I was in this terrible place for a month - the kind of hotel you can pay for by the hour. Homeless people were roaming everywhere and though I was in a room, I knew I could be next.
A lady older than me walked off to nowhere at noon one day. She could not pay for another day. If you stayed past noon, they came and took you to jail. We had both seen other people be taken away. She left a large cooler of food outside her room and told me I could have it. When I looked in the cooler after she left, it was all garbage food I no longer ate - my old obesity food. I told some other people about it and they were glad to have the food and cooler too.
Gunshots went off nearby at all hours. Police stopped me when I walked in the night and did not smile. I had to go to my hotel room and get my ID to show them. After they ran me for warrants and didn't find any, they said to go back inside and stay there.
I had lost "Half My Size" after a lifetime of obesity and now I had lost everything else. I spent all my money on stupid ideas - trying to get my message out: "You can lose weight too and be just like me." Now I was broke, evicted, and in this awful hotel with no idea what to do next.
My fat friends couldn't stand to see me, and did not want to hear how I had gotten thin. Thin women looked at me as a rival and thought I wanted to take their husbands. Men of all ages were gawking at me for the first time in fifty years, and I was terrified. I now had the body of a thin teenager and all I wanted to do was go back and be my fat self I was used to.
Right before I took this photo, a young guy came charging up to me from behind. At the last second, when he was just feet away, I turned in time to see him running at me with bad intent. When he saw my old grandma face, he gasped and dissolved into tears. "Ma'am. I'm so sorry." He ran off as fast as he had come. I don't know what he was going to do to me, but my wrinkled face saved the day.
I walked off in shock to take photos and tried to think.
This photo appeared in my processor an hour later. I don't know how I took it, but I saw my wing and knew something was coming to save me.
A few days after that, I moved in with a wonderful family and their pit bull and helped their mother die with dignity. They were in desperate need of help, and so it was a miracle for us all.
This is my entry for the monomad silhouette contest by .
Losing weight was the best thing that ever happened to me. I knew it even if I did not know who I was anymore and had lost everything else. Anyone can get over obesity and live their dreams if I can.