The Love I've Got

I will tell ya’ll one thing I know for certain. I am not grateful enough for the love I’ve got.

I hear all the time about these guys. Husbands who slyly mention that their wife might like to put down the sour cream and onion chips, or women whose husbands tell them not so slyly, straight out, that they’re chunkers, or women whose partners tell them that they’re more attracted to them now that they’ve lost weight. I know a woman who got a divorce after months of marriage counseling didn't work because at the end her husband admitted to her that he just wasn't attracted to her because she was too fat.

One of the reasons it was so easy for me to gain weight after I moved in with Mr. E is because he didn’t give a shit how much I weighed. Even though I complain about being groped while trying to cook dinner, let’s be fair and say he gropes me now and he groped me then, sixty pounds heavier. He’s ALWAYS loved me. Well, I mean, not that one time I went postal in downtown Chicago, but he’s never ever put me down for being big or small or said anything to me that made me feel fat. And it’s not because he’s a smart man and he keeps his mouth shut. It’s because he doesn’t love me for the size of my ass or the number on my pants. He loves me for who I am.

Before Mr. E, I used to look at my arms, at the pale inside of my arm, where I have these little freckles, and think, I want someone to love me so much that they notice all these tiny things about me like my little arm freckles and then I want them to tell me how much they love those little things about me that no one else notices like my arm freckles. It never occurred to me that maybe I’d be better off with someone who wouldn’t know my arm freckles from the next girls but who loves me for something more than what any chump on the street can see, on the outside.

I once asked Mr. E what he thought when I gained weight and after thinking about it for a little while he said, “Honestly? I never even noticed.”

That’s a love I just stumbled on, people. At the time I met Mr. E I didn’t know just how amazing that kind of acceptance was. I never wanted to gain and lose sixty pounds but sometimes I think it might have been worth it to come out the other side and see that I somehow, despite the fact that I’m a complete pain in the ass, I found a love that’s the greatest thing I’ve ever known. True absolute accepting total love. For ME.

I really am the luckiest girl in the world.