Merry Christmas?

There are numerous books and movies out there about the horrible, stereotypical monster-in-law relationships. Very rarely do we imagine that that will be our life.

I'm not married, but I am with a guy that I want to marry. And his mom is open to talk about the reasons she disapproves of me. I held my ground and maintained that I would not change myself to make this woman like me more. I felt like eventually she would grow to respect me for not caving. Things seemed to be looking up. She apologized to Alex (my boyfriend whom I want to marry) and said that maybe she was wrong, and even offered to take us to Olive Garden for the New Year. My heart was full of joy. Until a text from him that shattered that joy.

The text reads, "so my mom apparently disapproves of you again... she questioned if your weight would impact your fertility... if we want to have kids".

I am a bigger girl. I am not a twig. I have hips and thighs and an ass. I am shapely and have always been (that is me to the right). I always grew up feeling like it was some sort of handicap. My dad was harsh about it, threatening to take pictures of me in my bathing suit and hang it over a mantel. He would tell me how a girl my size wouldn't find love. Just recently, I spoke with my Mexican grandfather in Texas whom I haven't spoken with in years. He asked me, "you still big or you pretty now?" I said, "Ummm...." and he responded with, "I bet you like 400 or 500 pounds now. Big girl. No fellas. Lonely life." followed by chuckles. My grandmother on my mom's side would constantly tell me how much prettier I could be if I just hopped on a treadmill.

I've spent my entire life being treated as though my weight was something bad. If I was fat, I couldn't be pretty. When I was fifteen, I began throwing up my food after every meal because of this disgust I felt with myself. I had begun to get into the point of my life where I was feeling like maybe I could be acceptable. Of course, I still struggled. Some days I'd love what I saw, other days I'd sit down and cry because I could hear my father's voice in the back of my head. Glamour recently ran an ad that most people know as The Girl on Page 194. It was a picture of a girl who is size 12 naked (picture left). She is sitting down and her tummy rolls over and she has clear curves and definite meat on her bones. The reaction to that picture was more positive than anyone expected. Men wrote in to say how beautiful she was, how that was their ideal shape, not the size 0 models most magazines picture.

I was starting to feel like as a size 18/20, maybe I could be beautiful.

Maybe I could be accepted.

And then this. I don't know if it is because she is afraid of losing her baby or if she just genuinely does not like me, but it hurts. I try hard, I am only me and that is all I can ever be. But it is not good enough for her and her son. You know what? I am fat. F-A-T! What bothers me even more is if I lost all of my excess weight, she would probably still find something wrong with me.

It's frustrating. I never thought that I would be that girl, who has to deal with that mother.