Holy Insight Batman, It's an Epiphany!

I was just posting an email to a group and wrote a lot of what's below. Then I realized that what I was writing was not really pertinent to the email, but it sure is pertinent to my life.

When I first joined Weight Watcher's back in 1992, my then-husband tried to be supportive, and he thought he was. Hell, I even thought he was. However, his idea of support was to be the food police and the exercise police. "Should you be eating that?" "Are you sure you want that?" "Are you going to work out today?" At the time it felt like support, at least at first. Then it felt mostly like criticism and not of the constructive variety.

Looking back, I'm both surprised and not that I put up with it. Surprised because I know that at this point, I wouldn't and don't tolerate the food police. Not surprised because I think that time I was doing Weight Watcher's for him more than for myself. I wanted him to find me attractive because even then, 6 years before he asked me for a divorce, I sensed that he wasn't satisfied with me. I joined Weight Watcher's after we left Texas for Ohio, at least in part, because he said in passing the words "if our marriage doesn't work out."

ASIDE: The other part was because I noticed my ass had turned to cottage cheese when I accidentally saw myself naked in a full-length mirror. To this day, I still don't own one of those. I probably should; I can never see how my shoes look with the rest of my outfit.

BACK ON TOPIC: I can't really remember what the conversation was about; I just remember the clutching feeling I got in my chest, and the thought running through my head, "he's going to leave me because I'm fat." And at that point, I was over my ideal weight, yeah, but still within the realm of normal sized human (with 2 kids under the age of 5). We moved in February, and by the week of Easter that year (1992) I was at my first WW meeting. In the end, he left me anyway, in 1998. Was it because I had gained back the weight I'd lost with WW? Probably not, but I can't ever know. It could be for a lot of reasons; none of which really interest me right now. Once I figured out he'd done me a favor by leaving, his motivations ceased to be of importance.

I'm what's important now.

CURRENTLY READING: I finished The Jane Austen Book Club: A Novel by By Karen Joy Fowler last night. Now I'm trying to decide if I'm going to read some Austen or something a bit fluffier.