December 2011
It's hard to believe the path to get me to this moment. Here is was in the driver seat of a 1995 chevy Silverado with a shotgun by my side contemplating what to do with it. I'd been there for about two hours sitting in front of my apartment in my college town. I was weighed down with the thoughts of what would my mother say when she found out what happened, how my decision would affect those that found me, and thinking how not existing had to be much better than my current existence. I wasn't weighed down with simply thoughts, I was also weighed down with 100 pounds of excess body weight, a knee injury that did not permit me to walk without an extreme limp or handle stairs without excruciating pain, and an exasperated terrified thought process of how things came to be the way they were.
Two years earlier were my "glory days" if you could call them that. I was a freshman wrestling in college and had been making my progression from my post knee surgery weight of 254 pounds to 200 pounds in pursuit of wrestling at the 197 pound weight class. I'd cut the weight the only way I knew how; through working as hard as I could training twice a day AND eating hardly anything. I'd gone from 254 to 200 pounds AND LOOKED LIKE CRAP. Long gone was the "jacked" look I had when wrestling at 215 pounds in high school. I was now 200 pounds of flabby gelatin. Skinny fat is the term now but skinny obese was more like it. Gone also was my happy go lucky time of feeling no pain. The spring before my freshman year of college I'd undergone my third knee scope to remove the floating cartilage in my knee from a persistent meniscus tear. I'd ignored the doctors wishes pleading for me to allow him to file the paperwork to remove me of the commitment of my national letter of intent to wrestle. Truth was that after my first knee scope as a junior I was never the same wrestler. I had to completely relearn a new style of wrestling in order to compete at the level I wanted to. My second knee surgery came at the end of that junior season after having not come close to achieving the goal I had set out to do. The third surgery came after the state tournament my senior year, where I nearly accomplished my goal of being a state champion. However due to not really believing that I could do so I lost the state title match on a last minute takedown in the third period. After that my battle with excess weight began.
How had I gotten myself into the situation of sitting in my pickup with a loaded shotgun contemplating ending my battle right then? It was truly pretty simple. Food and beer were my emotional go to's. I ate and drank to feel happy and when I was "happy" I ate and drank some more because more is always better. It was nothing for me to drink a 30 pack of beer a night or eat more than a large pizza for "dinner." Additionally my knee injury kept me from being able to take any part time job that was worth its salt to pay my bills. I was working at a local pizza joint and "attending" classes at my university. I say attending with a bit of disdain because I in fact rarely attended. I was in a severe state of depression due to having creditors from the hospital calling me daily, (I had around 10 thousand dollars in medical bills from my last semester wrestling in college), not being able to pay the few bills I had, having my athletic career taken from me "too soon", but most of all the thing that fueled my depression was the weight. I'd been ballooning up fast. I stopped stepping on the scale when it said 267 pounds and that was months ago. I couldn't stand the look of myself, I had 3 t-shirts that "fit." Fit being a loose term because my belly hung below the bottom of each of those shirts. I threw up violently EVERY SINGLE MORNING. I hated myself and worst of all I didn't even know where to begin dropping the weight. I was at rock bottom and had absolutely no idea of a first step to dig myself out. I liken this era of my life to drowning. I felt as if I were literally drowning and there was no way out. Drowning in self pity, depression, and the 100+ pounds of excess bacon grease that was my body. Little did I know that there was a way out and often times when one is in such a dark place help is always there when one just asks.
I made the best decision of my life to date at that point and called my best friend and simply asked him if he could come over so we could talk. He didn't know for 5 years that he saved my life that day and until now he probably doesn't know how close I was to self demise.
The blog entry above wasn't fabricated to be over dramatic or fabricated at all for that matter. This is a dark stage of my life that if the path had continued I would not have had a future. I'd had a doctor tell me that my cholesterol was the "worst he'd ever seen" and if I hadn't ended the fight myself in that pickup my life would have likely been over by now anyway. I'm writing this to do my best to help ANYONE that may feel as if they are drowning in their own weight battles and have no idea where to begin climbing out. If these writings help even 1 person from wallowing in the pit of despair then it doesn't matter how many hours I invest writing and sharing this story. The funny thing about the pit of despair with body weight is that help is always just around the corner. You just have to know who to ask.
Commentaires