Here’s to all the people who truly need Christmas cheer. To everyone who wants to feel happy but can’t. To everyone who smiles through the pain until they can be alone to cry. To the people who see the joy on others’ faces but can’t quite feel it in themselves. To the people with the invisible ailments that don’t show on the outside, but hurt so much on the inside.
During this holiday season, here is to all of you. Because the most precious gift often is knowing that you aren’t alone.
…when, if you don’t stop, your body will stop for you.
I can’t believe I let it happen to me again, but I did – and yesterday I suffered the consequences.
With the hormones, the demands from work (and a lot of demanding people), suddenly having to figure out how to do Australian income taxes, a stack of Christmas cards yet to finish and send out, financial woes, and just wanting nothing more than to sit down and write… Well, all that stress bubbled up and came out yesterday.
After walking out of the tax office (an appointment we had to put on our credit card), I sat down on the steps and just cried. Poor Bloke was great and helped me to calm down, but I was in full on panic attack mode just trying to breath and not think about anything other than being in that exact moment. Every time I started thinking about something else we had to do, I couldn’t breathe again. So I had to sit and not think about any of it.
Not exactly an easy task for a woman who runs her to-do list through her head almost constantly.
I managed to calm down and make it through the day, but getting the rest of my work done involved frequent breaks because I couldn’t sit for long doing it before I’d start to tear up and have trouble breathing again.
Today is a bit better, but I still have to layer my work with task, non-work something, task, non-work something… (This is one of my non-work somethings.)
I was in denial. I was in denial about being exhausted, about being strapped for cash, about having to declare a no-presents Christmas because we just can’t afford it, about the fact that not having a ‘proper’ Christmas broke my heart because it’s ‘my’ holiday, that I was freaking out over having to learn taxes because we can’t afford an accountant, about… a million and one different things.
I’m so tired of feeling like I have to justify my stress because someone might scorn me for having it better than they do.
So no more justifications, no more denying that I want to give my husband a gift on Christmas even if I have to put it on a credit card and no more feeling like I have to keep my mouth shut when they treat me like crap.
I’m done with all of it.
Since I posted Click a week and a day ago, I have changed my diet, which has calmed my mind, which has prevented binges, which has helped me to lose four and a half pounds.
I love when things click.
I am a firm believer that there are some people who, if they just put their mind to it, can lose the weight they want. And there are others, like me, who must piece together the ‘whys’ of the weight before they can proceed to have a healthier life.
I also believe that the realisations I talked about in ‘Click’ have helped me to take another approach to healthier eating and being. And this time I am winning.
I started by switching to a mostly raw diet, which helps calm my mind and the moods that plague me and encourage binge eating. I then ditched breads and pastas, which always leave me feeling bloated after I eat them. (I didn’t know what bloating really felt like until I stopped feeling bloated.) After that, I cut down heaps on my alcohol consumption, which isn’t easy in Australia when so much revolves around drinking.
Instead of the usual struggle and doubts, I’m feeling good. I know I have a long way to go, but I’m finally viewing this as a true lifestyle change instead of a means to get where I want to go. I can honestly envision a life where I only very rarely eat bread or pasta. I can see myself embracing smoothies once more.
I’ve gotten past the panic period I usually have in the first week by letting myself eat as much as I want whenever I want as long as its healthy, and that plan has seen me settle down into a proper diet with plenty of vege and fruit.
I’ve been here before, feeling confident and getting healthier, so I’m not going to make any promises. I’m not going to expect perfection, no binges and no regrets.
All I know is that I’m feeling calm, if not good, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come in just one week.
Click.
That is the sound of one of my mental hang-up mysteries unlocking and floating into the realisation part of my brain.
Once again Hanlie and I seem to be rocking the same wavelength when it comes to our journies to health. (Really, I do read other blogs, too. I promise.) And once again, something she said has me thinking. (Really! Lots of ofther blogs!)
She mentioned in a recent post that when she first met her life coach, he asked her, “Why don’t you want to lose weight?” The post went on and I read on, but that question buried itself in my brain and refused to let go until I found an answer.
After all, what a strange question. Haven’t we all proven time and time again that we want to lose weight? Doesn’t the very fact we even have these blogs prove it?
And yet the question gnawed at my brain for days after. Why? Because I knew I had an answer to it somewhere in me.
Today, as I decided to rest my feet after a bit of wandering around the shops, I sat down across from a shop selling tiny tiny bits of marerial for tiny tiny girls for massive prices. My recent weight gain, recent blog posts, recent reading and that damned question all danced around in my head while I looked at that store.
I thought: “Even when I do lose weight and feel great, I will never wear crap like that. It looks horrible!”
Then I began thinking, “Well, maybe some of it. Maybe my fashion sense will change as I lose weight.”
After all, I have been overweight for nearly as long as I can remember. I’ve been wearing mostly overalls, jeans and baggy things for a long time. I don’t know what I’ll feel, what I will want to try on or what I will find I like at a healthy weight. I don’t know… I don’t know…
I don’t know how to be thin.
Bam! Click! Fireworks and the gigantic light bulb above my head.
The funny thing about realisations is that they are often simple, and there it was: I don’t know how to be thin. I don’t know who I am thin. I don’t know how to put a mask on it, so I’ll just have to be the real me, which is a whole different can of worms because I am terrified of rejection.
This isn’t exactly rocket science, but it isn’t exactly to be unexpected from a woman who was rejected (in all the real ways) by her parents.
So there it is. I don’t want to lose weight because I’m afraid. I’m afraid because I don’t know how to be thin. I don’t know how to prepare a mask for that.
While this is a beautiful realisation, it also makes things more difficult. I need to lose weight, find out who I am and be comfortable with that person all at the same time.
But knowing our inner motivations is half the battle, so I’m on the right track.
At the heart of it, my change of direction is not only for my immediate health but to answer the big question in my life:
Why don’t I want to lose weight?
This may seem like an odd question coming from someone who has been trying (and losing, and gaining back) weight for so long, but it’s the question that has been bothering me for a long time now. I can lose weight. I know how to and I know what to do. But what keeps me from doing it?
Why do I, instead of ‘falling off the wagon’ and getting back on, fall off the wagon and roll around into the mud while trying to dig myself such a deep hole that it’ll suck the entire wagon inside, never to be ‘gotten back on’ again?
As much as I try and succeed, there is a part of me that wants to pad itself with weight and never see the light of day again.
I have gotten past all the anger and shame to do with the question, leaving it more of a matter of curiosity than anything.
I’m sure it has to do with control; I don’t want anything being taken away from me. I am also on a journey to learning to self-soothe without food, which is a biggie because food was the only thing I could depend on for most of my early life.
With those kind of things standing in my psychology, I’m attempting to be patient with myself.
Did I mention patience isn’t my virtue?