"Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again."
-Nelson Mandela
I was in 5th Grade and I thought I was in "love" with this girl in my school...let us call her Leticia. I lived in a house with my sister and my mother that we rented in this tiny culdesac and Leticia lived in a neighborhood close by that was separated from us by a large chain fence. We used to talk at that fence for what I remember as being days on end, but more accurately was probably about thirty minutes since my mother would yell for me to come inside and I would awkwardly say "bye" to her and run into the house.
I thought she was the sun and the moon. Even though looking back she could probably tell I had a crush on her because I was staring at her across a giant fence in the cold with puppy dog eyes, I did not think she truly understood. So I devised a brilliant plan.
It was a Friday and our class was watching a movie. I expertly placed myself in a seat, which happend to be assigned, that was right behind Leticia. She was wearing her backpack at the time, this girl was eager to get out of our crampled class and exprience LIFE, and I decided I would send something home with her. I constructed a note which can only be described as the GREATEST PIECE OF WRITING EVER WRITTEN, in my mind at the time, and waited for the right moment to place it in her book carrier.
Each time I reached to put the note in her knowledge container someone would cough or a distant cockatoo would crow in the piney field (we had cockatoos that randomly crowed in piney fields in North Carolina) and she would look back and I would pretend as if nothing was more interesting than how the narrator described that one beautiful ant carrying a leaf. Finally, with sweat dripping down my brow and my heart pounding I gingerly unzipped her backpack half an inch--slipped in my masterpiece--and lightly zipped it back up. The end-of-day bell rang, she looked back at me suspiciously and as manly as possible I pretended to play a one man game of "Ms. Mary Mack".
That beautiful ant
I left school feeling nervous, scared and excited. I felt exultant, that I had finally let her know exactly how I felt. I imagined that she would be melted by my words and we would live a happy and wonderful life together. I thought about what I wrote and I imagined I had written:
The truest pity of the English language is that no words have yet been formed to describe how incomparably beautiful you are. No syllables have been constructed that can encapsulate the rapture one feels when they look at the beautiful ivory orbs containing amber jewels some would call your eyes. There are no sentences that can cope with the magnitude of your majestic shape and the letter has not yet been created that is worthy to capture the elegance of your celestial face. I, but a humble English speaker can only shape my tongue in archaic manner to feebly attempt to explain the joy your grace and magnificence conveys to my soul. If you, a goddess, would only kiss your poor servant's unworthy lips then maybe the heavenly speech could come to me to describe but half of your beauty. One, yet not one as lowly as I, I, but not one as base as me could only hope for such a miracle.
This is what I think I really wrote:
Ummm..I saw you. When I see you my pants feel so tight...not tight like normal, but tight like a different kind of tight...ummm..bye.
Needless to say, I was excited about writing the note and putting it in her knowledge container. Once she read it she would have no doubt how I felt. I was sure when I saw her on Monday she would either tell me she felt the same way or we would at least talk about our relationship changing going forward.
I was mistaken.
On Monday, she hardly acknowledged me at all. Except in the cafeteria line where she was with a group of girls giggling. She was holding something that looked a lot like my note..and they were having a good old time looking at it, looking back at me, and laughing incessently. I was embarrassed and I was hurt. It was not just the laughing, but the fact that she did not acknowledge me at all. I poured out my heart onto a piece of loose leaf paper--all of my intrepid emotions, the important fact that my pants felt tight around her, and I received no personal response in return. Did her pants feel tight around me..and if so why? Nothing.
Fast forward one year and I am in a new school and hopelessly infatuated with another girl...let us call her Denita. Denita was popular and I liked her not only because she was pretty, but also because everybody else liked her too. It was human nature, no one would go to an empty restaurant so we gravitate to the things that "everyone" enjoys.
We were all sitting at a lunch table in the cafeteria, (cafeterias apparently hold bad omens in my life) I was probably 5 feet from her sitting on the opposite side. I received a tap on my shoulder, a young lady said, "Denita wants you to peel her banana!" and thereupon she handed me an unpeeled banana. I took the banana and looked up at Denita who gave me one of these:
I thought that was a definite sign of "interest" to say the least. I didn't realize that was the universal face for "is this fool really going to peel my banana"? I really did peel the banana and handed it back to the girl playing telephone who passed it down the line to Denita. General giggling ensued and that was it. I was out of the cafeteria and back in class before I realized I was played. Again, with no acknowledgement.
It hurts to be ignored. It sucks to give something and not receive reciprocation or any recognition of your act. But that is life. Those two girls were not anywhere close to the loves of my life. I already found her and I am building a life with her. But disappointment and dealing with it, and fighting through it, and learning from it are everything that life is about. As I go through this journey to lose this 100 pounds I know there will be setbacks. I need to keep my focus on how good it feels to succeed and how good I will feel to be healthy for life. At 11:18 p.m. on Monday, September 15, 2014 I am 323.6 pounds. Still losing weight after three weeks of this journey and still on track. Keep coming back and stay with me on this journey.
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