My Most Embarrassing Moment

When people ask me "What's the most embarrassing moment of your life?", I can't be honest. My answer is always a dismissive "Oh, I don't know...", or a partially fabricated tale of something slightly less mortifying than the true answer.

The true answer is that one day, I had to face a harsh reality.

My family never takes trips together, especially now that my siblings and I are all grown. This past summer my mother, my siblings, my nieces and I took a day trip to an amusement park. I visit this amusement park at least once a year with friends, and I'm a big fan of roller coasters. Visiting the park this time was special, because my nieces are eleven years old now and they're first time roller coaster riders. In all my trips to this particular park, I've never managed to get on one coaster in particular called Possessed. Every time I go, the person I'm with is too afraid to ride it, the ride is closed for maintenance, or the line is too long. As soon as we decided we were going to the park, I told my siblings about this coaster and made them promise to ride with me.

The first half of the day went really well. We were having so much fun with the kids coaster hopping and playing games. We came upon Possessed, the roller coaster I've been talking about for weeks at this point, and my siblings and I got in line. When we were seated, the attendant called for help when trying to fasten me into the chair. I've always been rather large in the chest area (as well as larger than average in other areas. Let's be fair. lol) and amusement parks have never been easy, but they were never quite this difficult, either. When the attendant trying lock the seat for me called for back-up, I was instantly mortified. After a minute of three attendants trying to secure the harness, one of them told me "I'm sorry. We cannot secure you".

I was stunned. Even though I tell myself everyday that I need to do something about my weight, even though every time I'm in line for a ride I have that little fear that maybe this will be the time I can't fit, I still somehow never really believed it would really happen. Once I got up and walked down the exit stairs, what happened began to sink in and I couldn't help but cry. I felt defeated and thoroughly embarrassed.

For the rest of the day, there was an awkwardness. I shut down and wouldn't ride anymore for the rest of the day out of fear I would go through that again, and nobody questioned it. Nobody asked. They all knew why, and that knowing silence was heavy on me for the rest of the trip.

It still weighs on me now.

This past Halloween I turned down an invitation to return to the park. This is the first year I've missed a trip to this place during the Halloween season in 5 years.

This will not repeat.

I won't trade fun for food.
I won't trade self-respect for food.
I won't trade my dignity for food.
I won't be a prisoner in my own body.

I'm going to make changes.
I'm going back to the park.
I'm getting on that ride.
And it's gonna be awesome.

This is almost identical to the experience I had at Six Flags Over Georgia a few years ago. It took me a few years to make the changes, but I'm well on my way now. I'm hoping to be well under 200lbs by next summer. When I reach goal weight, I plan to take a trip to my favorite amusement park, Cedar Point, to celebrate. I haven't been on a roller coaster in close to a decade (maybe longer) because of my weight. I also have been known to say, "I'm tired of being trapped in a prison of fat...a prison of my own making." Kudos to you for taking control. Sometimes we learn the most from our most painful moments. I was recently watching a documentary about a Chinese gymnast. She was only twelve years old at the time the documentary was being made. She had been living at the Chinese national gymnastics training center since she was five or six years old. During that time, she was only able to see her father for a few hours each weekend. She trained for five to six hours a day, every day. This twelve year old girl said that the one thing the keeps her going when she wants to quit, is something her father once told her. "It's hard now, but when you have reached your goal and you look back over the difficult years, you will see that there can be no sweetness in victory without first having experienced the bitterness of tears."