Like many women, I have an askewed reality as it pertains to self-perception, which is in itself my own personal hmarsis, or to say else, my tragic flaw.

Hopefully, unlike the Shakespearean heroes, my recognition of my flaw will be able to alter the direction of my fate.

As a child, I could not escape adopting the view of myself that others--family, friends, teachers, strangers--had of me.

"You'd be such a pretty girl if only you'd lose some weight," my grandmother said.

A girlfriend once said, "Once you lose that baby fat, all the guys will be after you."

And, although I truly believe he meant to ill-will, my father told me when I was twelve and we were watching the Miss USA pageant, "You know, fat girls don't win beauty contests."

Even the clerks at department stores were harsh in pointing to the direction in which my mother could hope to find clothes to fit me in the "husky" section.

My personal favorite, though, was what some teen-age boys in their oh-so-sensitive phase chose for me as a nickname in high school. "Harp-oon."

My revelations are not for readers of this blog to feel sorry for me, but for me to add to the realization of my past.

They were words. They are words. They will always be just words. And, they are not the words of all, not even some, but the few people whose words I have chosen to remember.

We all do that...don't we?

It is so easy to remember and focus on the negative, and so devistatingly difficult to elate myself according to the throngs of personal accolades I have received throughout my life.

The irony of the situation lies in the presentation of myself to so many as a confident and self-assured go-getter who is afraid of so little. It began as a facade I created to convice the malicious attackers of my youth that I was untouched by their harsh words.

As time passed, the confident and self-assured woman I presented to so many, actually became a comfort to me.

Until I realized, I am a hypocrite.

I am not whole. I have to defeat that which has sought for so many years to defeat me.

I have tried to do it through going to the gym. Losing weight. Looking "right." But none of that has been for me.

It has been to silence the voices from my past, to which I have decided to hold.

Held they will be no longer as I welcome the woman I am intended to be: all of that which is not created by the negativity of those before me.

Shakespearan heroes realize, right before their demise, their tragic flaw.

Good thing I studied Shakespeare.