Next Tuesday is a big day for me: it’s my 6th anniversary. On September 3, 2013, I made the smallest of decisions with the biggest outcome: to try, just one more time, to lose weight.

I made myself accountable to anyone and everyone. I announced what I was doing. I asked for support. I put myself at risk in ways I hadn’t, previously, because I knew that if I quietly went about my efforts, I could just as easily quit.

I’m more surprised than anyone to be here, on the cusp of crossing into my seventh year, successful. I know darned well that even my closest friends may have supported me in the beginning, but silently watched and wondered when I’d reverse my efforts yet again. After all, I’ve repeated that pattern more times than I care to discuss, thank-you-very-much.

As I complete my 6th year toward not just weight loss but bettering myself in large ways, I feel a lot of things, and I’ll discuss them in the weeks to come — but this week’s thoughts may surprise you: I feel guilty.

Guilty for not having tried harder the numerous times I’ve traveled this same road. Guilty for knowing better and still giving up.

I regret that the decisions I made to stay where I was caused the problems that it did. My knees are hardly the only parts of my body to have sustained damage from morbid obesity; I’m sure I have arthritis that may eventually damage other parts of my body (or already has). As I back away from the edge of diabetes, I pray I have not done internal damage. My skin? It’s a mess.

I regret that I succumbed to depression and anxiety, and that had dire effects on my family. I regret not being a fully active parent to my daughter. I regret how my anxieties about my weight made me withdraw from social functions, and I gave in to hiding in corners whenever possible.

I regret, most of all, not being a fully active participant in my own life, denying myself so many opportunities.

I can’t go back in time and change those things. I can only do better from now on, and hope it’s enough. But at least that small decision that one September 3rd gave me something I hadn’t had in a very long time: hope. Every single day that’s gone by, since then, has brought just a smidgen more, but six years of little smidgens have added up to tremendous hope for the future and the determination to keep changing, keep improving, keep living a better life.

I’ve learned a lot over the past six years, including how much of a fighter I can be. I refuse to be broken, now.