A Fat Girl's Guide to Romance

I can remember a time, when I was young, being very desperate to find love. I seemed to attract rejects. The thin beautiful girls got the football players and popular guys. I didn't realize until much later that they were just as desperate as I, only they were "putting out" and had reputations as being "easy". I was a good girl. It wasn't because I was fat that I didn't have many dates. I had oodles of friends. It was because I was a good girl that I didn't have many dates.
My best friend in high school was sort of a "fruitcake". He was like having a best girlfriend. We were friends since grade school. He did ask me to marry him at one point, but he didn't like children, and I wanted a family. So we went our separate ways after high school.
My parents were very strict. I always seemed to gravitate to older men, so that gave my parents some headaches. My first steady boyfriend was 19 to my 16. That ended when I went off to college. Older men were more mature and able to look beyond the fat to the nice, pretty (yes, I said pretty) girl underneath. With size 6 being the norm, they liked the curves and voluptuousness of a size 16. I started to feel sexy, smart, and independent.
I was always a romance junky. I love romance novels to this day. I love romantic songs, too. It all started with Disney. Snow White's song "Someday My Prince Will Come"; Sleeping Beauty's "Once Upon A Dream"; and my all time favorite, Cinderella"s "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes" and "So This Is Love". How can a little girl not have fanciful notions of growing up and marrying her prince.
I have been lucky in love, but not always in romance. There is a difference. Reality has hit me in the face many times, but I'm still a romantic, emotional person. I have never given up hope and have always kept an open mind and heart.
I continue to read romance novels. Of course now they are quite lusty and grown up. I love the regency England time period. Some of my favorite authors include: Johanna Lindsay, Mary Balogh, Celeste Bradley, Lisa Kleypas, and Stephanie Laurens. Reading is a quiet, calm escape that allows you to continue dreaming of that prince, or duke, or viscount. And, you never get too old to dream.