Who Am I?

Who am I?

That question has been haunting me lately as I have watched myself transform into a new person. Who is this woman staring back at me in the mirror? The fat is gone, the crooked teeth are gone... but do I like what I see now?
And beyond the physical... who am I on the inside?

A loving, compasionate, caring person? Or a self centered, egotistical, bitch?

I hope I'm not the latter, but it seems that I've been hearing that a lot lately. I did brush off a lot of it as jealousy, etc, but you know yesterday I realized something.

I have become a big ball of bitterness. Somewhere a long the way I have internalized every bad thing that has happened to me, the molestation, the rapes (yes I said rapeS), the loss of people I love, the broken trust, the broken relationships, etc. I have held it all. I dug a place inside of me, and just kept burying it all. Then I planted bitterness over top of it and it grew. And grew. And grew.

It was easy to hide behind a wall of fat. That seemed like the bigger issue in my life. I could laugh and joke in front of people...pretend I was coping with it all, then go home and shove it all back down with a package of cookies and a pizza.

As the fat has been peeled away, it has revealed my hidden wounds, hurts and pain. Pain that I can't hide anymore. Pain that can't be silenced by food.

I have tried to turn to other things to replace the drug that food was. Smoking has been the biggest one, but as my 9 year old daughter sat on our couch sobbing after finding out her mom was smoking, I realized that it's time to let the bitterness go. It's time to stop self medicating and its time to deal with the pain. Deal with the issues.

How?

I don't know yet.

But I'm working on it and I will do this. I've come this far and I'm not willing to give up now.