How Green Was Everyone Else's Valley

A classic by John Ford, of course, his was titled: How Green Was My Valley and it has nothing to do with my own. For some reason the grass can always be greener, still don't know why but other people's lives seem so easy and perfect from the outside, or do they?

I talked to one of my closest friends on the phone the other day, she's back in beautiful sunny California, and she was telling me all about her problems with her boyfriend. How he took her for granted, how he didn't call her everyday first thing in the morning, how she told me she missed him and that she wanted to marry him and that she was terrified of losing him. In short, she sounded as insecure as I've never heard her before.

As I said in "The Icebreaker", being overweight has been somewhat easy for me, of course there's always a rude comment here and there although I forget all about them as soon as I hit Starbucks, but generally speaking, people were cool with me being fat, they were used to it. I never really thought much about it but I realize that I've been surrounded by a lot of overweight people in my life. Most of my cousins were overweight, a lot of the friends I hung out with in California were overweight too, at least my closest ones; so I guess I always had that we're-on-the-same-boat kind of relief.

Well, it didn't last long. I don't know what happened, but it was suddenly an epidemic. EVERYONE was losing weight. I would hear things like: "Remember so and so how she used to be one of the heaviest girls in school? Guess what? She's like super skinny now, she wears a size 6!" That was only the start, these were people I knew incidentally, but almost never really saw. It got really bad when MY friends got it too, the let's-look-like-Paris-Hilton disease. I'm not kidding, 10 out of the 15 heavy girls I knew, all wear a size 4 or 6 now. Sooooooo unfair.

Yes, I feel evil. You know how people say how you're supposed to be very happy for your friends' newly-found happiness and all, and in part I was, don't get me wrong I was ecstatic for them, but I felt somehow betrayed, I was alone on my frickin' boat. Even though I knew how selfish and wrong it was, or it is, I feel alone. I feel like I'm now the freak that doesn't belong in their new world, and I've always hated the skinny behaviour: "No thanks, I'm full" "Are you seriously gonna eat that?" "You're hungry already?" "Oh, I had a super heavy breakfast (a bowl of fruit) and I can't really put anything in my mouth right now" " Oh my gosh, have you seen how fat I look? (she wears a size 4)" Gee, If you're fat then I guess that makes me Shamu. I've always hated how they can go all day without a bite to eat. How they never savor anything, how we're eating and all they talk about is how healthy are the choices they made and how they're going to spend the rest of the day burning them. It almost feels like we're from a different species. I feel like crap every time I hear these things, am I wrong?

I don't want to be the kind of person that envies her friends, but I guess in the end that's just the truth: I'm jealous. It's evil but it's honest. I'm jealous that they were able to do it while I never got the damn disease! And now it's so hard when we go out because we don't have that in common anymore, now they barely eat which makes me feel guilty every time I take a bite from my meal, then they go shopping and I can no longer shop at the same departments and sometimes not even the same shop! It's humiliating, I just don't feel part of my friends' life anymore and it's somehow ridiculous because we're friends! We're supposed to just forget about our now physical differences and just talk about something else, religion, politics, art, movies, WHATEVER! But as much as I want it to be the same it isn't. They can't seem to talk about anything else other than dieting, shopping for a size 4 and how proud they are of themselves. I'm happy to celebrate this because deep down inside I'm really happy for them and I really admire them for what they've accomplished, but come on, do we have to talk about this all the time? I don't know where I stand anymore, am I being too selfish? Could I be right? Should I feel evil? It's really hard to say.

Going back to my close friend, the one I talked to on the phone, she drove me nuts. She made me angry because she was acting like a wimp when she's everything but. She's one of my friends who used to be really heavy. Now she's a size 6 or 4 and she's going for a size 2. She of course looks beautiful now, she's always been, but she's even more radiant now, and I guess it's because she feels a lot better about her body; but to be honest, she sounded as insecure as she was when she was overweight and this is why I got angry. She used to complain about not having the body she wanted, she never went out, NEVER, she locked herself in her house and missed out on meeting great people and having some real fun. Now she's got this boyfriend who has her eating out of his hand! He calls the shots! He's the one in control! I wanted to kill her for giving him that power. She has EVERYTHING to be happy and to reassure herself, she's from a wealthy family, also has never had to worry about money ever in her life, she goes on trips, cruises, shopping sprees, anything, and she's beautiful, smart, has a stable job, I can't see any reason why she should feel that insecure. I lashed out, I told her that she needed to get a grip, that she was an amazing person and she could have any guy she wanted, even the shallow ones now that she's thin, the thing is, she seems to have everything and every reason to be happy, but then again does she?

Was I judging too quickly? Because maybe her valley is not as green as it seems, this is what I'm starting to learn, that we shouldn't look at someone else's valley, without knowing what really goes on inside and assume that just because they SEEM to have everything it means it's true.

There are so many valleys that seem a lot greener than mine, all these girls that finally won the battle against obesity, but what I'm forgetting is that it doesn't mean all your problems magically disappear with the lost pounds, life can still be a bitch even when it seems like you have it all, so I decided to be a better friend and just be there for her, not just assume that she's and idiot for not feeling like she's high on skinny-life all the time.

It all comes down to one conclusion: I have to do the work! I want to lose weight? Then I have to get to work, it took a lot of hard work for them too. So I guess I have to stop nosing around and focus on making my own valley green, right?