I'm finding the place where the trees outside are golden, fall is in the air of my mind. I can smell leaves burning on the cool breezes and comfort settles over my self. Once there I can open up to anything. The raw emotions that well are not as intense, do not pain me as much and I can allow the emotions to course through me. Why did she call me 24 hours before my flight, after the arrangements were made, after the time is off from work, when I am going to get the surgery. Why? I know the answer but to confront her would only produce the script of posts I always hear, like a high school yearbook where everybody wishes the same but doesn't always mean it. Her need is so powerful her human condition and that of my sister seems profoundly sad. I sit here feeling sadness for them and for the need to tear down that which they fear, things they cannot control.

This is my journey. As long as I remember and when I didn't know how to say those words it seems that has always been the straw I drew. Stay in your room, read a book quietly and stay out of the way as much as you can. Walking into mom and dad's room and my sister sitting on the bed deep in talk with mother. What was that like? To share your deepest thoughts, your dreams, your problems with your mother. She only had time for the oldest one. I learned young to find my answers in magazines, ask my friends or their older sisters. Listen to their mothers. I realize now that the women who influenced me most were not biological at all. My teachers at school. There was my Health teacher in 7th grade who was fit, put together every day with coordinating clothes, heels and patterns that were interesting. Her color choices were vivid and jewelry boldly accenting her wrist or neck. How she described a woman's period "just a couple of tablespoons of blood, that's all" made sense in a simplistic way. Compare that to mother's talk to me in the parking lot of Bate's Burgers one spring night when I was filling out an application for summer camp. The question? "Does your child know about menstruation?" I asked what that meant. I must have been 10 or 11. "Well I guess you're old enough to know". I knew that "old enough" meant something in my family. There were the haves and have-nots of knowledge in my house growing up and it had everything to do with age. I compare that with how I raised Crystal and no topic was off the table. I told her what jacking off meant, slut, cunt, names for "intercouse": fuck, bang, and anything else she heard at school. Why lie? Why hide anything? No big secrets to knowledge, it will empower her. I use to work with a woman who lived in a lovely apartment in Louisville, Kentucky. We worked together at a store in the mall and one snowy night when traffic outside the store was slow save for the occasional lone figure walking the mall, the blizzard outside persuaded her to talk about a sexual encounter on another night years before with a musician who played the guitar by the fire while it snowed outside. Lying nude, she reached over and touched him and he became so overwhelmed he shot his load before hello. She also shared her mother's philosophy about telling her everything in life that were taboo subjects so that by the time she got to middle school and she heard whispered words by girls huddled around talking about "it', she was able to cut through the bullshit of misinformation and correct them; "That's not right" "That's not what it means". I embraced that idea then and decided if someday I ever had a child, I would follow the same teaching.

I saw my friends enjoying intimate moments with their moms. There was the time I was at Lula's house and her mother "Gertie" was sitting in the living room talking about school board members. She has known most of them since they were kids and had grown up in the community. A political voice, Gertie Jung was unlike any woman I had met. Fire red hair, and eyes that seemed to pierce through any fog of bullshit, Gertie had an opinion or story for just about everyone. She encouraged her girls to be independent within reason but more than anything she encouraged them to have a political opinion, hers preferably. It was 1976 and from her I gleened a strong political interest. That year we worked the polls where both Lula's parents ran for office. We spent an entire day in the old gym at the elementary school that once housed the old high school. It sat on the top of a hill just off the road in the little town where Lula lived. Those moments, those places were lightyears away from my house where opinions were given but not received. Who was running for office? Who knew. And what to think was gleaned from the Fabian haired preacher at our church. I think back then and realize that while at home, I had two moments, staying in observation mode and out of the picture or out of the house. The less anyone knew about me the better.

So here it is the night before my flight to Denver where I'll take on a new persona, a new journey to truly getting healthy. I wish most to find my old self underneath these layers of someone I am hiding from. Church could not save me from myself and it has nothing to do with faith or belief. I know so many people who purchase diet programs, pills, join clubs with faith that they will arrive to that goal in their minds. Still, six months later, perhaps smaller or in my case, about the same having lost and gained, failure looms over their heads. Faith and Fail are only different by two letters.

Flying into a different time zone, one mile above sea level, I do have faith. I have faith that whatever I do different from what I have done is better than repeating a cycle of failure.

Chris will be by my side but I know there will be the moment when my room will be empty, I will be prepped and ready to go in. I have no fear. None. I will be alone as I have been alone many times. All that I gain in my strength comes from those who have gone before me. The ones who talk to me about what to expect, those who suffer with this disease as I have. Those who feel pain when they walk and judgement by their appearance.

Those who know they were passed over for one prettier, whose absent credentials or soft work experience are compensated by a thin appearance, or the flash of a white smile. They know. In my mind I hold their hands, I hug them around the neck if the waist does not accomidate. They are my brothers and sisters. They are the ones that come to me as a new family. Onward we go with faith of a life filled with possibilities.