Fat friend = Friend Zone?!

I'm not gonna lie to you.
I am a HUGE romantic sap. Always have been. I am a sucker for romantic comedies and happy endings. I guarantee you that I will be one of the first ones to congratulate you on your new relationship, engagement, or marriage. I have been to more than my share of weddings throughout my adult life. On the outside, I swear I will be the happiest person for you! ..... But deep down inside, part of me is hurting. Time after time just hurting and wishing and hoping and praying that ONE DAY I could have that same happiness for MYSELF.
Let's be for real. We live in a predominantly shallow society. If you look back on the last 20 years with the media, TV, movies, music, internet... what do the couples mostly look like? It's your same cookie cutter "Perfect Relationship" mold. Look at the shows & the movies of the last two decades! Same premise. It always show the ones with the perfect bodies successful or more likely to get in a relationship. There's always the stereotypical fat friend that always support the best friend on dates, but never has the happy ending for themselves. They may have a crush or admiration for someone, but those feelings are never reciprocated back to them. It's those visuals that put women, ESPECIALLY those who are heavier in size, in an emotional frenzy because we are trying so hard to emulate and BE what we see! We ALL want that happy ending.... and to me, I have always thought that no matter what your size is, we all deserve a chance at love. Here's the reality check.... it doesn't always work that way. Sad, but true.
Throughout my life, I have always secret labeled myself and could relate to the term of being the "fat" friend. Granted, I have female friends of all shapes & sizes, but the truth of the matter is, if you were to put us all in a group (especially at an outing), I would be one of the heavier ones...if not the heaviest. That has always been so daunting to me, and I was always intimidated by that. Due to that intimidation, I always felt that I was going to be 2nd best compared to my skinnier friends. It took a very long time for me to be fully comfortable in my skin and consider myself to be beautiful & BELIEVE it.  I never expressed it like I wanted to because once again... I always hid behind a smile.
Being a small town preacher's daughter, there was little to no dating for me at all in high school. Not because I couldn't, but because I was 1. Too shy to ask a guy out for fear of rejection, and 2. I always felt that a date with the fat girl would always be the pity date. Plus, in my dad's eyes, there wasn't any guy good enough for his baby girl.  So instead, I stayed quiet and to myself as I watched or heard about my high school friends going on dates. I was on that sideline.... I didn't even get my first kiss until I was in my 20s for crying out loud!!!  It was always difficult for me to express my feelings vocally because I didn't think anyone would take me seriously. I can remember an instance during my sophomore year where I tested the waters a little. Every year for Valentines Day, our school's Honor Society would sell carnations with a paper heart where you could write a message. I had a longtime crush on a guy friend of mine at the time. Cute white guy with gorgeous eyes & a wonderful smile. We always had this competitive friendship, but I never had the courage to tell him vocally how I felt about him. Anyways, I took it upon myself to buy a carnation for him that would include a message long enough to fill up the entire heart & I signed it as "Your Secret Admirer"... I was waaaay too scared to put my name on this!!! So Valentines Day came around, and the members of the Honor Society would deliver the carnations. I was nervous the whole day because I knew he would eventually get his carnation & read that message. I remember being in band class later that afternoon, & I was scoping him out from afar... It just so happened that he was talking to a friend of his about my carnation & my message! I'll never forget the look on his face... shock & wonder of who this mystery girl could be?! Looking back on it now, I wished I had the courage to go up to him at that point & confess. He eventually found out before we graduated, but not in the way I would have liked it. Amazing how things come up in bouts of angry teen girl. :(
The fear & cold reality of rejection keep me so bound from being able to put myself out there when it came to dating and relationships. To fix that and keep it at bay, I would eat for comfort. I have always identified myself as an emotional eater, and it has proven through several instances of rejection in my adult life to be a very vicious cycle. A cycle that needed to end.  The funny thing about it all is that I never had a problem making friends. Especially guy friends. Took me awhile to really admit that I am a natural flirt. I realized that big time in college. I have a bubbly personality. Genuinely sweet. I love to make others feel good... all the recipe for being a natural flirt! Hey, I didn't have the skinny body going for me. So why not let my personality shine!?! College became a time for experimentation... laying aside the things I was taught, and experimenting with new things.  Trust me when I say that as long as alcohol was involved, there was a lot of experimenting to be had. If there is one thing I can say about the college experience is that you definitely experiment with every aspect of your life and who you are as a person. Hormones are raging, and it seems like the only attention worth getting was sexual attention.
So being in my 20s, I had that mindset, but I hated that it had to be that way. It made me constantly wonder, will I ever have a guy to truly love me for me?. I KNEW that I had a lot to offer a woman. Great personality, sense of humor, intelligent, caring, respectful.... but the truth of the matter is... Guys are always going to be initially attracted to what they see at first. So I felt that being a plus size girl, I would be at a disadvantage. Didn't help that I also have huge curves... the big boobs and butt to match. I pride myself in being a curvy woman, and part of me loved the attention I would get with that, but I would eventually feel empty because I knew that it would lead to that same sexual attention. I deserved so much more than that! So as always, I turned to food for comfort. Alcohol became my comfort as well as my liquid courage, and because of it, it nearly damaged two friendships.... with two guys that I honestly care about and love so much.
Truthfully, I've spent the majority of my 20s being in LUST with most of the guys I ever had feelings for. One instance of being in lust when I thought it was love nearly killed me, and it took a long time for me to recover from that AND recover that friendship with that guy. It took me to a very dark period in my life that I never thought I would heal from it...  Honestly, I have only been in love TWICE in my life with two different guys & two different periods of my life. Once again, I always had a problem with vocally expressing how I truly felt about them, & time & our friendship would continue to go on... while I hid behind my true feelings. The most recent instance of this happened late last year, and I regret my actions that night. I'm all about venting problems...but not while being drunk..... and/or on Facebook. I was a jealous drunken fool that night, and I allowed my emotions to overtake me. I ended up doing the drunken venting on Facebook...and went MIA... To come back to that post after the fact and after sobering up...to see the replies and posts from friends with harsh words based on my rant from that night... My heart sank when a comment from him came up, and I knew our friendship wouldn't be the same... I felt like I was losing him, and it was all my fault.  I spent the following days after beating myself up mentally & emotionally for what I said... and I was on an eating binge. I had reached my breaking point, and I got tired of allowing myself to be in that same cycle of emotional eating. That was the moment of clarity I needed to be able to start on this weight loss journey. Not because of the guy or the situation that happened. It was because I realized that I owed it to myself and my HEALTH to make that change and not allow myself to continue that vicious cycle of emotional eating and binging.
So does being the fat friend automatically put you in the friend zone? In my lifetime...with what I have experienced... yeah. It shouldn't be that way. It took me a long time to fully believe that I am beautiful.. on the outside as well as the inside. I KNOW that I have a lot to offer as a woman, but honestly, I am tired of being the fat friend. I know what I deserve, and it took a lot of thinking to realize that I too deserve MY PRINCE CHARMING. MY perfect guy. MY lover. MY soulmate.... I don't want to be the option, the side dish, or just a piece of ass and boobs. My value is worth so much more than all of that.
Time for me to exude on the outside what I have always felt on the inside.