Determined To Succeed

Day Four.

What does it mean to be my mother’s son? When I was a child, it used to mean going to school, doing my homework, staying out of trouble and helping around the house so that my mom didn’t have to worry about me when she went to work. She’d leave at about 7:00 or 7:30 a.m. to begin her long haul to work in Cicero, Illinois, and would come home to Hyde Park between 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. after a hard day of packing catalog orders for Sears. I am quite sure during that time period every single day my mother prayed to God that I was O.K.

Well these days I’m pretty fucking far from O.K.

I’ve been lying to people ever since I was a kid. I grew up in a one-room, roach-infested hotel room in the Hyde Park Arms Hotel which was not something ANY child would EVER want to be known, let alone seen by friends. My mom, JoAnn, who worked her ass off making sure we had SOME roof over our heads and food in our stomachs, who went out every day on two buses and a train to work in a warehouse, did the absolute best she could to make sure we had SOMETHING, especially since my father gave little to no support to us in any way including financially. It may not have been much, and it may have been something about which I was embarrassed, but it was good, innocent, honest and our truth.

My mom also said something to me that stuck with me and continues to stick with me now which was the basis for what would become my lying lifestyle. My mom said, “Bill, no one has to know our business but us.” It’s true. Who wants everyone to know everything about them? Do you? Ask any person you see today how often they lie or omit truth to keep something private and you’ll find out the number is overwhelmingly in favor of lies.

But with those words I knew two things: that I could tell my mother anything and everything (and did) and that I had permission to lie to people if I wanted to preserve our secrets and reality. That’s when my creative mind came into play. As I got older I got much better at lying, so much so that even I could barely remember what lies I told which person. I had to start keeping my lies “straight.” And for what? For the sake of making myself look and sound the best I could be to ALL people?

No one can be all things to all people, and my mom is now the one who would be embarrassed of me. I haven’t been my mother’s son for many, many years.

When truth is told trust is earned, plain and simple. Someone knows they can depend on you based on your words backed up by your actions. In this weight loss thing (the only thing I have done right especially these last few years) I knew I had to be honest with myself and others about what I ate and shit I did that made me heavier. The accountability I made public was the one truth – the one absolute truth – backed up by my actions. Too bad the rest of my life, while showing glimmers of my mother’s son, was lost.

There were times I glimpsed him. Either I’d see him looking back at me in the mirror or I’d see him out of the corner of my eye. But he was never there for very long and his image would always fade. Nowadays, with all my lies exposed I am actually beginning to see signs of him again where I hadn’t for so, so long.

Look, I know weight loss is a bitch. It is, but  there is lying there, too. How many times do you eat a pint of ice-cream, nibble on cookies, sneak a piece of cake, grab an extra portion or go through the drive-thru and not tell anyone. I know I’m no saint but I admit that every day to you. That is where there is trust. I screw up and eat shit I shouldn’t but I get back up and try to do better the next day. Through all of this the past few days I have been less hungry because I am literally not trying to keep my lies down or make myself feel better with food. But my mother’s son was never meant to exist just as someone definable by weight loss. He was meant to exist because JoAnn Larson worked her ass off and did her best to raise a boy to be a man that people could look up to. To be that somebody parents tell their children they can be.

Now, for the first time in my adult life ever I am beginning to be that somebody and finally be the man my mom would be proud of. As I go through old photos I see that innocent kid and I think about what happened to him over all these years and it’s enough sometimes to be proud but also enough sometimes to throw up. But I will get back to him again. I will get back to being my mother’s son and stop wasting time, energy and effort because truth does mean trust and I so want to trust in myself again and be the man she always wanted me to be.