One word.

Do you ever wonder why someone has found the need to tell you something? Why the information that has been given to them they feel they should bless upon you? Or, in this case, curse …

Because that is what I’m dealing with right now. No, not dealing … suffering.

And now I just want to scream and yell until my throat is raw and dry: “WHY DID YOU TELL ME?”

Some things surely are better left unsaid. This was at the top of that list.

I love this man, don’t get me wrong, but my mind has recorded this word and it plays it over and over. If I’m walking down the stairs, closing a door, driving to work. In the middle of singing my favorite song. When I kiss him …

Someone asked him if I was his “project”

Upon hearing, it took a few moments to realize I stopped breathing.

He told me something I didn’t need to know. I didn’t want to know. It is something I want no part of and I wish it could get ripped right out of my mind. That pain would have nothing on how it felt taking in those words. That word. One word. Project.

Project? Really? What does that even mean?

Am I some sort of assignment? Are you going to put me on display when you are finished? What happened to loving me? What did you give this person that made this question possible to ever be asked? What did you say? How did you respond?

Why do I know?

My Secret

My secret.

If I could keep anything from you, it isn’t that I sucked my thumb for far too long. It wouldn’t be that I grew up in a house where water was shut off due to unpaid bills. Or that I have been accused of lying, cheating, and stealing (whether guilty or not). It wouldn’t even be that I have run away from home in bare feet, scared to death and nowhere to go.

Yes, these are my secrets. Things I try to keep from even my innermost circle of friends. But, with my head hung in shame, fear or embarrassment, I would do it. I would share this with you. If it meant that my secret, my one that can bring me to tears and silence in seconds, would never have to be shared.

It’s that I’m a big girl … big boned, plus sized, shapely, lusciously large, full figured … fat.

No, dear friend, I am not just 10lbs overweight, or even 30. It’s more than that. But, it has never defined me. Yet it has. It doesn’t make me who I am yet at times, it’s everything about me. For others, it IS my very being. I’m sure I’ve been written off by people who have not taken a moment to get to know me strictly because of what I look like.

But, I am so, so much more than that. But there are moments that I forget. And that’s when this little, yet big, issue becomes my grandest secret.

I’ve heard the jokes – from the school hallways to the mall, my own backyard to the workplace. From mothers in front of their daughters at the local playground to boys in clubs with beers in their hands. Some were blatant and said straight to my face. Others were side comments or side glances that I caught – because I’m always on the lookout. Always one the defense. Ready to … to … ready to take it.

There are days I fight. And I fight hard. With the mirror. With my jeans. With my make-up. With every physical part of myself. It seems to be those very days that I just happen to pass the best looking girls, the most attractive men. And I feel inadequate, insecure, insignificant – not me. I seem to forget the things that make up who I am.

How do I get back there to this place where I can remember? I’m on my way right now ...