Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve has always been a very special time in my life. For the majority of my youth, it was just me and my mother. My father moved out when I was just five and even though my mother remarried, for all intents and purposes, it was just the two of us. During a particularly rough time when I was young, I wanted to do something special for my mother for Christmas. I didn’t have but a few dollars and nobody to take me shopping, so I decided to cook dinner on Christmas Eve. My cooking knowledge was limited and we didn’t have a lot around the house so I treated my mother to the most elaborate spaghetti and meatball dinner that a seven year old could put together. At the time, I didn’t really understand the pressure that she was under, but I could tell that my efforts had meant the world to her and with that, a family tradition was born.

Throughout all of my struggles, missteps, and issues in my young life, I’ve always kept this tradition alive. If my mom and I are together Christmas Eve, we’ll enjoy our Italian delight, but if we’re apart, no matter what I’m doing, I make time to have a salad, spaghetti, and meatballs on Christmas Eve. A few nights ago, I had the pleasure of sharing my December 24th tradition with my new family, “rock star” and “princess.” We have had the most hectic time since the beginning of October and the few days leading up to Christmas were really passively guided chaos, but for dinner on Christmas Eve, I drove to Fazoli’s, picked up a family order of spaghetti and meatballs, and we sat and enjoyed my traditional meal.

You see, December 24th was the one year anniversary of the “first day of the rest of my life,” as it were. It was on the 23rd that I came to the realization that I had to make some changes in my life. On the morning of the 24th, I weighed myself, for the first time in 7 years and was shocked to find out that I weighed in at 507 pounds! It was such a shock, because I had been too depressed to even look at myself in the mirror for the last five years, so I really had no clue what I looked like or how fat I really was. After that moment of truth, I’ll admit that not even trying was my favorite option by far. I was in such pain and I knew that I was getting closer and closer to the end. Why not just ride this misery train to its last stop and give up? In a very overdramatic fashion, I wasn’t, couldn’t really, give up and I decided that I was going to live my life the way I always wanted. I had known my calling in life from a very early age, but I always lacked the backbone and initiative to tell the people close to me what I wanted out of MY LIFE. I announced to the world, even though nobody was around, that on this day, December 24, 2007, that I was taking ownership of my life and that rolling around on the bottom of the barrel was officially over. It was time to put on my “big-boy pants” and make the necessary changes in my life.

So, one year later, I’m 172 pounds lighter and having the time of my life. Even though that is a milestone, it still isn’t what makes the 24th so special. Because of the way I grew up, it’s always been clear to me that I would never leave my family like my father did. As the years after high school have passed and my mom has moved to Florida, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know my father a lot better and we actually have a pretty solid relationship. He has helped me through some very tough times and I owe him a great deal. I’d even come to the point where I’d forgiven him for leaving and justifying it by saying that understanding yourself is hard work and he just hadn’t had the opportunity to figure himself out in time to save our family.

With that idea fresh in my mind, I ventured into this relationship (with “rock star”) where I got the opportunity to see “how the sausage was made” and I was shocked to say the least. She is in the process of getting divorced. It is such an ugly situation where a mother is pit against the man she loves in an attempt to provide for her child. What a nightmare and absolutely unfair/inappropriate situation. My girlfriend’s ability to persevere through this situation while encouraging her child to have a happy, healthy, fun, and loving relationship with the man who walked out on them is a trait that I admire so much. Through all of that, plus all of the other struggles in her life, my girlfriend is still one of the nicest people I’ve ever know and she still sees the best in others even though she has a plethora of reasons not to.

Finally, watching this divorce unfold has reinforced such an appreciation that I have for my mother. Even though I cooked on Christmas Eve, she managed to put food on the table for the remaining 364 and a half days of the year. Even to this day, through all of the evil she has seen in her lifetime, she continues to touch peoples’ lives and show them the potential that they have within themselves. She is an administrator at a nursing home in Florida, but the word administrator doesn’t do her efforts justice. Her employees would probably refer to her as a “staff mother” before a boss. On many occasions, I’ve seen her talking to people making minimum wage emptying bed pans and encouraging them to get their G.E.D. and helping them find options to pay for it. She treats everybody equally and possibly better than she treats herself.

Even though December 24th now marks a date of personal accomplishment in my life, my traditional dinner will always be an honor to the women in my life have persevered over so much and still held true to their belief that good really does win over evil. These “superheroes” are champions of the human spirit and a great example of how not to sacrifice your principles no matter what the circumstances. These women have earned my admiration and respect 1,000 times over and I feel that a spaghetti dinner on Christmas Eve is the least I can do to show them how amazing they really are. Hopefully, and maybe with a little help from this essay, they can see themselves in the light that they deserve.

I consider myself fortunate to have one woman like this in my life. I have no excuse to be anything less with two in my life. They are the single greatest motivator in my life and I celebrate this tradition in their honor. Every day that I venture to live like my queen and my mother puts me one day closer to godliness (whatever religion or creed you subscribe). The world would be a better place with more people like these two; my life sure is.

"Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are..."

My life has been plagued with bad relationships. Until recently, I lacked the confidence to demand that I be treated properly so it allowed women to walk all over me. I never thought I was good enough for the relationships that I was in and they used it to their advantage.

The other day, my girlfriend and I were eating dinner and she asked me how much of my thinking and behavior is affected by previous relationships. I struggled to come up with the first one, but since then I realize that I'm a fucking mess with all sorts of baggage clogging my way of thinking. It amazes me that I expect the worst from an absolutely incredible woman because every other woman I dated treated me like garbage. I'm a smart, level-headed man, but when it comes to relationships I'm neurotic bordering on insanity.

I've been conditioned to expect my partner to do and think the exact opposite of what I think and feel and when I find a woman that I match up with so well, I'm nervous that it's just some elaborate ruse. I know in my mind the truth about her, but these ne-jerk reactions are a tremendous inconvenience and could potentially ruin a really healthy relationship. It's been so long that I can hardly see their faces anymore, but the affects of those bad relationships still remain.

Meat Loaf once wrote, "I hear that ugly, coarse, and battered voice and he's right behind me now and he's gaining ground.... But it was long ago and it was far away, oh god, it seems so very far; and if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car...."

I was scared to make improvements in my life because I knew that the daemons from my past would haunt me wherever I ventured and that they would cause me to fall further the higher I got in life. Because it isn't where you end up that is painful; it's how far you fall. That's the problem with life. "Objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are." If I'm not careful, I'll be so focused on the pain in the rear-view and I'll crash into something catastrophic. Every day is new. Every day is different. Addicts in recovery say that "today is the first day of the rest of my life." I need to pay better attention to those words.

My past sucks, but today was one of the best days of my life. Nothing really special happened except I worked on improving my life, I woke up and will go to sleep next to the woman of my dreams, and I got to cook for my family. I've spent my whole life looking backwards and missed the joy right in front of my face. Life will be so much different without starring at that rear-view mirror. I think I'll figure it out though. Besides, most cars in Indiana don't have rear-view windows anyway..... ;)

What to do when words don't seem to help....

As I continue to get older, it seems that the effectiveness of my words seems to becoming less and less. I'm a very genuine, honest person and in the past, people in need of an emotional boost would flock to me because I was always there with a compliment. If you have nice eyes, I'm going to tell you that you have nice eyes. If you've lost weight, generally, I'm going to notice and compliment you on your hard work. It seems that as I continue to age, and my peer group continues to age, the world has taken it's toll on people. Now, those same compliments seem to go unnoticed.

My lady friend, whom I refer to as "rockstar" on this blog, is the most incredible woman that I've ever met. She is fun to be around. She is full of life and energy. She is sooo seductive and absolutely sexy. I literally worship the ground that she walks on. I compliment her all the time, not because I'm trying to get somewhere, but because she has no many things that are so right that I just feel compelled to list all of her positive qualities. I will admit that sometimes I'll tell her how pretty her smile is when she isn't smiling just to get her to smile. Let me tell you, when she smiles it's really as if time stands still. She has such a great heart and soul that just radiates in bright, colorful rays outward when she smiles and it really makes you feel fortunate that you were there to witness it.

Sorry, I got off track. Anyway, it seems that a lot of the compliments that I pay this woman seem to "bounce off." I sometimes get the feeling she doesn't believe the nice things I say about her or maybe she thinks there is some sort of agenda behind them. This is a very common tale. As we get older, words just become lip service (sorry for the bad pun). People have been lied to so much as their lives progress that they get to where the really don't believe half the things we say to each other, even compliments about each other.

So, since words have lost their utility, let me tell you what I'm doing right now. I'm lying on the floor of my bathroom, with one hot pad under my lower back. I've got another hot pad under my upper back. My feet are over the side of the tub soaking in warm water while I've got bags of ice on each of my knees. My laptop, fellow bloggers, is on my stomach and I can see the screen because I have a rolled up towel under the back of my head. I ache in just about every muscle group I have. Why am I in so much pain? Today, I laid 1.6 tons (approximately) in a nice orginized fashion for the final step in the brick sidewalk that I've been putting together for "rockstar." I spent all day with my 360 pound stature hunched over and squatting placing each and every one of the few thousand bricks into their proper location. I would have gotten around to finishing this task earlier in my vacation, but I was busy doing other things for her such as hanging a new front door, fixing some steps, doing yard work, and trying to fix an ice machine. In the last few weeks, if I haven't been eating or sleeping, I've been doing some sort of job for her or researching on the internet how to do the job she needed done.

The funny thing is that she has said more than once that I don't have to do any of these jobs to get laid or for us to maintain our relationship. So why do I do these things for her? If words aren't going to do what they were intended then I'm going to have to try even harder to prove to her how I feel about her and how much I appreciate being with her. She can believe me when I call her amazing maybe 40 percent of the time, but EVERY time she walks out her new front door and along her new brick sidewalk (or even when they're her old front door and old brick sidewalk) she'll remember that I thought she was so amazing that I decided to use my vacation time to struggle and sweat as hard as I possibly could just to put a smile on her face.

Physical contact is great. Kissing makes me feel so special. Sex is absolutely incredible, but there is nothing better that giving a little bit of your time, strength, and maybe even a little of yourself in a selfless way for somebody that you care for very deeply. It's what makes relationships so special. In my opinion, communication in a relationship is very important, but nothing tops the lengths one goes to in an attempt to put a smile on the face of the person they care for so deeply. It's with that in mind that my alarm is set so that I can go over to her house and get some more work done before I have to go to class. I'm such a very fortunate man that I can't even put it into words. I guess you will all have to come by and see the sidewalk to know what a special person she really is.

3:30 am is a great time to start blogging.....

So, where do I begin? I have a final at 10:30 tomorrow morning and I can't sleep. I was a little tired when I started reviewing at 9:30 so I decided to make myself an iced mocha-chino (with sugar-free mocha and skim milk of course) with a triple shot of espresso. I'm not going to see the inside of my eyelids anytime soon. I'm in the process of this huge life change, which I'll elaborate on at a later date, and I've decided that it's time to start writing about my life. That isn't to say that I'm any sort of role model, far from it, but I've made a lot of mistakes and intentionally done some pretty stupid things that just so happen to be hilarious. I intend to use this blog as a way to share some of those stories and to discuss things that are going on in my life right now.

I wish I could tell you that tonight is one of those funny story nights, but I'm really just not in the mood. Maybe that's because my final is in 7 hours and sleep is nowhere in sight. Since I'm in this exhaustion generated philosophical mood, I guess I'll go ahead and ask the question that's been on my mind recently:

What makes sex so special?

It is the most incredible experience, but what about it makes it so special? I used to only have sex in very serious relationships, so I mis-guidedly thought sex was so special because it was an exercise in love. I was mistaken.

Is it the intimacy and vulnerability that a sexual situation involves?

I've been in therapy for a few months now and its been nothing but intimacy and vulnerability. I can honestly say that I'm not desperate to go see my therapist in the middle of the night when I have the most incredible dream.

I know that sex is so very special, but I have a very hard time describing why. That is one very big problem in talking about sex is that there isn't a common vocabulary. It is so hard for somebody to understand what you're saying when everyone uses different words to describe their feelings. Doctors or mechanics have no problem communicating and understanding each other because they were all educated using the same vocabulary. When we talk about sex, we could all be saying the exact same thing, but it makes us (at least me) feel like we're out of touch with the rest of the world.

For me, sex reminds me of the first time I ever kissed a girl. We had been dating for weeks and I think she was about to dump me because I would never make a move. One night I went to kiss her on the cheek to say goodbye and our lips met. It was one of those moments that felt like it lasted forever. It was one of those moments where I felt like nobody else existed in the world, but us. I have had thousands of kisses since then, but no kiss ever compares to that first one. Sex, on the other hand, is very much like that first kiss. When two people are locked in that moment it's almost as if time stands still. As the passionate kisses and incredible motion are followed by this unbelievable euphoria, it gives you the illusion that all of you cares, troubles, worries, and inadequacies have vanished for good.

A very, very good friend of mine, we'll call her "rock star," firmly believes that the world would be a much more peaceful place is we all just had sex with each other. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I do think the world would be a more peaceful place if everybody had more sex. I can tell you that for the two days after sex I'm bouncing off the walls, giggling, and acting like a kid on Christmas morning. Imagine if the whole world felt that very same way.

As it is now 4am and my final is now 6 and a half hours away, I think I'm going to take a shot of tequila and hopefully pass the hell out!

In the beginning..... How sacreligious is that?

One summer in college, I worked for one of my fraternity brothers mowing lawns. We were mowing at the Nazarene church in our hometown and I had taken a break to refill the lawnmower. I took this opportunity to talk to the beautiful, young lady friend of mine that had stopped to chat. As I was chatting away and very distracted by her very large, round “features” I scraped the gas nozzle against the rim of the tank as I removed it the nozzle whipped around and splashed a substantial amount of gas into my face; specifically my eyes. I threw my hands firmly to my face as I shouted every curse word I knew, and even made up a few! “Shit, fuck, god damn mother! Fuck god! Oh god!” The preacher ran out of the church and calmly explained to me that god could hear the filthy words I was saying. I turned to him and replied, “Then that means that god watched while my distracted dumbass managed gasoline into my eyes and didn’t do anything to stop it! So I’m not particularly concerned if I offended anybody that would watch that happen and do nothing.”

I don’t know where I’m going with this story, but I can tell you from experience that questioning religion, or even blindly, wholeheartedly committing your life to religion you don’t fully understand, is what I like to call one of the million items you use to fill a size 62 pair of pants. What does that mean you might ask? Well, you see, nobody is born clinically obese, or an alcoholic, or a drug addict, a sex addict, a family-less workaholic, or even a criminal. Lots of people, smarter than myself, will talk about “nature versus nurture” and how much of our behavior is learned versus how much is engrained into our psyche, but I can say with absolute certainty that there aren’t any babies that are born that wear size 62 pants. You see, there isn’t just one bad choice that causes you to be fat. If only it were so easy that we could just find Marty McFly from Back to the Future, hop in his Delorean, and go back and tell ourselves not to pick up that donut or that glass of scotch, or that hit of cocaine when we we’re at a moment of weakness in our lives. Instead of one bad choice that ruins our lives, it’s this progression of bad choice after bad choice until we get to a point that it’s nearly impossible to correct our path.

Though I’ve traversed the gambit of all sorts of addictions and self-destructive behaviors, obesity is the one that was going to kill me. When I look back and try to think of all the bad choices I’ve made, I struggle to find a number. So how do I quantify it? Well, I’ve counted to a thousand before, and I’ve had one hundred thousand of something before so I guess a million is the first number that I really can’t conceptualize. So, for conversation sake, we’ll say that at my worst I filled my size 62 pair of pants with one million small mistakes. The problem is that you have to remove as many of those items as you can to get those pants to shrink and that is easier said than done. These tiny mistakes are all intertwined, like the cables behind your computer or television, and it takes focus, self-awareness, perseverance, and most importantly patience to whittle down those 62 britches to a more suitable size.

On December 24, 2007, the beginning of the better half of my life, I weighed in at 507 pounds. For 10 years at that point, I had succumbed to a family history of mental disease, specifically depression, and the fog that I had been living in had caused my life to completely spin out of control. I had been living in an efficiency apartment where I had hung bed sheets to block out the sun and the walls were lined with stacks of pizza boxes and newspapers from the floor to the ceiling. In the middle of my “fortress of solitude” was an old, worn out mattress and box springs that sat on the floor, because I’d broken the frame 50 or 60 pounds ago. I had my big-ass TV perched as high as I could so that whenever possible I could just lay and watch TV and zone out of my quickly deteriorating life while my garbage protected me from the evils that lurked in the world just outside my defenses.

I got started at a residential weight loss facility in Durham, NC. It was a great place because their program didn’t have any tricks to lose weight. The nutritionist was very straightforward. “You weigh this much, you’re this tall, you’re this age, you plan to exercise this much while you’re here. Well then here is the lowest number of calories that you can eat safely.” With that magic number in mind, I started planning my meals and they would prepare them. I quit drinking alcohol and soda. I quit smoking (yes mom, I smoked. Sorry!). I was drinking a gallon of water a day and exercising two hours a day. Inside, they had classes on proper nutrition, cooking classes, life management, meditation, and group and individualized therapy sessions.

After 1 year and 1 month not to mention the 6 weeks I spent in North Carolina, I have lost 172 pounds! None of those 172 pounds was ever lost because of surgery, starvation, or trick diets. It was all lost the good old fashioned way with hard work, determination, a lot of sweat, and painstaking planning! I’m still counting calories and I’m in the gym about 8 hours a week doing either weight training, boxing, yoga, or training for the Indy 500 mini marathon. I’ve plateau-ed pretty hard at 172 for a while now. I’m still slimming up all the time, but the scale seems broken. I’m not worried about it though because I’m really not dieting. I never did and I never will. For me, this is a lifestyle change and I give my body what it needs based on how busy my life is and how heavy I exercise and the weight loss is just a byproduct.

So, after a year, I’ve managed to shrink to size 62 pants down to size 42’s that I bought the other day from Old Navy. It was the first article of clothing I’d bought myself outside of a store specifically for fat guys since I was in high school! In keeping with the theme of the million mistakes inside my big-ass pants, I’ve managed to get half of that garbage out, but half still remains. The part I worked off we’ll think of it as the poor mistakes that my daemons tricked me into making. Now, if I’m going to make any more improvement in my life, I have to tackle those daemons, faulty ideals, and misconceptions and re-learn what it means to become a man.

Writing is my creative outlet so this blog is my therapeutic release. I need to relive my mistakes and that ugly trip down to the bottom of the barrel so I can learn where those daemons are hiding so that this whole voyage to hell doesn’t happen again. I don’t care who reads my blog, but all of my readers should understand that I’m telling these stories so that I can see them in proper perspective and to have my story heard, because everybody’s story should be told at least once. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, colorful ones at that, but I’m not proud of any of them. Please don’t think that I’m writing this for sympathy and I’m definitely not trying to tell people how to live their lives. I’m just trying to keep fixing mine.

Finally, the terms “Queen” and “rock star” are for describing my amazing girlfriend and “princess” is her seven year old daughter. These two women have taught me so much in such a short period of time. If you want to read an incredible story, read her blog. She is truly my source of strength and my inspiration and if you read her story you’ll understand why. www.rosieblankenship.com .

Enjoy the journey! I’ve found that it goes down a lot smoother with a beer or two….. Of course that would be light beer, specifically MGD light 64, and with a designated driver!!!!

Quote Book

"Hail to the chief he's the one we all say "hail" to..." Dave

"What we do in life.... echoes into eternity." Maximus from Gladiator

"Webcams are a perfectly good waste of poor moral judgment." Me

"Just be the ball and throw yourself." Mr. T

"Be excellent to each other." Bill and Ted in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

"Wally Balls is gonna bring the 1970's class BACK to porn!" Billy Walsh in the TV show Entourage

"Yum! Hilton cookies! They taste like Paris Hilton sat on each one herself!" - Milf after the Colts/Titans game in Nashville

"Fuck you four horsemen....... I am the four horsemen." (my 21st birthday after 22 shots)

"if you keep drinking at this rate; then I hope you shave your pubes..... 'cause they're gonna be shaved when you wake up!!!!"

"Man, she has really put on some weight..... I love it when girls come down to my level!"

Hyk ==> "Don't talk about it; be about it"

Ian ==> "If I died, would you stuff me with peanut butter, wrap me in chocolate, and burry me in an orange body bag? 'Cause I love Resse Cups!"

Ian==> "I'd like to say as a general rule that I would never do anything like that....... but I do drink alot."

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Paul Gross==> "Ashby, let me help you. We need to get you out of here."

Me==> "Fuck you! I'm fine! Leave me alone!"

Paul Gross==> "You realize you're passed out on the floor in front of everybody don't you?"

Me==> "Oh, I think I need help getting out of here."

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Nurse==> "Any ideas how opium got into your blookwork?"

Me==> "Nope"

Nurse==> "How could you not know if you've smoked opium or not?"

Me==> "Because I thought I was smoking weed......"

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Ian's mom==> "Ian, its ten o'clock and you're drunk already?"

Ian==> "Actually mom, I'm not drunk. I've really had more prescription pain pills than alcohol!"

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Biggler==> "What is this?"

Me==> "Its a cement mixer"

Biggler==>"I thought you were buying us liquid cocaines"

Me==>"Well, I thought liquid cocaine, but it came out cement mixer"

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Coleman==> "I just wanna go out with a big group of people! Its better with a big group of people." (Then repeat fifteen times in a span of five minutes)

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"Am I in the hospital or the morgue?" Me

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Hyk==> (says to somebody) "You missed it! There was some 35 year old lady taking a shit in there so we opened the door and took a picture!"

Lady==>(comes out of the shitter knowing she'd been photographed) "35 years old! I'm more like 55! Would you like to meet my daughter?"

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"I'm so wasted that I think I look good!"

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Girl==> "I always wanted to make out with you in high school, but you've put on some weight."

Me==> "Make out with your eyes closed and pretend we're back in high school"

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"I'm so pissed! My girlfriend's husband ate all my animal crackers!" our buddy Junior