The Things We Leave Behind

I am told that from the back I look "skinny."  I am told that one cannot tell when they look at me how very much I used to weigh.  With half anticipation and half trepidation I ask "but, I still look fat, right?"  Their responses reveal that, in the course of the past few months, a huge part of my self identify has     slowly           faded                   away.

My obesity was a badge of my struggle.  A sign that I had baggage.  A signal that there was a little place in me that somebody had broken a long time ago and which I had never taken the time to put back together.  Now there is no announcement of my scars.  They are hidden beneath clothes.  The more important ones are found beneath flesh in the intimate places where the soul resides.

Recently, I was spending time with friends I just met.  They did not know me eight months ago.  They have not been with me through this journey.  They saw me in my new body.  They assumed I did things like cross country ski and snow board.  They invited me to go rock climbing.

Without my weight, I have no external mechanism that notifies people of my faults.  Nothing to say that I've still got baggage.  That I'm still a little broken.  I've decided not to tell them.  I've decided to join them.  I've chosen to be the man they see, rather than the one I feel like.  And, perhaps, along a hiking path, or on my way down a sloping hill I'll loose a little baggage and heal a little.