One day I was in the kitchen in front of the stove making a meal for the family while talking on the phone. It was a rare warmer day during the winter so I had a wife beater on and some yoga pants. Raven comes into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator to get something to drink and does a double take… and starts staring at my mid-section. She closes the fridge and starts slowly walking towards me like she is trying to creep up on a roach to smash it. She gets real close and takes her index finger and pokes me in my stomach and damn near hits my intestines. She says “Mommy….. Why is your stomach so…BIG!??” I had the cell phone tucked in between my shoulder and ear so it almost landed in the pasta sauce, but I managed to intercept it and tell my homey I would call her back. I hang up and say “Raven… What I told you about talking to me when I’m on the phone?”
“I’m sorry mommy but your stomach is coming out of your pants. Why did it get so big?”
“Well, Raven. My stomach got big because when you were in my tummy and Rhea was in my tummy, my stomach had to stretch and get big to make room for the both of you to grow into strong and healthy babies.”
“Oh ok. (She is quiet and still looking at the stomach.) “But mommy, me and Rhea were in your tummy a long time ago. So how come your stomach is still big? Is it going to go away?”
“It will go away. I just have to exercise and it might go away.”
(Now she is smiling big)…“Well mommy. Maybe you don’t need to exercise. Maybe your tummy is big because there is another baby in there!”
I appreciated her optimism and even though she had no idea of what she was saying, I still wanted to back slap her for callling her Mommy fat.
Perhaps maybe I DO need to work out. Perhaps I do need to lose the tummy. It’s not really a matter of if I can do it. It’s more a matter of WILL I do it. I am so not motivated to work out. There is nothing about working out that excites me. And I know that how I treat my body now WILL affect how my body treats me 30 years from now but STILL… I don’t wanna! I think the reason why I don’t really work out is because I have been able to camouflage the tummy for all these years. I don’t really wear things that accentuate the tummy. I wear loose clothing and I have learned to play it off. I sometimes wish that I would gain a lot of weight EVERYWHERE so the weight will be obvious and people would be like “Wow Heaven, you look… different!” Which means fat of course. And then THAT will make me feel bad enough to work out. Ya think?? Or would I end up on one of these talk shows and say, “I don’t know what happened? It just got out of control! One day I just woke up and realized that I was 600 lbs! Ya know?… I wasn’t always like this Oprah.”
I know I’m lucky and I know I’m still really small for having two kids. (126 lbs to be exact.) But I want to wear certain clothes that I can’t wear cause of the tummy. The tummy makes me feel older than I should and I really AM sick of it. But apparently not sick enough to do something about it. I am not the type of woman that can walk around with fat hanging out on the sides of my pants and shit like that. I cover my flaws up! I don’t want to see my rolls hanging over my pants so I don’t see why anyone else would.
I wish I could say that writing this has motivated me to get my shit together. But it hasn’t. I’m just going to sit here and drink a Pepsi. I’m sure that will make me feel better. Hey! Don’t judge me! It’s 10 am! I COULD pull out some wine instead!
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