From This Moment On (55 page)

Fred put on some of my favorite tunes while we danced and sipped champagne. I was so taken by this romantic surprise and never would have imagined there was more to come. Fred left me for about three minutes, and I assumed he’d gone off to the bathroom. Upon his return he said, “Now for the next part.” I was breathless, not believing there was a “next part.” How could there be more to this beautiful, thoughtful surprise? He walked me to the theater door with my eyes closed, and when he asked me to open them, I immediately began to tear up as he guided me to view the platform below. My eyes fell on a table for two draped in white linen with another vase of roses set beautifully for a romantic dinner. Fred had made the lighting very theatrical, with blue and red color gels on the spotlights, aimed to highlight our private table. Candles were lit all around the edge of the platform, and the rest of the room was black. It was incredibly dramatic and looked like a set for a play.

I couldn’t believe this was happening, and just as I was trying to get my head around how on earth he put all this together, Fred began to escort me down to the table, and a side door swung open. A formally dressed waiter came in with our first course as if he’d walked on the set from backstage, his timing perfectly cued. Fred chose the
menu himself right down to the dessert, and the restaurant was conveniently next door to the theater. It was so gorgeous and touching. I was in awe. The waiter was caught up in the whole romantic spirit of it and had a smile from ear to ear as he swept in and out from the theater with our delights. Fred had thought of everything. This was not only the most romantic thing I had ever experienced, it was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard of. Fred is full of these ideas, and from small to elaborate, he fills my life with surprise and wonder every day.

It’s true I swore I would never allow myself to love again, but Fred is impossible not to love. This man goes the extra mile and loves in a truly unconditional way. Pure, honest, selfless love. Sweet, humble, compassionate. Little by little, he would win my heart.

We’ve grown together through a very unusual set of circumstances, and we both agree that we’ve developed a unique love as a result. We’re so grateful for having discovered each other in this new light. If our lover can also be our best friend, we’ve found the ultimate partner. I’ve never experienced this as completely as I do with Fred. I trust his observations of me and am not ashamed to say that I rely on him to hold up the mirror for me.

Fred makes me feel good about myself and helps me focus more
on my positive attributes rather than my faults. He helps me see that although I may never be completely satisfied with myself,
he
is, and there is no pressure from him to be anything other than who I already am. This is precious, and I value this love, acceptance, and appreciation. I am loved, and I know it; what more could I ask for?

Passion for romance is something that I have rediscovered since allowing myself to love and be loved by Fred. I’ll be honest: when your husband leaves you, and falls into the arms of your close friend, the other woman, your self-esteem can really suffer. I was sure that there must be something wrong with me. The rejection made me feel self-conscious, and I was sure that no man would desire me. I’d always been rather conservative when it came to romantic intimacy, not being terribly open or comfortable expressing myself with a new lover. Just feeling shy about it, basically. I had to know my partner well before feeling safe and confident in the bedroom. It was going to take strong communication with a very sensitive partner for me to feel appreciated again romantically. When it came to romance, Fred was able to give me back the confidence I needed to relax about loving again.

Physical attraction is essential to a healthy romantic relationship, and, thankfully, there is no shortage of that between the two of us. Fred makes me feel as if I’m the most gorgeous woman on the planet. Of course, I know I’m not, but he means it and shows it. When I tell Fred that I’m feeling fat and ugly or have general complaints about my appearance, he says, “Well, Sunshine, I’m just going to have to try harder. I guess I’m not doing my job, and no matter how many times a day I have to tell you how beautiful and sexy you are, I’m going to say it until you believe me.” He seems so genuinely perplexed when my self-image is low. What a gift! I wish I could love myself as much as he loves me. I think this is a worthy goal to work toward, and so I put it on my list of priorities.

The irony is that I have a man who is highly attracted to me, and yet I’m more dissatisfied with my body lately than I’ve ever been in my life. The best years of my fitness and body shape were during my
first marriage, as I was so physically active and just younger. I had very little extra body fat, an hourglass silhouette, and a taut tummy, even after the birth of my son. But lately my body has gone through a change that I’m not liking. I was reading that emotional stress can cause weight gain, especially in the abdomen area, and I believe it. For the first time in my life, I have cellulite on my stomach. In fact, I have a flabby layer of fat over my entire body. I’m not complaining about size here, I’m talking about texture and shape. These unwanted changes came on over the course of just a few months following the discovery of the betrayal, and I’ve had a very hard time getting rid of it. In comparison to the high percentage of surgically perked and plumped breasts today, mine seem droopier than usual, and probably really are. I’m letting “the girls” hang loose under my sweat clothes around the house and when someone comes to the door, I cross my arms under them for support to avoid making it obvious that I’m not wearing a bra but should be. Fred thinks I have a warped sense of my body image and am too critical. Maybe he’s right.

I’m pretty insecure about my changing body, as it came about so suddenly that I haven’t had time to get my head around it yet. I asked Fred recently, “What if I can’t get rid of my flab? Will you be okay with that?” He said exactly the right thing and reassured me that with or without my squishy layer, he’s still totally attracted to me. I lecture myself regularly to just be happy with what I have and even happier that I have a man who is, too. When I express this nagging insecurity about my self-image to Fred, he pulls out his research ammunition, and as I roll my eyes he reminds me that in 2009
Hello!
magazine voted me “Most Beautiful Canadian,” and a study by researchers at the University of Toronto cited me, actress Jessica Alba, and model Elizabeth Hurley as having perfectly proportioned faces. Fred found that one in an actual scientific journal,
Vision Research
; he loves researching this stuff, taking pleasure in using it as a means of turning my self-confidence around. Now, that’s what I call “a good man,” and every woman deserves one! I prefer to remain realistic about what I really look like when I’m not glammed up. The only other option is to
remove all mirrors from the house, which sometimes Fred threatens to do when he feels I’m being too hard on myself.

I’ve decided to be proactive about my changing body and my attitude toward my new self-image. I’ve started by being realistic. I had the body of a twenty-five-year-old until I was forty-two, and seemingly overnight, I now have the body of a forty-five-year-old. So, part of my daily practice is to stop and reflect when I find I’m beating myself up over it, and to take action rather than moan. I’ve hiked up my level of physical activity and clamped down on my eating habits, but without my whole quality of life going to pot (as my new potbelly is enough pot for me to deal with as it is), and I remember to balance pleasure with discipline. I’ll let you know how it goes, but for now, I’m still on the road to finding the solution to all this change. If I don’t see any results within a reasonable amount of time, then I will resign myself to learning to live with it and concentrate on changing my attitude and not being so hard on myself.

There has to be a point in our lives where we simply accept that time catches up with us eventually. As much as medical advancements have made it possible to forestall aging, I’m not sure I’m someone who is willing to invest excessive time and effort in the quest to preserve beauty. The healthier thing to do, it seems to me, is to learn to be comfortable in your own skin and love yourself as you are. Besides, the character lines on my face have branded me with a number somewhere in the range of my real age.

At the moment I’m clearly at a crossroads with my self-image. Maybe I’m entering a phase of my life where this will become a never-ending battle from here on out. Maybe my hormones have taken my body in a new direction, and there is nothing I can do about it. Maybe at forty-five, this is my new body, like it or lump it, lumps and all.

The first time I think I even gave any thought to the appearance of my body was in the seventh grade. I was athletic and still tomboyish; skinny and scrawny, but strong, with muscular legs. Then I sprouted,
or at least part of me did. At twelve, I was already a C cup, busting out of last year’s shirts and developing an hourglass shape. One day while I was walking down the hallway at Pinecrest Junior High, a boy reached out and ripped open my snap-up, red-and-white-checkered shirt. I was embarrassed, of course, but mostly pissed at the nervy kid who did it. I never let boys intimidate me and had their number at an early age; most were quite sexist in an instinctive way, almost as though they couldn’t help it or something.

I wasn’t overweight, but I started noticing what fat was. I saw a classmate wearing very short shorts walking toward me. She was tanned and pretty, but I noticed her thighs jiggling as she walked. My thighs were hard, carved, and masculine. I was proud of my boyish athleticism and found her jiggly thighs unattractive. The tomboy in me saw this as a sign of someone lazy and soft. A girly girl was behind those thighs; someone weak, fragile, and not equal to boys. A girl with thighs like that couldn’t possibly run as fast, or kick as hard, or jump as far, or stand as firm.

As my jiggly-thighed classmate came closer, I noticed that not only was she jiggly, she was bumpy, too. Each time she took a step, I could see a blanket of lumpy, bumpy skin.
Gross!
I thought.
What is that?
A boy with me said, “Eilleen, you’ll never look like that.”
Man,
I thought,
I hope not.

The next summer, I started wearing short shorts, too. I was becoming more aware of the fact that I was a girl, with bulges and curves that boys admired. I was still very athletic and masculine in attitude, to the point of strapping down my breasts, as they painfully and annoyingly bounced out of control if I moved any faster than walking. I had to control these balloons that had grown without my consent.

I managed to maintain my boyish thighs until I was probably in my early twenties. It’s hard to say because, to be honest, I avoided wearing bathing suits altogether in my teens after coming out of the lake one time with one breast completely hanging out, for what felt like the whole world to see. There were no full-length mirrors around
our house, and no one would have seen my thighs to notice them transforming.

By the time I became a photographed celebrity in my thirties, I not only had a floppy, soft, orange-peel texture to my thighs, I had
cellulite.
I was horrified. I wasn’t fat—in fact, I was quite thin—but still had this horrible texture to my legs when I squeezed down on them. It wasn’t obvious when I was standing still and in flattering light, but squeeze them down with my fingers or put me in the wrong light, and it was obvious that I had this dreaded female nightmare.

In my daily life, I see girls and women all over the planet walking around with tummies bulging out of their shirts and thighs flapping around, as if they are proud of their earned chub. After all, we have babies, cravings, menstrual cycles that keep us famished no matter how much we cram into ourselves, and moods that demand immediate and desperate relief that only something fattening and indulgent will satisfy. Hello, chocolate, potato chips, alcohol, ice cream, and so on.

I envy girls who wear their extra weight like a badge of honor; clearly, they are comfortable in their own skin. They are not worried about what I or anyone else thinks of them. These girls are not miserably avoiding the foods they love and forcing themselves to be more active than they want to be. They are eating what they want, when they want, and not apologizing for it. How their bodies end up after that is not their concern. I admire the sense of freedom they possess. But at the same time, I also hear so many of them eventually moan about how they wish they could lose weight. I think that describes most women, and at least every woman I know personally.

My conclusion is that it’s more important to be comfortable with your weight, no matter what it is, as long as you are healthy and energetic enough to meet the personal goals and demands you have set in your life. Those might be the ability to kick a soccer ball around with your child, host a Sunday gathering with your family, manage your job and domestic life without it completely exhausting you, not avoiding sexy lingerie if you secretly wish to wear it, feeling sexy and attractive
to your lover, and having enough energy at the end of the day to actually engage in intimacy. If you meet your own expectations, what are you questioning? I ask myself this every day. The expectations that the fashion industry puts on us are not realistic.