Hi, my name is Amanda, and I have a weight problem am clinically obese. I’m not an alcoholic, a drug addict, or a hoarder.  I’m highly functional, successful even.  I’ve even been told that people look up to me.  But beneath all that success I have issues, and I try (and fail) to deal with them with food.  Surprised?

I could join Weight Watchers (again) and it would work if I made/let it.  But that’s just programming to make me compute.  I’m not a robot; I’m a human being.  I don’t need a behavior prescription. I don’t think I’m ugly.  I don’t want to lose weight just to lose it.  I’m in a good place with framing Liam’s illness in the context of our lives. I don’t dislike myself, and I’m not generally unhappy, but I am haunted.  I know what I’m doing wrong, but it’s more important to me to know exactly why I do it.  I have an inkling, but when I travel down the path of why it hurts, and then I eat. . . whatever I can find.  So, tomorrow, I’m going to see a therapist, just for and all about me, for the first time in my thirty-eight years of life.

I didn’t have to out myself on my blog.  I don’t have to tell you that I’m weak and fragile and oh so horribly human.  I suspect you already knew that anyway, but I didn’t have to own it publicly. In fact, I’m a little shaky right now.  I’m considering never pushing that publish button and leaving this forever in the draft folder.

I’m very nervous about admitting it, but some of you, who read what I write, are so kind and tell me I’m smart, or wise, or a role model.  Maybe I am, maybe you just think I am – either way I feel obliged to tell you the truth.  Sometimes, even those of us who “appear” so together, need help.  So, I’m now modeling asking for help.  I still don’t “feel” better, but I’m trying.  Maybe one day I’ll even tell you how much I weigh, but not today because I’m too afraid of the scale right now to know myself.

Tomorrow, I’ll take a professional with me down the path of why to shine some light on my scary emotional monsters.  I tell you this, those monsters have pestered me far longer than I’ve been a heart mom or even a grown woman.  Those emotional monsters have haunted and hunted me for the better part of thirty-eight years. I inherited some of them from many generations of short round women who didn’t know how to process emotions and just ate instead.  Every time we over ate the monsters grew.  Tomorrow, I’m going to start to face down those monsters and put them in their place.  Wish me luck, and join me for the next installment of weighty issues, serving up the truth by the pound.