Life, Love and Lard (part 1)

… I must leave this harbor for the sea, I’m too young to settle down and make a home, but I don’t know where I’m wanting to be, I just know I have to be there alone… “Gathering Dust” – David Gray
I love music. It’s something that’s been a part of me since I was barely able to talk and my dad would begin planting bands/singers/songwriters into my head (which proved useful years later for trivia!) What’s more important to me than the music itself, are the lyrics. I will listen to any type of music, as long as the lyrics have some sort of depth and the singer/band is passionate about them. So when I rediscovered the lyrics above, they made me reflect on them. When I first heard this song, many years ago, I hadn’t thought anything of it. That is until I was living it. A lot of time we can’t relate to ourselves, or reflect until we are out of a situation. So I started reflecting on the situation that led me to make these lyrics so personal. How it changed me, how it brought me to “wearing lard colored glasses.”
The next few days of blog entries are a series. My main focus of the blog has been to discover how different it is to “live life through lard colored glasses,” and has kind of evolved into my own little random world. Each of these entries will, briefly and personally, cover a year in the life of getting fat, mainly just in the terms of my long term relationship which led to a gain of about 90lbs. So here it goes:

A Little Background to Begin With:
Three or four months ago, things were rough, but I thought I had it all figured out. LSAT in June, entering my super-senior year at KSU in August, getting married on 10.10.10, graduate in May and commute to law school in the fall of 2011 all while building a home and a family in the country with my long time fiancé.
I had it all, or so it seemed; a plan, a future, someone who loved me. What I didn’t realize is that I wasn’t truly happy. I gained the bulk of my weight (a little over 90lbs) during the course of my long-term relationship. The slow gain started after relocating back to Kansas after living in L.A. (and the city life) for six months during for the birth of my daughter, which is another story all together.
After leaving L.A., I returned to Kansas with a renewed sense of myself. Full of confidence, ideas and a spring in my step I hadn’t experienced in years. A situation like the one I had just left gave me the opportunity to find myself. I was a “new” me, or more accurately, I found the “real” me. The one I had hid in a bleak effort to fit into the small town Kansas way of life, and to adapt to everyone else’s expectations of me. It was nice to be me.

For about five minutes… (Part 2 tomorrow)