There is always a girl…

359 pounds.

About 3 months after the end of a two and a half year relationship, I decided to get a job as a "sandwich artist" at Subway. It was the start of the spring semester of my freshman year in college and I knew hardly anybody. When my girlfriend and I moved to town, we were still so wrapped up in each other that I never took the time to meet new people and when our relationship went south I found myself in a very lonely position and dealing with pretty serious depression that I had been using my relationship to mask. A few weeks after I started at Subway, a young woman and fellow college student started there and she brought so much light back into my life. She was smart, funny, hilarious, and had this smile that actually brightened the moods of the people around her. I remember she drove this total piece of shit car that she spray painted yellow and then painted these huge multicolored flowers all of it. She was always laughing and saw the humor and the beauty in everything around her. As we began to see each other more and more, we became inseparable. It was such an incredible feeling because as I had began to gain weight from all the recreational drinking, I could tell by the way she looked at me that she still saw the beauty that I possessed inside.

At the end of the academic year, I moved north to a different school and she moved south to cook at a Girl Scout camp, but for the 4^th of July she and a friend drove up to where I was going to school and my best friend and I took them to the carnival and the fireworks. So we got back to my apartment where my rainbow-colored sunflower told me that once the summer was over she was taking a job as a chef on a cruise ship so that night was going to be our last night together, or even in communication, for quite some time. So as the morning hours started to roll around, the young lady and I retired to my bedroom and we began to cuddle, which was actually the first physical contact we ever had. As we were drifting off to sleep in each other's arms, bottles clanging and drunken cursing alarmed us awake. I got up to see what was going on where I found my best friend on the balcony, drunk and in tears. We sat and talked and it turns out that he had tried to make a move on the friend and had been denied. I should have patted him on the shoulder and said better luck next time, but instead I sat down cracked open a beer and started discussing the pitfalls and hardships of being single in an attempt to get him out of his funk. After a few hours of talking, his mood started to lift as the sun started coming up over the horizon. So at a point of physical and emotional exhaustion, I headed back to the bedroom only to discover that her alarm was going to go off in four minutes! I climbed back into bed, woke her up, looked her directly in the eyes and we kissed. I apologized for wasting the night helping my friend and I asked her to remember me for that kiss and not as the hapless mess that I was becoming. At that point, the alarm went off, she and her friend got up, I walked them to her car, we kissed again, and then she drove off never to be seen again. Later as the single life raged on, I came to regret and regret missing every second with the cruise ship, rainbow-sunflower girl.

When I started in my quest towards 215 pounds, my therapist started talking about how important it was to take time for myself and suggested that I get a massage or two. The massages would be good for a 500 pound man who was exercising and it would be therapeutic for my soul. In beginning the process of finding a massage therapist and learning of all the different types of massage I came across a healing technique known as reiki. From what I understand, reiki is a type of massage that deals with getting your energy balances in order and the therapist actually channels the "bad energy" out of places of pain and discomfort and into their own bodies. Furthermore, this practice can't be performed by just anybody off the street because the therapist needs to have the ability of pushing that channeled bad energy out of their own bodies and back into the universe or else the therapist will then suffer their client's pain and discomfort. I thought the idea of this technique was totally preposterous, but now I'm singing a little different tune. Though I believe it to be scientifically unlikely, I really don't think it matters. What does matter is if the client and therapist come to a meeting of the minds. If the patient believes it will work and the therapist believes they are helping, then both parties will experience mutual benefit.

I mention this because I think I have been an unlicensed reiki therapist since I was 7 or 8 years old helping my mother deal with the trials and tribulations of a single, 40-year-old college student raising a child on child support and pell grants. In college, I had a fraternity brother that used to mockingly call me "mother goose" because I was always the one that would seek out those who were in emotional distress and help them get to the bottom of their problems. Though they, and I many times, were too drunk to remember the situation or what exactly was said it would always end it with, "you are a man above men and WE will get through this." The problem was that not only was I not educated in reiki, but I had no education in any sort of therapy, so their fears, pain, and problems became my fears, pain, and problems. And though that pain is what eventually drug me beneath the surface of the water and all the way to the bottom, it was only a welcomed distraction from the huge knife in my belly, or my own personal hell of pain, sadness, despair, and darkness. At that point, as I lay weighted down at the bottom with a knife in my belly, there were very few "clients" that came to see how I was doing. It got to the point that I enjoyed living at the bottom because it meant that there was nobody that needed my magical hands anymore.

I guess I bring this up because earlier this evening I was looking on facebook at pictures of that same friend's wedding. It was so great to see him so very happy and that those sad, sad nights on my balcony with the Bud Lights had finally become a distant memory. As I continued through the pictures I noticed other familiar faces and thought of all the emotional battles that we had fought together, and then I started to feel sad that I missed out on such a joyous celebration. I started thinking of all of the people that I grew up with and struggled though my early 20's with and I realized that probably 95% of them are now married and of those 95% five of them invited me to their wedding. I'm happy to say that of those five, I managed to make four of them, but god do I feel like such a damned fool! To this day I remember every single one of the heart-to-heart conversations with my friends and brothers, but it seems that it didn't mean enough to anybody else to get my name on a guest list. Now this probably makes me sound angry and bitter, but truthfully the only person I hold responsible for any of this is me. My motto used to be that "every beer is an adventure," but in retrospect if it isn't an adventure then its at least a story, and trust me I have a million stories to tell and a bottle cap collection as evidence. But based on distribution of invitations the only person that gives a damn about all these stories, from all those beers, is the fool that is telling them. I guess this kills me so much is because without all those stories, without all those tough times that I thought I was helping my friends through, then all I have to show for the past 13 years of my life is humiliation, embarrassment, and shame for all of the opportunities that I've squandered. After looking through those albums I feel like a crack pot and a first class fool to say the least.

I remember an episode of Family Guy where they did a Dawson's Creek spoof and the theme song went, "high school; because this stuff really matters…" During any given time in college I was carrying at least one of seven people, emotionally and financially, and today only one of them ever contacts me. When my queen and I started dating, she used to complain that she just wished she could understand why her ex-husband was the way he was. She just wanted to understand him, and I would tell her that the fact that you don't understand him is a joy because it means that you aren't as crazy as he is and to understand him means you have give up your own sanity. I spent so much of my early 20's living in other peoples' dysfunction because I was just too scared to make the effort to take advantage of the opportunities I had right in front of me.

I grew up on the story of the man who was walking the beach and came across a little boy throwing sea turtles back into the ocean. The man said to the boy, "Look down the beach at all of those sea turtles that will die if they aren't returned to the sea in the next few minutes. You can't possibly think you can make a difference." The little boy smiled, picked up another turtle, and flung it into the ocean and replied, "I made a difference to that one right there." It would be great to know there was at least one time that I made a difference in the last 13 years, but that isn't going to magically change the mistakes that I have made or make the road ahead any less cumbersome. It's true, I am bitter, but I want to make clear that it is intended at nobody other than me. For each and every one of those characters from those million stories, I want nothing but the best for each and every one of them. My psychiatrist recently prescribed xanex and for some reason I've been reluctant to take them as if I'm afraid of being happy, but I see now that happiness will always be a fool's errand as long as I sit here depressed wishing it to come closer. So tonight I think I will take a pill to help swallow down that sadness and shame so that tomorrow I can rise rested and refreshed and ready to do something to be proud of, because pride is the greatest drug of all!

"Family Guy" under attack

“Families who watch television together on Sunday night shouldn't be bombarded by content like this that would be more appropriate for the Playboy Channel.” Tim Winter, Parent's Television Council

The PTC (Parent's Television Council) has filled a very public complaint about the most recent aired "Family Guy" episode. In the episode, Mr. Pewderschmidt, Peter's father-in-law, admits that he never had a bachelor party, so Peter and his friend take him out to a strip club. While at the strip club, the guys buy Mr. Pewderschmidt a lap dance and then they have to explain to him what it is. I saw the episode and I admit it was a little racy, probably as racy as clothed cartoon characters could be, but now the PTC is up in arms about it. According to Tim Winter of the PTC, “Apparently Fox must believe that because the program is animated it can air anything it wants on Family Guy no matter how inappropriate or indecent."

I think it's fantastic that we, the television viewing public, have watchdog groups and lobbyist organizations to protect us from non-Christian influences on TV, but I'm wondering who is responsible for protecting our children from parents that don't care enough about their children to monitor what they watch on television! For that matter, who is in charge of protecting adults from indecency on television or even from our SPAM message and junk email boxes. Also, I think Mr. Winter of the PTC should pick up the phone and call his fun-hating friends at the tobacco, fast food, and alcohol lobbies because once you insist on a warning label on the product, there isn't much else the manufacturer can be compelled to do.

WARNING: No lifeguards present. SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK!

It seems to me that by publicly opposing Seth MacFarlane's "Family Guy," the PTC, and similar organizations, are actually offering the show free publicity and now there is a greater risk of young children learning the specifics of topless bars, lap dances, and the rest of the indecent material that the responsible parents are trying to keep from their kids.

Say for example that the good parent turns off the television when "Family Guy" comes on or makes their children watch something else. A few days later, the child hears on the news that "Family Guy" is in trouble for their most recent episode. So the child gets on the Internet in class and finds the article and reads words like strip club and lap dance. Then, with a little help from Wikipedia, the youngster is now fully educated on the material that his or her parents where trying to protect them from. This same child might now be aware that Playboy has a television network and will now accept invitations for sleepovers with kids they might not like but know their parents don't care what they watch. Personally, that sums up my sexual education.

I was watching the infamous Super Bowl Halftime Show with the "wardrobe malfunction" and I absolutely missed the controversy. It was just too quick for me, as well as most other viewers, to make out exactly what happened before the camera switched to something else. It was until the watchdog groups started publicly complaining that I learned what had happened. At that point, I got to a computer as fast as I could to see Janet Jackson's notorious breast before websites started taking it down. Parents, I guarantee you that your children did the same!

What the American public has to understand is that most lobbyist organizations and watchdog groups could care less about their mission statements and the people they claim to protect. Their jobs are to keep the controversial issue in the news as much as possible so that more people will donate money and their organization can grow. Instead of spending all this time and money trying to get Seth MacFarlane and RJ Reynolds to advertise against themselves, why not spend it on developing better alternatives?

That money could be better spent paying the bigger actors and actresses to do more family friendly programming. If they really cared about children and families, they would be spending less time worrying about indecent programming on television and more time trying to get increasingly obese families up from in front of the television and outside where they could be active for a change. It just seems that creating a safe television environment for families is like mandating environmentally safe areas for parents and children to smokes cigarettes together!