When you're as overweight as I was, you come to expect that no guy will ever look your way.  I spent my twenties locked in a cage.  I didn't want to go out to bars with my friends because that meant I would be the girl the guys would come up to and say, "What's your friends name?  Can I get her number?" 

 I was the funny friend.  People wanted me around because I made them laugh and I knew how to have a good time and I watched my friends go through relationship after relationship and took part of my version of 27 dresses in the biggest sized bridesmaids dresses that they made, all the while thinking "I don't need this.  I'm better off alone."

 And so I believed it.  I believed it for so long that even after I lost 104 pounds, I thought that a boyfriend was something I didn't need right now.  I needed to finish school and with the two jobs it became the perfect excuse to ignore the opposite sex...until HE came along.

 He was, well actually IS a client of mine.  I didn't catch on at first but I finally realized that he was flirting with me.  When you've been in hibernation for as long as I was..ahem an eight year hibernation... the furthest thing from your mind is, "this guy is flirting with me." 

 After some opinions from friends, they confirmed what I suspected and so I did my best to flirt back.  It was really the thrill of it all.  He's my client, twelve years my senior, extremely successful, so very confident, so very funny, everything I thought I wasn't because I still see myself in this almost three hundred pound body. 

When I finally had the courage to give him my number I soon realized that Mr. Client was going to be my own version of Fifty Shades.  He didn't want a relationship but told me he could show me a world I've never seen before.  A world through the eyes of a successful, experienced man, who lives for adventure, who told me he could do things to me I'd only read about in books or seen in movies. 

A part of me thought this man shouldn't be talking to me like this.  This was all wrong.  But I couldn't deny the attraction and how he would make me shake just by speaking to me.  I quickly became the moth and him the flame.  I wanted to run away from him as fast as I wanted to run toward him.  I stopped eating.  I stopped sleeping and he quickly consumed my every thought. 

Although I didn't want anyone at my job to know, after two consecutive dinner dates with Client/Fifty around the town that my boss often dined, I knew I had to tell my bosses that although this was nothing serious yet, I no longer felt it was professional to handle his accounts.  They were appreciative and supportive and agreed that my privileges to his accounts be revoked.  I was relieved.  It was never about the money and I didn't want to know what was going on inside his accounts.  It was none of my business.  I didn't want anything to do with the money.  I just wanted what he promised me...him, in all his Fifty Shades.

 For three weeks (which felt like three years), this man turned my world upside down.  When he took me out, he was every bit the gentleman.  He opened the car door and the restaurant door for me.  Something I've never had before.  When we crossed the street he put his arm around my waist to shield me from oncoming traffic.  The feeling of his hand on my waist (and the fact that I actually had a waist!) sent chills down my spine.  And our first kiss set my lips on fire.  I quickly knew I was infatuated and I didn't care.  

One night I went to his house to watch a movie and on his oversized couch, he held my hand as I snuggled in his strong arms and his thumb gently caressed my side, rolling slowly in between two of my newly noticeable ribs.  He occasionally kissed my forehead and brushed his fingers through my hair and at one point my ear lay on his chest as he fell asleep and I could hear his heart beating.  It was in that moment I knew what I had been missing all of these years.  I DID want a relationship.  Why was I so blind?  How could I make this moment last forever.  I would have given anything to lay in his arms all night.  In that moment, the part of me that had laid dormant for eight years was awakened from her slumber.

When he woke up, a heavy make out session ensued.  I wasn't sure if I was prepared or ready for anything that followed and when he started moving his hands all over my body I started to shake.  I don't know if it was fear, or pleasure or both.  It was then he looked at me and asked me why I was scared. That's when the flashback hit and took me back eight years.  Back to the passenger seat of a steel gray Volkswagon Jetta, staring at the face of my boyfriend who was breaking up with me to be with another woman.  A woman I would grow to learn, was of average size.  I'll never forget how he hurt me that night and will never forget the words that came from the man I had loved for 7 years.  He said to me, "My friends always wanted to know how I could sleep with someone who looked like you."  Meaning, someone fat. 

Although the weight is almost gone, I'm left with the scars of the battle. Loose skin and gravity have taken their toll and his words although uttered 8 years prior, still echo through my ear.

And just as quickly as the flash happened, I was back in Fifty's arms.  "I'm ashamed of my body" was my only reply.  He told me not to be embarassed.  He would not judge me.  He told me my body was beautiful.  That I was beautiful.  It was just us.  And he made me feel safe and comfortable.  And without much more convincing, I was in his bed.

In the end I don't think I was really ready and after coming THISCLOSE to going through with it, I politely said no and instead we laid there in his bed for hours, pouring secrets like great wine. 

 I don't know if it was because I said no or because he told me things I don't think he ever planned on telling me, but Fifty stopped communicating after that night for a week and then came into my job with a gift for me like that would somehow make up for the fact that he had held me in his arms and then thrown me back into a cold world void of human touch.

A part of me is angry.  I have every right to be. We still make contact on occasion to see how we both are and when he texts me I smile even though I should be mad. 

In the end, more than the anger, I am happy.  Some people may thank lucky stars for their fortune, but I thank Fifty.  For waking me up.  For helping me see that there is a world out there made for me to experience.  I locked myself up for so long not thinking I was good enough to be seen but he saw me when I thought I was invisible and maybe that's because I really wasn't invisible at all.  Either way, I thank him.

 And it's because of him that I let myself meet someone else.  Someone that eventually would want a relationship.  I don't know where it's heading but we're doing something right now that Fifty had no concept of.  We're taking it SLLOOOOOWW.  We're becoming friends and getting to know each other.  If it works out, great.  If it doesn't, that's ok too because I'm back.  I'm alive. I'm no longer invisible.  It's time for me to step away from all of those shades of gray and into a world of color, somewhere over the rainbow.