I’m 300 pounds, my finances are a joke and my house is a mess. I don’t have the will to do anything about any of this because “why bother?” Nobody is around to notice anyway. I’m just the reliable girl that does her job, doesn’t make waves and exists in the background.

I know that part of this is that I don’t know where my passion lies. If I found something to participate in that I was passionate about, I would find people like me. I’ve spent so much of my life being what I thought I was supposed to be that I really don’t know what I want.

An old friend from college (who is a little older than I) told me a few years ago that when I passed 40, my life would get way better. She told me that it’s like a magic age where all of a sudden the petty crap that plagues you earlier in life just doesn’t matter anymore. It’s when you start to discover who you are and really begin living life. You reprioritize (is that even a word?) what’s truly important.

Honestly, I didn’t really believe her.

Now that I’m less than a month away from my 41st birthday, I finally see what she meant. I don’t dwell on piddly stuff like I used to. I’ve taken an attitude of, “Hey, this is who I am. Take it or leave it. I really don’t care what you think of me.” I’m starting to find that stuff is less important than experiences (except for computer stuff, that is!).

Granted, having been blessed with finding a man that loves me and sticks with me no matter what has been the most wonderful thing that could’ve happened to me. I can totally be who I am with him and be totally comfortable. I am grateful for his strength and his wisdom. He truly is my soul mate. I pity women who are afraid for their fellas to see them naked or without their makeup. I can not imagine being in a relationship where you can not discuss things and have intelligent conversations. How sad that some partners can not even show their true selves.

I still have a lot of negative self-talk and chatter that goes on in my brain, but more and more I’m recognizing it for what it is and trying to let it go. I have lots of big plans for me in the near future. I’m finally beginning to believe I can make them a reality.

I don’t know what’s blocking me. Why am I so unwilling to put forth the effort needed to be the person I want to be? What am I afraid of? There’s a beautiful, healthy, alive person choking under all this flab and she wants to get out.

I’m making healthier food choices, but I still don’t eat enough during the day and have so little energy that I can barely move. I know that getting some exercise would help me sleep better, yet all I do all day is sit in a chair at a computer, even when I get off work. We’ve got a wonderful piece of exercise equipment at work called a ROM that only takes five minutes a day, yet I can’t make myself walk across the parking lot to the building that houses it to use it. I know it works because I’m seeing the results on a coworker that has been using it religiously. She looks danged good.

The new life starts right here, right now. I want to be thinner when I meet my online friends in Las Vegas this November. I don’t want to be in the 290s when I hit my 41st birthday next month. I don’t want to feel like the blob that I am like I did today trying to go up two flights of stairs at the Cherry Creek mall. My newest project is a better me and I’m going to complete that task this time.

I was looking at some pictures of myself from high school. I weighed around 170 then, I think. I used to think I was so fat. True, I was overweight, but I was nowhere near obese. Even through most of college, I was under 200 lbs. My lack of self-esteem, not my fat, kept me from really living then. I want to be the pretty woman I was then.

What is it about humans, woman especially, that keeps us from putting ourselves first? I want to be healthy and thin, but you wouldn’t know it by my actions. When am I going to get off my duff and make myself the most important person in my life? I deserve to be a priority — the main focus of my attention. If I’m not, how can I truly be there for anybody else?