AMY P.
My Mother, my childhood:
I tried to post this as a normal post but there is NO Readers Digest version, so here it goes ALL OPEN BOOK AMY! I am doing this mainly to have it in writing for once in my life.
I was born in Ohio in 1967, I have a sister who is 3 years older than me. My parents decided to move to FL. in 1971. My early childhood memeories are non-existant, I have been told my whole life from my Mom that I was a difficult, dirty, baby and toddler. From the time I can remember my Mom, on my Birthday would tell me that every year the week before my birthday she would start to get physical symptoms of sickness and be sick on my Birthday because I was such a horrible birth. I NEVER COULD understand this but I felt guilty EVERY year because of it, to this day I HATE my birthdays. O.k., so now we aree in FL. and my VERY HARD working Father is working sun up to sun down in the construction industry. My Mom stayed home with us until about the age of 8. She went to work for Sears and I was left home alone or with my sister. My first real memory of my Mom saying something to me aboout my weight was at age 8 when she stood me in front on a mirror naked and told me that my face was really pretty but my body was fat and I needed to lose weight, she proceeded to do this many times througout my childhood until about the age of 15. My Dad and her would argue about me all the time and she would leave me alone with him on the weekends while my sister and her went shopping, played tennis, or did the fun girl stuff, My Dad and I would stay home cooking together and I would help him around the house and getting a great meal prepared. I always tease him and tell him that he taught me my love of food and he did but in reality...without his LOVE and willingness to hang with me I don't know if I'd be the person I am today. By 9-10 I was seeing a nutritionist/psychiatrist on a weekly basis and i was on a diet and diet pills for 2 years. Up and down and Up and Down on the scale I would go, every Summer was dieting and every school year I would gain it back and then some. It's funny my Mom was abusive .......... almost ALL of it was either verbal or mental, some kicking and hitting incidents but nothing that major. I had migraine headaches my entire life from the age of 8 and most of the time she thought I was lying about them. I would puke and puke with them and she still acted like I was making them up or I could control them. She once left me with my Aunt that I hardly knew when I was puking my guts out.......I needed her, I needed a Dr., I needed HELP! This happened all the time but Most of the really weird stuff started happening at about the age of 12. My Mom apparently decided that she wanted to explore New things. By this time my sister (a cheerleader and VERY popular with the boys) was about 15. She always had a boyfriend, most of them very good looking and a year or two older. Looking back on it now I see that my Mom was probably VERY jealous of my sister and all the attention. Here is what started to happen.........my Mom started to go out and do things like late night bowling from 11- 3 a.m. and take me with her, go to these VERY strange charasmatic catholic rolling on the floor speaking in tongues seminar things and take me with her. Everywhere she would go I would NOW HAVE to go with her after all these years hating me and neglecting me she all the sudden wants me to be with her. I NOW know that I was her cover-up kid, if I was with her my Dad wouldn't think she was doing anything strange, right? She started hanging around VERY young guys, some of them about 17, then more and more 1 guy in particular kept coming with us everywhere we went. Well, in the meantime my parents were fighting non-stop and my Mom was now sleeping in my room with me every night while my Dad would come in every night and try to wake her up to solve the problems after he had 1 too many beers. This went on for 3 months and then one afternoon my Dad came home and found my Mom with one of my sisters ex-boyfriends in my bedroom, the boy was 17 at the time. We moved into an apartment a week later. My Dad was a wreck!!! It got WAY worse after we moved. I ended up sharing a bedroom with my Mom. She went out EVERY night of the week and came home drunk at about 2 a.m. She NEVER cared where I was or who I was with or what I was doing...........I was 12 years old, going on 13 now and already I started drinking, did I mention that I NOW weighed about 240 in high school . I can't imagine my kids drinking when they were 13, thank God. She brought strange men into our house all the time, she dissapeared for days on end without even calling. I started working at the age of 13, I was now ON MY OWN, my sister and I that NEVER had anything in common now had a bond that brought us just a little closer. She became my new surrogate Mother at the age of 16. I was now in my first year of high school and flnking out due to drugs, alcohol and a lack of giving a shit about anything but making enough $ to eat, and buy clothes for myself. My Father never went a week without giving her a $120.00 check for child support , back in the 80's that was GOOD, yet we never had any food in our house and I never got school clothes. I learned then that I could live cheaper on crap food. Alright, so now I'm flunking out of my freshman year of high school because why should I give a shit about my grades, I need to concentrate on making $$$ enough to eat and clothe myself. I am working about 40 hours a week if I can! My sister decides that all the neglect and problems with my grades are enough and tells my Mom that we are moving out to go live with my Dad and his NEWLY PREGNANT wife, she is about 4 months pregnant and they have been married 3 months, you do the math! LOL!! I think...this might be alright, she seems nice, she is a teacher, she actually used to be my 3rd grade teacher! WELL, how wrong was I!! My Dad was still stressed working and drinking all the time and she was now stressed working and pregnant with 2 teenagers living in the house and NEVER had any experience with teenagers ever. My sister had a car by this time and a job and was in her Senior year of high school. I was stuck, stuck with the pregnant woman who resented us!!! She would get mad at things like.....the butter was scraped in the wrong direction, the towel wasn't hung correectly, the kitchen rag wasn't laid right, we used to much toilet paper, this was just too weird! My sister ended up moving out before she had the baby and I was STUCK IN HELL! I thought that neglect was bad, this was WORSE! They wouldn't let me work but they would give me $10.00 a week to buy all my stuff like deoderant, shampoo, conditioner, tampons, make-up and other needs, this was also supposed to pay for any activities that I wanted to do with my friends. In turn they made me CINDA-FUCKIN-RELLA! I had to do the dishes, clean the house, and now that my new 1/2 sister was born I WAS ALSO HER NEW LIVE-IN-BABYSITTER. The good side of this is that I loved my new baby sister and she kept me from commiting suicide at the age of 15!! Well, after a year of this I got some Summer jobs, 3 to be exact so that I could save up enough to buy my school clothes. I always wonder what was going through my parents head, aren't clothes a neccessity??? I now, make sure that EVERY year my kids and I go out school shopping, one on one together so tha they can feel and look good when they go to school. I still believe in hard work but not to buy clothes. Anyhow, I am now getting all A's and B's in school now and I'm entering my Senior year. My Step-mom is having her 2nd child now. A boy. I have had enough of constantly babysitting and having NO freedom at ALL! My Mom is now doing better and seems to want me to come and live with her so that we can start fresh. Being young and stupid, I believe her and tell my Father that I need to go see if I can make this work with my Mom, just me and my Mom...................she wants to make things right or so I thought. My Dad tells me that if I leave I will NEVER be allowed to come home again.....I leave and he is MAD!! BAD MOVE.......looking back on this move, it changed my whole life!!! I should have just stuck with the babysitting and prison life! When I got to my Moms with all my stuff she sat e down in the first 5 minutes that I was there and told me that there was a MAN that she loved living there, that they were born again christians and that they were already married in God's eyes. He was 12 years younger than her and weird as hell!!! When she meant him he was living out of his car and diving for golf balls in the local lakes of the golf courses to get $ to start his own bussiness. My Mom had just been paid off by my Dad for the house that still was never settled from the divorce. My Mom gave him all of her $$$ to start the golf bussiness. Now, I am in my senior year of high school, wanting to get out any way possible, wanting to go to college so I applied to 2 out of state colleges and got excepted to both but could not afford it because they took the income of the house I lived in the year prior so I couldn't get any loans because my Dad and Step Mom made too much $$ to qualify and I KNEW absolutely nothing about how to get help with all this?!!! I ended up not going , I was now working 2 jobs but I was still living with my Mom, found drive-thru places to be my best friend, quick and cheap! I just turned 18 and she told me that she wanted rent $$$$ and that I am to keep my room and bathroom spotless if I want to continue to live with her. I am working 80 hours a week waitressing so I can afford a new car , I am 18 years old and I am paying my Mom to live with her. O.k, so I wasn't the cleanest person in the world back then, what 18 year old is?? Long story short,oh too late for that, right? She kicked me out because my room wasn't clean enough. More like her new husband, (they did get married officially in the church eventually) and her didn't want me around, I was cramping them. I left that day and went to live with my sister and her new husband (great guy) in the one bedroom apartment that she was renting from my Step-mom! I slept on the couch for 3 months until thier house was done, (not really fun for any of us but we managed) and they moved out and I then took over the place............I was FINALLY on my own!! I started working like crazy making tons $,I got that new car, I got braces on my teeth, I enrolled in college and took a full course load, I started dropping pounds like crazy with the help of Weight Watchers and exercising, I was tan and now blonde too. I was on top of the world!!! Everything was going my way for once in my life and just by coincidence, I decided during this time again to cut all ties to my Mom. I hadn't talk to her since she kicked me out for not cleaning good enough. O.k, so here is where the decission to move in with my Mom kind of has all this domino effect..............I was living on my own and I got home around midnight and I was so tired that I just crashed. About 30 minutes later I wake up to a fist in my face and a hand covering my mouth. Yes, I was being raped! I guess he knew me because I tried to talk and fight my way out of it but he kept telling me it was alright because we went to school together. I fought and the more I fought the madder her got. As this all was happening I kept trying to grab something to hit him with and everytime I did it would end up falling on me. I would learn later that the whole time I was on the floor I was actually laying on the knife/brass knuckles that he dropped. After about an hour he left and I was left there naked on the floor, beaten and bruised and when i heard the door close and waited a few minutes I got up and had to plug the phone back in, I called my SISTER, the one person that had been there for me during my life and I told her what had happened, freaking out the whole time. What seemed to be like an eternity later, she came with her husband and the cops soon followed and the ambulance and fire dept. too!!! What a circus!! I didn't want to even see any Men but when my Dad showed up.....thank God, I thought......someone to protect me. The first thing he did was ask me "WAS IT A BLACK MAN?" All I could think of is what the hell does that matter but I told him NO and I guess that made HIM feel better about the whole thing. He NEVER spoke to me about it again. I then went to the hospital for what felt like a worse situation than the rape at the time, I was interogated over and over again and I had to be picked and scaped at every hole in my body, nails cut down to the skin, nose, hairs, mouth scraped, skin scraped, naked pictures taken of your entire body, you get the picutre. I also got to go for a police line-up the next day which turned out to be nothing but that was one of many that turned up notthing. they never caught the SCUM BAG. I, on the other hand. was now homeless again.............who was going to take in poor Amy all beaten and bruised and messed up inside and out? Who else, the Sister, the one that just had a baby too! I was now a burden to someone again!! The same person that I've pretty much been a burden to my whole life. I was messed up to say the least......unable to sleep at night for fear that he would come back, don't want to work much, he might know me from there? I was a mess! The night of the rape a lady came to the hospital, BETH, from rape crisis and I said I would be fine. I wasn't fine, I needed help or else I was just going to end it all and then he would WIN!!! I will never forget the day that I was walking out of a Marshalls Department store and I thought to myself .....I can either do One of two things, commit suicide and get it over with or call this # and get some help!!! I picked up the payphone and meant with Beth 10 minutes later. She helped me see that I was a survivor, that I was strong, I was a good person that something bad happened to, she helped me live and I thank God for her. I still keep in touch with her. O.k. so now I'm still messed up but getting help and I've been at my Sisters for about 3 months and she is getting sick of me being so depressed all the time, she thinks that I should just snap out of it and move on with life. I forgot to mention that my Mom decided to pay me a visit during all this and we are now back to speaking. Beth introduces me to another rape survior in group therapy that is really messed up too and she thought that we would hit it offf and we did, this girl then introduces me to a guy that she know and we all start to hang out. Well, the guy and I start to hang out a lot and he admits to me that he likes me and I fell in what I thought to be love at the time. Now, looking back on it, he was my way out of my situation and I think I was his too! Well, about 4 weeks after we meant we moved in together my Sister said the same thing my Dad said..if you move out do not come back! Things were great for awhile.........then fighting and more fighting but I still thought that he was the one for me. He would get violent over very strange things and throw things. He Never hit me directly but always acted like he could snap at any minute. When things were good they were really good..........when they were bad they were REALLY bad! We married the next year and I was now 21, I got pregnant on the honeymoon with our first baby, a girl, CIERRA. God, did I love this child but I was so young. My husband jumped from job to job a lot and now I was delivering newspapers 365 days a year so that I wouldn't have to put her in daycare. I proceeded to this and many other odd jobs forthe next 16 years so that I could be a stay at home Mom and be there for MY CHILDREN, I NEVER wanted to leave then with anyone tht could harm them, I definitely had "trust" issues and still do, you'll soon find out that they for good reason. Well, after about 2 years of marriage I started noticing weird behavior from the husband. Oh, I need to tell you that noe he's working for my Mom and Step-Dad in the golf shop and another job at night part-time. I KNEW something wasn't right so I started to snoop and sure enough I found things...........OH MY GOD did I find things, this just couldn't be happening..he was cheating on me.....not with another women...............he was cheating on me with another MAN!!!! I found pictures and gay porn and $$$$ a lot of money. I found this while he was in the shower and I packed up the baby quickly and left for ???????????, I'll go to my Mothers and tell her. Why, after all these years of going to my Sister did I NOW turn to my MOM??? Embarassment I guess. Maybe I thought that she was a better choice because he worked for her and that she knew him?? I don't know but he proceeded to follow me and ram up with his vehicle. I forgot about that, it was one of about 23 accidents that he was in, very weird. Well, after going to my Mother and explaining all that had transpired I thought for sure that this was it.................NOOOOOOOOOOO, she took his side!! She told me that I NEED to keep my marriage together because during all this we found out that he was molested by his step-father as a young boy and this was the cause of all of this. I was now pegnant with our 2nd child and thought or was told by my Mother that GOD will help him get through this and he can change!! He/WE started to go to church, he/we started to go to counseling and after making him take an aids test and me too, we started to heal...or so I thought. I found out during the couseling sessions that because he was molested that was the reason for the anger, the violence, the lying, the cheating, the stealing and the manipulation. I lost the baby about 8 weeks into the pregnancy due to stress and he was on his best behavior for awhile. I got pregnant again about 3 months after the miscarriage. If your asking yourself why?how? It wasn't planned, my birth control method failed, I was fertile mertil!! and the next ? would be, you had sex with this man again? yes, I always thought that maybe, just maybe I could make this work, that he would be a changed man and NEVER do it again! That the church and couseling and my mother could help him. Looking back on it........I was SO STUPID and SO TRUSTING believing what my Mom had said. I still to this day HATE all organized religion, I LOVE GOD and believe in the power of prayer 100% but after everything that I have gone through with churches/my Mom....NO THANKS. So, now I'm preganant for the 3rd time in 3 years and I give birth to a Son, Tyelor, a WONDERRFUL beautiful Son! He/we stopped going to the couseling sessions and said that he was healed, BULLSHIT!! After 2 1/2 more years of looking over my shoulder wondering when the next car accident, problem, fight, anger issue, lying, making me feel like I was insane, craziness......I decided enough was enough one halloween night when something strange AGAIN happened. All throughout the marriage strange things would always happen but he would always make me feel that I was just imagining them or he would act just as surprised as me about the wierd incidents of a lot of cash being found or him not being where he should be when he should be? Always an excuse, but deep down I knew again, something wasn't right! This time on Halloween my little stinker/angel boy decided that while we were outside carving the pumpkin that he would lock us out of the house in my night comfy clothes and no shoes, kids in thier p.js! So, from the neighbors house, we try to get a hold of my husband where he is supposed to be working and he is not there, big surprise!!! The neighbor offers to take me down there to see what's going on and after calling a bunch of his friends and trying to reach him by cell phone many time without an answer he eventually pulls up in the parking lot filled with excuses! I just looked at him and said "it's over, I'm through with all the lies and the deceit and manipulation, I want a divorce!" He went nuts and told me that he wasn't going anywhere until he got half of everything. SO, I got mad and got even!!!! I got STRONG, for the first time in my life since my rape I decided to take control back again!!! Who ya gonna call ???????? Not ghost busters but GAY BUSTERS!! I finally broke down and called my Sister and told her the whole story, I don't know what lies my Mom had fed her over the years but I decided she needed to know the truth and I NEEDED some help and I KNEW she would be up for the job. Since he wouldn't leave the house until it was sold we put it on the market and he slept on the couch. He would still play his games and do the going out to work thing or so he told me?? So, I decided to have my Sister and some friends follow him.............what they found out would blow my mind and make me even MORE determined to get rid of him. When they followed him he went to the beach meant up with some strange men, went to a strange house and then stayed there for about an hour and then left, went back to the beach and did it again! To this day, all I can figure is that he was prostituting himself out for $$$$$!! The detectives (my sister and friends) took pictures and logged all this down and brought it to me. With this and many more things that I/we found I was now armed to fight and fight I did! I made sure that I had someone/ a young girl ( my friends niece) lined up to move in that night. As my COP neighbor was sitting outside of the house I sat my husband down and told him that I had evidence of his behavior including pictures, video and MANY other things and that he was to MOVE OUT TONIGHT!!! I also told him that I WANT TO KEEP the house for a stable home for the kids and that I want full child suport and for him to sign a quite claim deed for the house so he has NO LEGAL right to it any more He just sat and cried for awhile and then packed all his clothes and left to go live with his Mom, who by the way, KNEW NOTHING about any of this and wouldn't forthe next 2 years until there was NO OTHER choice!!. The kids and I went down to the health department and we ALL got HIV tests done, (they did not know at the time what it was for)......they were negative, thank God!!! My Mom, on the other hand, was soon going to find out THE TRUTH!!! For once in my life I was going to tell her that I AM TAKING CONTROL!! O.k., so I WILL NEVER forget this day for the rest of my life. I was sitting in Ruby Tuesdays with her and told her that " I AM NOT GOING TO DIE FOR THIS MAN FROM HIV" and "HE IS A LYING, CHEATING, GAY, MANIPULATING BASTARD" and " HE IS STEALING RIGHT OUT FROM UNDER YOU AND YOUR COMPANY, CASH and INVENTORY!!!". ( I found this out while cleaning up when he moved out)!! I felt so relieved, I finally got it all out and now she would believe me and fire him and maybe we could start to heal again, right???!! NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She told me that I'm making all of this up and that I am the one who is crazy and that he is a good man!! Oh my God. I can not believe that I was hearing this, she was going to do it again, take the side of this horrible man over me, her daughter! Well, I got up from the table in tears and walked out and had to keep telling myself it would be o.k. and I do not need her in my life, life is always better when she is not in it!! IT IS!! She continued to employ my ex-husband for 1 more year and go to my childrens functions with him and stay by his side until she found out that I was right and he ended up getting fired. She NEVER has given me an apology for all of that. Times were tough financially because he didn't always pay child support and I was working 2 jobs, with a mortgage and 2 kids it was hard but we were happy and I felt the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders! I started to lose weight again, I was now up to 320 or so, and probably at the heaviest of my life. I lost about 50 pounds. I was lonely though, I REALLY found myself missing a MAN, a friend, a soulmate and feeling like I wanted to get back out there and find the man of my dreams.............I liked being married but not to him, does that make sense? I loved the thought of having a family, a husband, more kids. A "normal life" I wanted to find my soulmate! I knew that with 2 young kids I wasn't ever going to be able to do that with the kind of job I had and not being able to get out much, so a friend suggested that I put a personal ad in the paper just for fun and see what comes of it, this was before the internet dating stuff!! I did it! I put in that I was a FULL FIGURED amongst other atttributes and waited for the messages to pile up in my mailbox, LOL! I thought that I would be lucky if I would get 2 replies. I got a ton of them!! I was in charge, they would leave a message on a voice mail and when you called to check your voicemail you would here them and then you could call them back if you wanted to. Before I called them back I always blocked my # so that they couldn't call me back. Then, if I liked them and they liked me through our phone conversation we would set up a meeting place that was VERY public and I would either tell my friends where I was going or they would come along and sit in the shadows. I had a blast meeting many different people, some I liked and others were a little strange. NONE of them were EVER introduced to my children. I wasn't going to do that to them, I was goingto protect them from getting attatched andthen hurt again if it didn't work out. Then, along came DAN...shy, cute, generous, smart, funny, and at first I wasn't quite sure that this was the guy for me but as time passed and we talked more and more and laughed more and more I knew that he was the one for me. He would come over every night after they were sound asleep and we would stay up till late talking almost every night. I told him from probably after the 4th or 5th date how my kids were so important to me and they WILL ALWAYS be put first. He ws good with that and lovd me more for it! After we were dating for about 3 months and getting more serious and I think we both knew that it was getting serious, I introduced him to the kids. They liked him and he liked them. The girl that was living with me was becoming a problem.......she was a complete PIG, food and garbage all over my house and I had given up MY bedroom/bathroom for her to be there to watch the kids and she was bringing her boyfriend over while the kids were here, a few times I had to get the kids up in the middle of the night to come with me on the route because she NEVER came home.........it started to get weird. I put an ad in the paper for a NEW ROOMATE and OH MY GOD the weirdos that came to my house, even a homeless woman. Not one "normal" human came. I started thinking..........and as Dan and I were talking one night we both agreed that we love each other and that HE should move in, I know him and trust HIM more than any other person off the street and when I asked the kids what they thought, they thought it was a good idea. He moved in that weekend. About a month after he moved in he handed me a card out of No where and when I opened it, it had the title to the cadillac that he had just restored and told me to "follow my dream" and open up my restaurant. I did and it was a huge success. We married a year and a half later and ANGEL SHELBY was born 3 months later....o.k., I got pregnant after we got engaged!!! I told you I was fertile!! I had to sell the restaurant, I was trying to run it, do the papers and be a good Mom. Something was bound to suffer and it wasn't going to be my children. I was now a stay-at-home Mom again just doing the papers. I loved it but the weight was piling on again. My ex-Husband came to my door one day in tears..........I KNEW, he had HIV!!! The children would have to be told and this would change thier lives forever, mine too!! They have had it rough and many times I feel guilty. I NEVER regret having them just the mistakes of not listening to "my inner VOICE" and allowing others to tell me what to do! I feel bad that they will have to live with this for the rest of thire lives, it is hard on them and of course he has NO IDEA of how hard it really is!!! A GAY father with HIV and now full blown AIDS!! We ended up selling the house and building a beautiful big pool home out in the estates. My husband passed the contractors test on his first try (I told you he was smart) and this lead to a wonderful new superintendent position with a lot more $$$. I was able to quit my newspaper job, finally after 16 years!! The day after I quit I started taking care of my sick Grandfather, he was in the hospital with vascular disease and my Grandmother was not mentally stable enough to handle it, my sister was too busy working, and my Mother in her usual style was NO where to be found. As far as my Grandfather goes............he was the one light in my life that I could ALWAYS depend on. When he came to visit in the winter and Summer too I would always look forward to it. He wasn't even my REAL Grandfather but this was the most wonderful man in the world, he always wanted me to be healthy and happy! He didn't really care that I was heavy he just knew it wasn't healthy for me. A hard working farmer his entire life, he didn't deserve to go through this alone so I decided that I was going to be there for him. I promised him that I would help him. He told me he thought he was dying and that he didn't want to die in the horrible nursing home they had him in. I got him out and then they eventually, after about 6 weeks they took him to HOSPICE where he died, I was by his side when he did. This beautiful bright light appeared before me and then he was gone, I NEVER had seen anything like that in my entire life!!! I don't know and can't explain it but I feel that he was trying to tell me he was going to a better place. I still believe that he watches over me as my "ANGEL", that's what he used to call me. We burried him in Ohio and when I got back I found out that I needed a full hysterectomy, this was now June 20, 2005. At this same time my wonderful Father was diagnosed with bladder cancer. They had to do MAJOR surgery on him (he almost dies 2 X) and we were both in the hospital at the same time, this was my first surgery ever and I came through it with flying colors, all done laproscopiclly. My Father is still living but he is in and out of the hospital a lot and I worry about his health. Well, now comes the part where I start taking a good look at my own life!!! After seeing my Grandfather die and my Dad suffer so at the young age of 60. I decided life is TOO SHORT to live it FAT and I NEED to do something permanant/drastic to become the person that I KNOW I can be and should be for ME and MY FAMILY and to live the next 40 years HEALTHY and HAPPY. I start to investigate the RNY and try to see if my insurance company will cover it but as I was investigating I came accross the VSG and the more I read about it the more I KNEW that this was the surgery for me. My inner voice told me that this is your answer, this is the surgery for you!!! I appealed the insurance company 4 times and they said that I was a healthy obese person??? So, by this time it is now August 2005 and we had just taken out an equity line from our house to buy property in North Carolina where we want to move and grow old in about 4-5 years. I found a great deal on some property and we had about $20,000.0 left over. I asked my DH if he would be alright with me getting this surgery with the $$$ and he said "DO IT! You deserve to be happy!" and was VERY supportive. I got the VSG on October the 5th, 2005. I came through with flying colors and the weight started flying off, I can't believe how fast. I hit my goal in less than 8 months, from over 310 to 159. After all that weight loss I now looked like a 90 year old women without clothes on, everything fell South, bad!! After recieving a big bonus and a great tax return because of all the medical bills we had about $15,000.00. We were going to buy a car but I asked my husband if I could keep my old mini-van and get the plastics on my upper half done instead, he of course said yes and that I had paid my dues and deserve to be complete! I had the plastics on June 19th, less than I year from my first hysterectomy surgery and only a little over a year since my Grandfather's death! Wow, what a year it has been. I KNOW my Grandfather is looking down on ME and he is proud and happy that I am healthy now! I have chosen over years and years of the same pattern, to not have any REAL communication with my Mom, I finally figured out that she needs to work on herself and get right with all of her demons before I can ever have any kind of a "NORMAL" relationship with her. I am stronger now!! My husband and I are happier now than we have EVER been. My kids are proud of me and I am proud of me too. I still have the bottom half to go with the plastics but I feel good and can't wait to be done with all this and get on with my wonderful "NEW" life!! I deserve to be happy now! I just wanted to add that my bottom half has now been completed and with a few minor (welllll, major) infections/set backs I am doing great and on the mend. I am now ready to live the rest of my life in peace and in my new body!!! WOOOHOOOOO to that!!!
Post Date: 6/9/07 10:36 am
Today I am the BIG 4-0!!! Never felt better! Staying at my goal within 5 lbs., building my dream business, and lookin pretty darn good for forty if I do say so myself. LOL!!! I had my wonderful Son Tye take some pics of me in my new clothes (size 6) , check out my new pics on my profile if you want and I even bought a pair of size 6 shorts and they were too big! I have to take them back and see if they have them in a smaller size, NEVER thought I'd be saying that. I did go shopping last night (of course) and got a couple of new Summer outfits and the funny thing is that I ALWAYS had trouble finding clothes that fit me in my size (26-28), now...............I have the same problem but on the other end of the rack, they always seem to have the sizes 8,10, and 12's but NEVER any size 6s! How funny is that! It's O.K. with me because I am willing to search a little for my size now, NO PROBLEM!!! LOL!! The business (BLISS!!) is going well, my D.H. is in there right now working like a dog doing demo work before the final permits come through. I told him.............NO GIFTS for my Birthday just HARD LABOR! LOL! I really just want my place to be done and ready to be built. I am going there later today to help out, this is all I truly want. The permits should come in next week, we will build it out in one month (a month of madness) and we should be ready for business by mid July if everything goes as planned!! I'm PRAYING HARD! I have MANY people waiting for me to start this up so I can't wait to get in there and start cooking!!! Thank you ALL for your support, I lurk a lot now still but respond ONLY if I think I have something MORE to contribute. YOU ARE ALL FABULOUS TOO!!! Keep on the plan, it's a wonderful journey and TOTALLY worth the trip! AMY
About Me
Before & After
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