So I realize that its been almost two months since i've posted anything. I'll make up for it with this one. It's going to be really long. You could ration it out in case there's another two month gap (as if you missed me writing anything). I don't know. I could say things got busy, but that's not really it. I just got down and didn't feel like sharing anything. First the church thing hit me pretty hard. I don't know how to explain it well, but having a ministry job sort of validated me. I mean, I know it is vanity, but I felt like I was somebody because I had a title . . . or at least for a couple of months they treated me like I had a title, but then I got a call that suddenly took away all of that validation and I was immediately a nobody again.

But I didn't have time to dwell on that rejection. School picked up and I poured myself into it. I stopped working out and started binging again. Too say I've gotten fat again would be an understatement and at the same time a misrepresentation. It would imply that there was a point at which I was not fat, but the smallest I got was about 285 pounds. I sure wish I was back there now, though. Somehow during about two months of cramming everything I could find into my mouth I've gained more than fifty pounds. I tried several times to get back on track, but it just hasn't worked so far. After a couple days of near fasting and intense workouts I cave and eat fast food and Little Debbie Cakes. You haven't known self-defeating behavior until you've ordered five double cheeseburgers and a McFlurry while still being drenched in sweat from an hour and a half on an elliptical trainer. You're not going to be able to pull the all-nighter you need to finish that paper on a protein bar alone . . . just one more fix, and then you'll stop. I've never been addicted to crack, but I'm pretty sure binging is just as hard a habbit to break. And I've broken the habbit once, but I fell off the wagon. Just go easy on yourself it's Christmas. Holidays are the only times I really let it get to me anymore . . . the loneliness. I don't even think it's loneliness at this point since it's all I've ever known, but it seems like it'd be so nice to have a girlfriend to take home to meet the family on Christmas. Either way, now that Christmas is over I'm on vacation in Florida with the family. You can't diet here, and especially not around them. It'll throw off their whole vacation. Really gaining more weight this week is the selfless thing to do. Did you know that in 7-elevens they sell pink doughnuts made to look exactly like the ones Homer eats in the Simpsons. It's pretty much the best invention in the doughnut world since they started poking holes in them. Tonight I bought four (ostensibly to share with my sister and brothers, but let's be honest . . . ).

I saw Will Smith's new movie I Am Legend. In it there was a scene where he was doing pull-ups shirtless and let's just say if I was into dudes, he'd be my go to. But it baffled me. If there were no other people on the planet that weren't cgi vampire-zombies there's no question that I'd get unfathomably fat. I mean, he's tending a garden in Central Park, but if the only eyes I had to worry about judging me were the ones in the mirror I'd eat so much junk food that the monsters who would come to eat me would get cavities. But there are other people who look at me in this world, so I'll be losing weight again soon. You know where people look at you. Theme parks.

I think there are some people who are wired so that it isn't as painful for them to be fat. I mean, anybody who's overweight at all is going to have some emotional and physical pain that goes along with the territory, but I think it affects me (at least I let it affect me) more socially than others do. My dad, for one, is capable of being in denial of a great deal of the humiliation of obesity.

So today we went to Universal Studios Island Adventure. Everybody was really excited about the Spiderman ride so we hopped in line even though the estimated wait posted was 95 minutes. I knew I didn't want to ride, but I jumped into line because I thought it would get kind of lonely after an hour-and-a-half sitting by the ride's exit, but I planned on just exiting before the ride started.

I'm sure you can guess my dilemma. It's not that I'm afraid of amusement park rides (at least not for the typical reasons). I'm a thrill-seeker at heart who loves the feel of the loops and falls and jarring brakes. One of the best memories of my life was a roller coaster ride. During a choir trip my senior year of high school when I was feeling particularly thin after a few months of dieting but didn't weigh much less than I do now, we went to Six Flags and I rode the Titan with a girl named Jessica. I didn't particularly have any feelings for her, and I knew she didn't like me (she was interested in my friend Nick), but she was really pretty and she rode a roller coaster with me, and you'll cling to any memory you can of feeling kind of like a stud when you've lived the life I've lived. But once at Fiesta Texas in San Antonio I tried to ride a Superman coaster and the safety bar wouldn't latch so I had to get up and wait for the ride to be over with everybody in line looking at me, laughing at me, and thanking God that they weren't me, and right there I swore to myself I'd never try another amusement park ride if I thought there was even a chance I wouldn't fit.

I agreed to this vacation back when I weighed 285 and was full of confidence that I'd continue losing weight and be around 250 by the time we were here. 250 is fat, but it seems more like normal people fat. 340 is not normal people fat. But here's the thing . . . Dad is way bigger than me at this point. I'm scared . . . dreadfully scared that Dad won't be able to lose weight and that he'll die soon. I couldn't take that, but at this point it seems all but inevitable. Anyways, Dad is not the socially crippling kind of fat guy that I am. I'm not sure where his self-esteem comes from . . . part of me thinks he's in denial or delusional or something. Most of me thinks that he is just as mortified by his obesity as I am mine but he hides it so that his kids (not me, but Amanda, Pablo, and Esteban) and his wife can have a good time at the theme parks. Either way, the whole time we're in this ridiculous line he kept shouting out over the crowd to assure me that we'd fit. "We were here three years ago, and I was about the size you are now, and I had no problem back then."

When he could tell I was not convinced (but was not getting the hint that I would appreciate some discretion) he yelled out, "And what do any of these people matter anyways. We're never going to see them again." That's a big part of Dad's philosophy on life. If you aren't going to see them again they don't count. My motto is quite the opposite. For the people in my life who care about me, even though I should be ashamed to be me around them, too, I can somewhat let my guard down because they care, but the randoms in malls and theme parks and restaurants and any other crowded areas are the ones whose opinions are the most excrutiating to bear precisely because they'll never see me again. When the frustration of it all finally got to me I sort of lashed out and asked Dad how he was capable of being so happy-go-lucky even though the odds of us fitting were slim, and he responded with a saintly, "I just guess I get happy when things make other people happy." It hit me like a dagger. I'm really a fraud. Hidden behind this wanna be follower of Jesus lies the most putrid selfish spirit in the world. Why couldn't I just be thankful that they were all having a good time and let that make me have a good time? But thinking about that didn't inspire me as it should have (as it hopefully has after some reflection), it just made me feel worse about myself. Not only is my outside shameful to look, my insides are hideous too.

In any case we inched our way through the 95 minute line and when I wanted to ditch out and skip right to the exit I found out that the cars dropped people off at a different place than the start of the ride. To get out of this I'd have to go backwards "pardon me"-ing my way through hordes of sweaty tourists all thinking the same thing poor fatty couldn't ride so now he's making me move over to accommodate his girthy trodging back to the entrance. People like him shouldn't be allowed here. Maybe they wouldn't have all been thinking exactly that, but I bet some of them would. So I was stuck getting on the ride. I took a bit of devilish comfort in the fact that if I was going to have to get up for not fitting at least Dad would be in the same boat I was.

All six of us packed into the cart and the bars came down alright. The relief of my anxiety was much more exhilarating than I expected the ride would be. Maybe it was all in your head. For a few seconds I was giddy again to be shaken and tossed. It wasn't like a roller coaster. You wore these dorky 3D glasses and the cart whipped around while it looked like Dr. Octopus and the Hobgoblin were throwing junk in your face and throwing you off buildings until at the last minute you were saved by webs. But just as the ride was about to be over our cart got stuck. We had to sit there for a few minutes while a bunch of mechanics pulled some levers and moved up some tracks until finally they pushed us into a back room. Then some Universal Studios PR kid came and said we had a bad cart so they were going to let us cut straight to the front of the line and go again. There was some grumbling from most people. After being stuck for awhile they were sure that the park owed us some money or at least this thing called an Express Pass for the day.

Let me take a little diversion to vent some frustration over this deal called the Express Pass. Now amusement parks are worthless for me, but I can see the attraction because the rides are fun if you can ride them. But spending 99% of your day in lines in order to get to ride a few minutes worth of rides sucks. Now they let you pay extra to get an express ticket to the front of the line. Maybe neat for those privileged few, but it fills me with some zealous pissed offedness. You can call me a Communist if you'd like, but I just think when people are on vacation they shouldn't have to be reminded that wealthier people have it better than they do.

Anyways, nobody was talking about the elephant in the room. I guess in our case it was the two elephants in the cart. I wondered what kind of sadistic people would put these two Jabba the Huts back into another cart to shut the ride down again for a little while longer. Apparently I wasn't the only one who was worried that it wasn't the cart that was bad but the riders. Esteban is young enough to be refreshingly and obnoxiously honest. He asked what we would do if the ride stopped again, to which Dad responded (once again either in denial or out of fatherly kindness I'm not sure), "Well, then they'll let us go a third time." And somewhere in my bitterness and embarrassment I was sure that he was stubborn and delusional enough to keep going at it. He'd have us breaking every car in the whole ride before he would've admitted that we were the problem.

Already humiliated beyond anything I could imagine but resigned to my fate of cycling through all of the cars and breaking them I went along with the replacement ride and it went fine. I was still convinced that it was our fault the first one broke so I'd sooner cut off one of my feet than ride another ride for the duration of this trip. Maybe I'll learn Dad's trick and have a good mood about the fun that the rest of the family is having and that can be fun for me or maybe I'll be a selfish jerk and bring everybody else down. I hope for the former. Either way, happy new year. I know my 2007 started off real strong but ended on a bad note. Maybe things will turn back around for 2008. I hope it goes well for you.