Directed by Roman White
It’s now been almost three and a half years since I began the whole BIG BONED DOCUMENTARY. I was, for lack of a better word . . . um . . . CRAZY in the beginning. I had the grand idea that I was going to create a film about a normal guy who loses almost 200 pounds in a year and it was going to all be perfect and simple and just ROCKIN’ AWESOME! But, it played out more like . . .
First Six Months . . . I go crazy, turn into raging/lying asshole and lose like twenty pounds.
End of First Year . . . I see the light, work hard, feel hopeful and lose forty more pounds! YAY!
Second Year . . . I board the mighty roller coaster, still work out, but realize there’s something more than FOOD going on here. A hundred pounds are gone! I even run a half-marathon!!! WHAT? Are those my jeans from college I’m wearing??? CRAP ON A BISCUIT! I ROCK!
Year Three . . . I start to lose hope . . . begin to lose myself in the process (not that I ever found myself really). I feel crazy alone and completely lost, struggling at every turn as I begin to gain weight back. I definitely feel like the KING of SUCKSVILLE!
So, I didn’t lose my weight with miraculous, Biggest Loser speed. I was a delusional freak when I started. I didn’t have any idea what I was and wasn’t capable of. I didn’t even know who the hell Roman White was. Truth is, I still don’t, but I realize that this whole dealio is a LIFE THING. It’s not a lose all your weight in a year and start posing for magazines and accepting Oprah invites kind of thing. That’s crazy. I was crazy.
I’ve been zoned out for a little over a year now, and I think there was a part of me that had simply given up on this weight loss/documentary/trying to get my shit together thing. It kind of reached the point where I felt like all the sparkle had been sucked out of it and, of course, I was both the sucker and the suckee, but not in a good way. Plus, losing your freakin’ sparkle is NEVER a good thing!
But now, when I really feel like I’m moving in the right direction again, I also feel kind of sad. I feel like I’ve let so many people down and lost even more along the way. I think they lost faith in me as they watched me struggle and trip and fall and peel my face off the ground and then fall again. Now, imagine that happening over and over and over. Get’s kind of old doesn’t it? I mean, I lost faith in myself . . . why wouldn’t everybody else?
I haven’t been back to the Baptist Wellness Center since October of 2007. The last day I went was the day Stephen “fired me” and refused to be my trainer. Merideth had left. Kami had taken over. Everything had changed. Everybody seemed to be moving on with their lives, but there I was still trying to find mine.
After the Stephen thing I just lost hope. It was kind of like the stereo-typical STRAW on the freakin’ camel’s back. Everything came crashing down. Everything was different.
I didn’t feel like I was strong enough for any of them, and I didn’t feel any of them cared anymore, but why should they? I’d spent two years trying to lose weight and kept sabotaging everything. Yeah, I’d lost a hundred pounds, but I wasn’t trying as hard as I should have. I wasn’t being that magical weight loss story I’d promised in the beginning. I didn’t make it to the finish line.
I will accept that I was strong enough in the last year not to fall as far as I could have. Things could have been A LOT worse, but mistakes have totally been made. More are probably on the way, but how do I get some of that hope back? How do I get people to believe in me again and does it even matter? Maybe the truth is that I’m the only person that can have that hope . . . maybe everything else is kind of pointless. Who the hell knows?
So, I am declaring an official BIG BONED REBOOT. I’m finishing the documentary. I’m going to continue this journey of finding myself, and I know I won’t be the only one standing at the finish line. Everybody that has and does and will believe in me will be there too. I can see it in my mind, and it makes me smile.