Before anyone sends me an angry email or posts a nasty comment, I want to make it clear that I am a big guy and this strip is based on personal experience.

This may be hard for some folks to read and if you’re not interested, enjoy the comic and I’ll see you back here on Monday.

For the rest of us, here comes a bit of honest, unflinching talk.

Like some of you, I have battled weight issues most of my life. I was a fat kid in school, a kinda chubby guy in high school, and eventually a fat guy in adulthood. My weight fluctuated over the years. I dieted. I worked out. I fell into depression. I fell out of my routines. I gained weight. I got depressed. I got angry. I got lonely. I returned to my routine. I got depressed… I think you get the picture. For the most part, I have always been okay with who I am and how I look.

When I got married, I felt as confident as ever standing next to my beautiful wife who loved me for who I was. I felt loved and I felt desirable. Years later, my marriage ended and it almost broke me for good. I fell back into the well (I have long described my flavor of depression as being at the bottom of a deep well, looking up for sunlight). I felt horrible. I felt fat and ugly with a sadness pressed down on me that I would not wish on my worst enemy. For a very long time I wrestled with myself, having these little arguments over and over again, where it felt like a little voice in there tried to be reasonable, urging me to climb the walls of the well but it was subsequently tied up and beaten by the rest of my (much louder) emotions. I was trapped and for a time I did not believe I could find any way out, except for one definitive act that I could never bring myself to carry out.

Have you ever felt truly worthless? I did for a solid year.

That’s right, 365 days of feeling like I did not deserve to be on this planet, that I would never be happy again, and that I could never bring happiness to someone else. I felt fat and horrible as the cycle continued throughout those days. Sure, I faked it well enough after a while, but a handful of people close to me knew better while their attempts to help usually fell on deaf ears (remember, the reasonable one was at the bottom of the well). I pushed people away, I hurt feelings, and I broke hearts, all the while digging my well deeper every day. Seriously. At my worst I didn’t want to go out or be sociable. I didn’t want to be anywhere except where I thought I deserved to be: alone.

Did you read that part? Where I felt I deserved to be. Deserved. Just because I was overweight and felt worthless, I thought that I should lock myself away like some kind of goddamn monster.

It was a t-shirt that finally broke me.

I hated to buy new clothes (and I still do for the most part). I can go to my closet right now and pull out no fewer that eight t-shirts purchased sight unseen, tried on, anguished over, and filed away under the pretense of “well when I lose some weight it will be awesome”. Have you told yourself that lie? I did all the time. Here is the truth: that lose weight part rarely happens. The day a D&D shirt I ordered arrived and I believed it too small for my fatness, I lost it. I truly lost it. I laid on the floor crying my eyes out and gushing everything I hated in this world to two cats who had no clue what was going on (but to their credit did seem to care about my well-being). It was a t-shirt. A stupid t-shirt.

The next morning I woke up on the floor. My eyes burned and my face hurt from the crying but something felt different. I didn’t have some dramatic life affirming moment, I just felt better. I can only describe it like being sick and hoping to puke, knowing you’ll have some odd kind of relief once it’s over. I had basically puked up a large portion of my sadness and this was the moment to breathe. That week I started watching my diet a little more closely. The next week I did some push-ups 2 days of the week. As the weeks passed I made more changes. I started walking. I cut out sodas. I cut out red meat. I went back to the doctor. I became social again. I found my passion for the things I love (comics and gaming). I do it all slowly and on my own maintainable pace, but I am doing it. I feel a little better every week and though I have my moments, they do not linger as they have in the past.

By now, you may be asking why I am writing this on a site with Boner Fairies and gaming jokes. Why? I guess I just believe that we as geeks and people with issues can kind of smell our own. I know one of you is wrestling with something in your life and even if it isn’t weight issues, self image, or loneliness, you have something on your back and I just want to tell you truly as someone who was on the last step to a very dark journey that you can do this.

You can do this. You can fucking do this. We all can.

It may take some time and I know now that it is a process that never ends but when I wake up in the morning, I take my Lexapro, pet my cats, and look out onto the day with a bit of optimism rather than dread. I truly hope that if you are down right now, this post helps in some way. Maybe just knowing that someone out there who, by hopeful trade, tries to make people laugh has the same issues will put things in perspective. I just say again, you can do this.

Normally, I say something smart ass or try to be funny to close long posts but not today. Have a great weekend guys. Thanks for your time.