I had an epiphany at a Target while on cold medicine last week. I was stumbling through the aisles, drowsy, and saw myself in the mirror. I looked plump. Like a too full version of myself. Was this déjà vu? No, this was me.
I lost 100 pounds via weight loss surgery four years ago and I have put back on twenty-five of those pounds. It wasn't all my fault. It was the damn hormones and IVF treatments and a pregnancy that was not meant to be. The thing is, even after all of this, the weight loss surgery and then the miscarriage, I still love myself more than ever. I love my huge boobs and my fuller thighs and face and my hair, which has come back thicker.
After riding the waves in Newport on a boogie board, in celebration of me and my fuller figure, I walked into a swimsuit shop in Newport. The Brazilian woman owner helped me find a bikini top that fit my boobs. I will wear it with a skirt until I work off these twenty pounds because I have realized one thing that is true. You gotta love yourself right where you are or you will never be happy. Ever. And thus, I have decided to love myself right where I am. Desperately and fully without any reservations.
There are no ghosts of bodies past to haunt me anymore.
There is just me right now in a gorgeous flowered bikini top at a coffee shop sipping my tea. No creme brûlée for me. Life is sweet enough.
Panorama of San Bernardino
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Memories
I have come to realize that I am only truly happy when writing. The act of punching the keys gets me out of my head. At times, I am an anxious, hair-brained person. I am much better on the page. It is my best self. That is not to say I am not honest. I am. Maybe too honest. But my craziness makes more sense when I can reflect on it, and give the reader my interior monologue.
Many of my stories have a cinematic feel. At least the best ones do. I think that is why screenwriting is a natural evolution for me. My movies will probably make you both laugh and cry, but I want to show the blue collar world I grew up in. It does not exist anymore, that time of the 1970s and 1980s. A time before cell phones and the internet. Kids do not play outside without interruption until dusk. Or ride their bikes for hours without parental supervision. And no liquor store will sell a kid cigarettes, much less beer, with a note fake scribbled in mom's handwriting.
There is something beautiful about that time for me. The image of a drive-in movie theater is enough to bring tears to my eyes. The image brings back thoughts of a long lost time when I would pile in the back of my dad's pickup truck shell with my sisters with a Shasta cola and home popped popcorn in a Stater Brothers' brown paper bag, the oil seeping through.
In describing those past moments with words, my dad comes back to life for me. His Mayflower uniform, the buttons bulging. His swollen legs. I can almost hear the sound of his voice yelling "Girls" and almost feel the way he would hug me tightly. In my mind's eye, I watch how I would always wriggle away.
One day soon, I hope to see my dad's character on the big screen. You see reader, my memories are not all beautiful. Or newsworthy. But they matter. They are all I have really. All anyone has.
Many of my stories have a cinematic feel. At least the best ones do. I think that is why screenwriting is a natural evolution for me. My movies will probably make you both laugh and cry, but I want to show the blue collar world I grew up in. It does not exist anymore, that time of the 1970s and 1980s. A time before cell phones and the internet. Kids do not play outside without interruption until dusk. Or ride their bikes for hours without parental supervision. And no liquor store will sell a kid cigarettes, much less beer, with a note fake scribbled in mom's handwriting.
There is something beautiful about that time for me. The image of a drive-in movie theater is enough to bring tears to my eyes. The image brings back thoughts of a long lost time when I would pile in the back of my dad's pickup truck shell with my sisters with a Shasta cola and home popped popcorn in a Stater Brothers' brown paper bag, the oil seeping through.
In describing those past moments with words, my dad comes back to life for me. His Mayflower uniform, the buttons bulging. His swollen legs. I can almost hear the sound of his voice yelling "Girls" and almost feel the way he would hug me tightly. In my mind's eye, I watch how I would always wriggle away.
One day soon, I hope to see my dad's character on the big screen. You see reader, my memories are not all beautiful. Or newsworthy. But they matter. They are all I have really. All anyone has.
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