Phat and Fabulous
Life is all about believing in your self. This day mark’s my 1 year weight loss anniversary. I have lost 40 lbs. to date, and have already started working on my next 40.
At the end of February this year I quit a job where I was underpaid and had a toxic relationship with the boss. I had endured this job for over a year, and reached a final point of no return. I also had been in a deep depression, which I can say has finally lifted.
Last year I had applied for an administrative assistant’s position for a woman who owned four separate and very different businesses. The job seemed ideal at first, varied and interesting, close to my home, working in a home office, 4 days a week/5 hours a day. A day could include anything from creating a quarterly financial report, to ordering supplies, sending out a press release, checking a renter’s background, working on the website, to researching information for any one of the four businesses.
The job however rapidly became one of a personal assistant who had to find time to do the administrative duties. One where I was to take care of anything that she either didn’t want to do didn’t know how to do or just plain wouldn’t do. I rapidly took over the household duties and many of her personal responsibilities for her family. I made all the personal Dr. appointments, travel arrangements, and even picked up medications at the pharmacy. With these jobs the responsibility for the outcome also became my job, and when something went wrong I was blamed whether it was my fault or not. “Just get it done right no matter what so I am not bothered!” was her motto.
After four months I asked for a raise commensurate to the job that I now performed and I also asked for my own computer. I had to share the computer with her son and his needs came first before mine which became a problem getting projects completed on time. I received half of the money I asked for with the promise that I would receive the remainder by the end of the year, which also included my own workspace with a computer.
This did not happen. What did happen was a very subtle and quiet campaign to show her displeasure in her choice of administrative assistant. I apparently wasn’t the simpering idiot that she thought she had hired and she would show me by god! She began to undermine my self esteem slowly, a few comments here and there about my weight, the clothes I wore, my hair…. etc.
I had been falling into a depression that started with the closing of my store, the ill health of my parents, my father’s death, extensive problems with in-laws and my own health issues. This campaign of hers began to work perfectly right away because I was already feeling crappy about me.
During the year I worked for her she started but didn’t finish four different diets and five different exercise classes, none of which made any difference in her appearance or personal attitude. I was so overcome by my own problems, that what I didn’t realize at the time was that she was unhappy with herself, and in order to feel better about her self she needed to make someone else feel miserable. I never knew anyone like this so was unprepared for the onslaught that came. The campaign escalated to the point that I received comments daily on how much I weighed, why I didn’t exercise to lose weight, and then with a smile she would give me a bowl of nuts to eat.
After five months I could barely look at myself in the mirror, I felt so fat, so ugly. I hated the way I looked and I stopped wearing makeup because I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. I had fallen into a deep depression that had many factors and had been a long time coming; and I let this creep of a person push me over the edge and had no power it seemed to stop her.
The turning point for me came when I had made plans to go to a concert with a friend. This was something positive to look forward to that had nothing to do with my daily life. I had a month and a half to think about what to wear, etc. I looked at myself for the first time in months and said, “You need to lose weight so that you can feel better about yourself, and you need to get out of this depression”. And I did start, I lost 10 lbs. before the concert.
It was not easy to take on this project; it still isn’t but I decided that I wanted to be around awhile, and I wanted to feel good and look good (to me) while I was doing it. I started walking, I started exercising and I started to reduce my food intake and be more aware of the foods that I was taking in! This change in diet went a long way to help control some of my health issues.
While I was losing weight she never bothered to notice or comment on the fact that my clothes obviously fit better. On the day that I told her I had lost 25 lbs. she seemed surprised and never spoke about weight loss again. Her campaign took on a different focus and she found other ways to hurt me.
The final breaking point came when I refused to do her grocery shopping which included lifting 25 lb. bags of flour and rice. Even though this had been discussed before, and I hadn’t been asked to do the shopping for some time, she refused to remember this and pushed the issue anyway. My hand had been damaged during chemo and I just wasn’t strong enough to lift this kind of weight, and I had to remind her that day. Well this didn’t sit well with her and she decided to throw out a hurtful remark, commenting on the fact that she hadn’t realized how “damaged a person I was”; this was my point of no return.
I turned in my two week notice that day. For the remaining days that I worked she barely spoke to me, nor was she in the office the hours that I worked. I think that she was shocked that I would actually find working for “her magnificent self” unrewarding and distasteful.
To this day I am sure she doesn’t know why I quit or what an ugly person she has become on the inside. At first I really hated her, now I am just sorry for her. No matter how much weight she tries to lose, no matter how much responsibility she tries to accept, no matter how much she tries to change personally she will never be happy.
I have finally come out of my long and horrible depression. I know now what my husband and daughter love about me, and I will NEVER allow anyone to take that away from me ever again, not even me.
Believe in you, you can do it! Christen
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