[Man, this turned out long.]
At the risk of sounding emo, I'm stuck not knowing where, or if, I belong.
But this area seems so welcoming that I just can't resist saying hello.
When I joined the site, I originally had my stats set to reflect the starting weight I recorded this April, but after a few days it started to make me feel like a fraud, like I was representing myself as someone who'd never been all that overweight, and that's just not true. So here I am, numbers and all. I feel drawn to getting to know members of the TDC, because as you can see, once I'm at what I now consider my final goal, I will have lost right at 105 pounds.
Thing is--and this is why I feel unsure--it's been almost six years since I was at my high weight. I lose very slowly anyway, but I've also had several periods of alternately starving myself [and thus slowing my metabolism] and then saying "the heck with it" and just not watching what I was doing at all. I was lucky in that I rarely regained much, so in a sense I do still consider this all just one really long diet, but man,
six years.
It's very hard for me to remember what it was like to be at my largest...and yet sometimes the memories of growing up a fat kid, and then becoming a fatter woman, are so painfully clear it might as well still be happening. I don't know how to explain it any better than this, so I probably sound pretty flaky, but I think some thoughts and attitudes are never going to leave me. I may talk a good game sometimes, and act like it's all behind me, but I don't know if I'm ever going to really feel like a thin woman, or even a "normal-weight" woman. (And what the heck does "normal" mean anyway?)
So I guess what I'm saying is that even with all the time that's passed, it's sometimes been a little hard to adjust, and I find it hard to relate to thin folks or those who only have a little weight to lose, because I was overweight, and then obese, for so long. I always feel like an outsider, no matter what.
With all that long-windedness out of the way, I suppose I should get to the meat (yeah!) of the introduction. Please do go ahead and call me Iris; it's not my real name, but it's a favorite, and a bit of a joke between my husband and me. As is obvious from that sentence, I am married; we've been together eleven wonderful years, and I hope for many, many more. No kids, which given my general lack of patience is probably a very good thing.
I am a housewife, and I'm very grateful for that fact because it gives me the opportunity to focus on my health in ways that are probably not as easy for those with outside careers and the resultant time constraints. I also have lupus, so being at home gives me the opportunity to rest when I need to. If any of you are dealing with autoimmune disorders and the accompanying fatigue and pain, I know you understand me when I say that rest and downtime are VERY good things.
Let's see, what else. I love to read and learn, am a self-taught (if not overly talented) photographer and photo editor, sometime fiction writer, serial blogger, perpetually beginner-level bellydancer, Tudor history buff, and general dizzy dilettante.
I enjoy long walks on the beach...oh wait, no I don't, and this isn't the right place for that anyway. Sorry! But I think that's enough about me.
Does anyone mind my dropping by?
*tries not to act TOO much like a hopeful puppy*
Glad to have you with us and nice meeting you!
Thank you!
Yup! That'd do it to me too!! 
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