It all started with a bottle of lotion.

I work at a call center, and as the late shift we don't have assigned seating per se. Instead we have to sit where ever there is an empty seat, and more often than not we end up using a desk that the day shift has decorated and personalized for themselves.

So as I sat there at that desk, I noticed this bottle of lotion. Not a lotion user myself, I wasn't particularly compelled to use any of it, but the longer I sat there the more I grew curious about it. I noticed it was from Bath & Body Works, a place I never go because I think it's overpriced - and I don't want to spend that kind of money on that stuff.

I finally picked it up and gave it a sniff. Sweet Pea, it said. It was nice. Curiosity satisfied I capped the bottle and put it back in its place without using a drop. Since I didn't buy it, I wasn't going to use it. That's just not my way.

Plus, I'm not the kind of person who uses lotion anyway.

Call after call came in and I kept looking at that bottle. Every now and again I'd pick it up and sniff it, recap it and put it back on the desk. It dawned on me that just by how pretty it smelled, it simply improved my mood just to smell it.

As I'm growing older I am noticing the changes in my skin. It's becoming a little less elastic and soft. I started to contemplate the benefits of lotion - and wondered why I'd never really gotten into the whole beauty regimen type stuff other girls seem to relish.

Someone like the gal whose desk I shared, whose pictures showed she took care of the way she looked.

I thought about my long, unkempt hair in a ponytail that hadn't been styled in months. I thought about how I usually don't wear makeup or even worry too much about the clothes that I wear. As long as they're clean, they fit and do their job camouflaging all my problem spots, that's all I really require.

The night wore on and that bottle continued to haunt me. Why *didn't* I try harder to make myself more presentable? Why did I use "pampering" myself as an excuse to pile on more pounds and eat myself to death?

I blamed the expense on why I wouldn't go to Bath & Body Works, but a bottle of lotion lasts far longer than a lunch at McDonalds - and as opposed to that high fat, high calorie junk fest, the bottle of lotion actually *does* pamper you and improve you.

Why, I finally asked myself, am I so willing to be unattractive? Not just unattractive... but repellent even.

That's when it hit me like a ton of bricks.

When I was attacked at the age of four and sexually molested, that rapist did more to me than simply invade my body and corrupt my innocence.

He stole my pretty.

Before that, I was exalted as a beautiful child. I was an average weight, and had a mother who taught me how to take care of my femininity. Men loved me from the time I was born, and my mother's favorite story is how they'd line up at the nursery just for a chance to hold me for a few minutes.

But after that event, no longer did I care about attracting any attention. Such attention could be, and in fact had proven to be, quite dangerous.

And thus, the lifelong - albeit unconscious - attempt to keep people at arm's length began. Being a pretty girl was dangerous, but being a fat girl - while often painful and bitterly lonely - was *safe*.

The lesser of two evils, as it were.

I've been on the journey to lose weight more often than not, and the pattern always repeats. I'll do very well, see significant changes and then I'll shut down and start to undo all the good I've done.

It's not a conscious choice, mind you. It's a choice that is buried under excuse after excuse why I can't do what I was doing that was working so well. And it all comes back to one simple truth.

Being attractive or successful or pretty makes me vulnerable. If people want to pay attention to me, it scares me to death.

I don't want to be targeted or worse... overcome. So I keep this wall of flesh around me like a barricade, certain that no one will want to invade me or if they do - I have the stature to prevent it from happening again.

I guess that's what happens when you're abused when you're small. Being big suddenly means you need to swing as far to the other side of the pendulum to ensure that it never, ever happens again.

As I get smaller, I feel less empowered. More vulnerable.

So I guess I need to work on the feelings that I felt back on that day so many years ago.

I felt targeted, so I made myself unattractive.

I felt small and helpless, so I made myself big and threatening.

I felt vulnerable, so I turned into a control freak.

Men who wanted me = a threat. Men who didn't want me = safe. (a pattern that has repeated many times over the course of my life as I chose where to throw my affection and attention)

The hell you create by choice always seems far more preferable than risking fate, where anything can happen to you.

So here I am with all this information and vague ideas what to do with it.

The first of which is a new mission. To dig deep under the layers of fear and find my pretty.

It was quite an epiphany for a Sunday afternoon.

And it all started with a bottle of lotion.