Epiphany

I was watching my niece's concert last night (which was ammmaaaazing) and I'm looking at her director and admiring her red hair. Ferria Red. And I had a though...

I have always been a "look at me" person. I crave attention.

Whoa. Back up. I just realized as I wrote that... that's where it comes from. My childhood. Wanting to be noticed. Wanting to be loved like Donny and Danny (my adoptive parents' natural children, whom my mother favoured) were. Wanting the positive attention, but taking anything I could get. Which turned to negative attention until I was midteens when it turned into sexual attention from whomever I could get it from.

Anyways, okay (deep breathe) and that is a quick snapshot of why I'm an attention whore. Or pretty much any kind of whore, LOL!!! Currently a married whore, who has her attention seeking firmly under control because she gets it in spades from her husband so doesn't need it elsewhere.

Except I still need attention, and am an outrageous flirt because of it.

But I digress... Back to the hair.

Fat people don't get noticed. Fat people live in a world of non attention. One of the strangest things for me when I started getting into the thinner stages of losing the weight was when people started randomly talking to me. I'll never forget being in Safeway, and the veggie guy just started yakking at me. I thought it was the strangest thing ever. And I recalled that the previous week, the same thing had happened to me at another store. And BAM, it hit me. People had stopped talking to me when I gained weight!!

I never noticed, because I always talked to THEM. But the reality is, or so it seems, that people are not comfortable talking to round people. Why? I don't know. But it's true.

This is why I had the hair that you see in the above pictures. People DO comment on funky hair. I was fat (can you see the way I posed, hiding my chins?) and never got the attention I craved. So I coloured my hair outrageously, looking to be noticed.

This is also why I could never understand the mindset of "hiding behind your fat". I was never hiding behind it. That was not my issue. Mine was a love issue. Eating equated to love. I crave love. Makes sense, right?

A huge part of my journey has been my hair. I now have it back to my natural colour, for the first time in my adult life (outside of when I was pregant with Logan, when the colour wouldn't take). It's a big thing for me to "just be me". And as I'm staring and admiring Fiona's hair last night, I'm thinking "I don't need that hair anymore".

Yay, me? Maybe. Maybe not. The sick cycle is still in place. But now I get the attention with my body. I get it with my face. I get it with my smile. I get it with my flirty eyes. I get it with every double take as I walk down the street.

It's funny... I walk with my friends and family and I watch for how people react to me. And when I comment on it to my peep, they didn't see it. Except for a couple of my soul mates, who are also watching for it (you know who you are *prongs fingers from my eyes to yours*). But most of my people live in the land of oblivion. Usually on purpose. Possibly afraid to see people's reaction to their physical being.

Personally, I think that is sad, because there are more positive than negative looks out there in the world.

So anyways... that was my epiphany. I coloured my hair outrageously because I craved the attention I wasn't getting because I was fat. Now that I am healthy, I want people to notice and love me for who I am, and what I've worked to look like today. Is that shallow? *shrug* It's who I am, it's how I roll.

Thanks for listening,

Dee