We have this idea that armor makes you stronger. It means you’re constantly ready for battle, and you sure don’t intend to lose. Suiting up with impenetrable metals to block attacks from deadly weapons sure does sound like a power move.

Or does it?

I’m not so sure.

True toughness requires vulnerability. True strength means not yielding to and masking your weaknesses. True power demands the risk of losing it.

Loading up with body armor isn’t a show of force. It’s a projection of fear. I know because I’ve done it all my life: I’ve worn my extra weight like a protective layer to prevent anyone from getting close enough to hurt me.

The problem with this approach — and the inherent irony in it — is that being heavy does precisely nothing to shield anyone from hurt. It only invites a different kind of externally inflicted pain, and the internally inflicted kind, too.

Loneliness.
Conspicuousness.
Mockery.
Rejection.
Othering.
Embarrassment.
Ostracization.
Discomfort.
Shame.
Isolation.
Regret.
Self-disgust.

That’s great insight to have in retrospect. Cruelly, having no consciousness of it until it’s damn near too late is perhaps the most painful consequence imaginable.

Now that I’m in the process of removing a lifetime of body armor, exposing myself to the potential for the type of pain I’ve hidden myself from since before I was old enough to recognize what I was doing feels like a scary move. But what is it they say about true courage? It’s feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Not just to prove your dominion over fear — but to prove something even deeper, even bigger, and even more meaningful to yourself.

I’m discovering a whole other person beneath the physical, emotional, and psychological layers through my weight loss mission. This is a veritable existential excavation that was not the intended goal of prioritizing my health, but it’s by far the most important one. I’m giving myself something no one else can give me: another chance at living the life I want, the way I want, as the person I want to be.

True fortitude, it turns out, is learning to live without the armor. It in itself is hard work that not everyone is cut out to handle without some grit.

I’m learning this lesson more profoundly every day — one pound at a time.