I am not the same person I was....

No, this is not a post about walking for a change, because it has been raining for two days and I have not been able to go ;)

This is a deeper post, something that I have been reflecting on for a couple of weeks now, and I feel like it is time to bring these thoughts out into the light, to help me process them.

As you know if you have been following along, I have made some lifestyle changes. I spend a lot more time with my parents and my kids, even though my family is going through a rough time right now because my Dad has a chemical imbalance and only recently agreed to do what he is supposed to in order to take care of it. I am a lot closer with my mother, and I love seeing my older kids much more often. I started to tackle my body image issues, and I am very pleased so far with that. My home life is wonderful. Alex is enjoying school and just had her 6th birthday. I have a few wonderful friends. I have started taking better care of me, and that included my mental and spiritual health.

I still have my ups and downs, because I am bi-polar and always will be, but I have learned how to not let the downsides get so extreme. I have learned that truth without compassion is brutality. I have learned to come out of that shell I was in, my "hermit mode" as I called it, and have realized that I enjoy being around people, and going out to do things. I have new friends, ( real life, in the flesh ones! ) I have had some new experiences, which have been great, and it has affected the way I live and look at my life. I still have to take in the flesh people in small doses, but it gets longer and longer each time I hang out with people. I have been in full Hermit Mode for 4 years...I knew it would not happen overnight, but it is happening much faster than I thought it would. I have learned to stop avoiding sticky situations because I hated confrontation. I was agonizing over Vicky last week, because I was worried that she was having an issue with me, and I finally got my nerve up and just went over there one day and it turns out my inner hermit was playing tricks on me to try to get me to stay in my old life patterns, where she was comfortable. I am a Taurus, we do not like change lol.

I am a much calmer and less volatile person than I was even as short as 3 months ago. I started doing things just for me, and realizing that it was okay to do that. I learned that I was so far from the whole person I thought I was it is not even funny. My "Bull in the china shop" approach towards people, and their emotions, cost me things that were very dear to me. Some of those things I have gotten back, some I probably never will. I thought I was okay with who I was, but after a major upset to myself happened, and I got out of the "It must be someone else's fault" denial stage, I started taking a long look at myself, and I realized I was mostly pretending to be happy, convincing myself that the way I had been was okay, when it was not. I was not miserable, not with other people, the problem was with myself.

I have spent the last couple of months looking deep within myself, and sealing up the big huge holes and the tiny little hairline cracks that were on their way to becoming canyons. Walking and changing my body is the easy part. Exploring the deep, dark caverns in my psyche was and is the hard part. My internal changes are reflected in my outward lifestyle, hence the finally getting off my butt ( literally ) to get healthier, it is reflected in the way I feel about housework and my surroundings. It is reflected in how I interact with people, or do not interact with people. It is reflected in the new and so much better relationship with my parents and my older kids.

I am always talking about cleaning clutter out of my house, and all I usually ended up doing was moving it from one place to the other, not really getting rid of anything. Not so anymore. Since I have been working on my internal clutter, I have been throwing things away with almost reckless abandon. I have been rearranging, and purging, and even acquiring a few new things because I now have the right mindset to add without excess.

One of the casualties of my broken and volatile attitude was a friendship. It did not bother me at first, because I was to stubborn and pigheaded to realize that the way I handled things ( and not just that one situation, but several before it ) directly influenced the outcome, in addition to other things from both parties. Eventually, after this internal review, I realized I was just as much as fault, but by then it was to late, and I lost something that was an integral part of me. The last two weeks I have thought of this person almost non-stop, and dream of them every night for the past two weeks, which is very unnatural for me, to dream of one subject for more than a night or two. Yesterday I was on one of my purging and cleaning tangents, and I decided to clean out my side of the entertainment center, what I call my spiritual cabinet. 75% of the things in that cabinet came from that person I am talking about, and I saved every letter ever written to me by this person, and as I was rearranging I found them and re-read them, and ended up sitting in the middle of my living room floor, crying my eyes out for over half an hour. Months after it happened, I was finally able to process it all, and to grieve for what I had lost. I know that neither of us were perfect, but I finally saw MY flaws, and the mistakes I had made, and how I could have avoided it, but let my stubbornness take over. Last night I had a long and detailed dream, and when I woke up this morning, this nagging feeling that I needed to contact this person would not go away. I finally sent a short email, and I hope they still have that email address. I do not expect a reply, nor do I blame them for not wanting to speak to me, but that feeling would not go away until I sent it. Everything happens for a reason, even if you do not understand it at the time.

I laugh more, I talk more, I enjoy life more. I know it is a constant work in progress, everyone is, but I finally got out of that state of denial I had been living in. So much goes on in my life on a day to day basis, and I am no longer overwhelmed by it the same way I used to be. I realize sometimes I have to step back and decompress, instead of letting it build up because I do not want anyone to see thorough my hard-as-nails persona. I am still that person, but I am finally letting more the person I am at heart come out. It might be true that if you never take risks, or let yourself be vulnerable, that you will be hurt less, but you will also never really live a full life. I have spent the last 16 or more years building walls...and at first I finally started chipping away at them with a chisel, but now, I am attacking them with a sledgehammer. My old way of looking at things has cost me more than I wanted to admit, and I do not want to be that person anymore. I can be reserved without being cold hearted, I can be truthful without being hurtful. I am worthy of being happy. No one can change that but me.

What will happen now that I am letting people in, and dropping those walls? I do not know about in the long run, but short term some pretty awesome things have happened, and it hit me finally that the reason they were happening is because I was putting my true self out there, and the Universe was responding to my intentions and the desires I was putting out there. It is long past time for me to lose that jaded mask I wore for so long, and now that it is gone, I can finally breathe.....

 

It is time...

Actually it is long overdue. I sit around 8 months out of the year, bitching about the size of my ass and then how it is to hot outside to do anything about it, that I can not afford to go to a gym, how my *insert body part here* hurts, and a myriad of other lame excuses I tell myself to not get off my ass and lose some weight.

My outlook on myself is a big mess of conflicting emotions. I am comfortable with my physical self and totally uncomfortable at the same time, and it can change at the drop of a hat. I am can be filled with killer self confidence, not giving a crap what anyone else thinks of me, and then Jack will come home and go to touch me in some affectionate way and I close up inside, suddenly feeling 400 pounds and horrendous looking. ( Which is no fault of Jack by the way, he is perfectly happy and attracted to the person I am now, inside and out, sometimes overbearingly so...)

I have known since I was a young teen that my personality and attitude and the way I carry and present myself more than make up for any physical imperfections I have or think I have. Oddly enough, when it comes to the outside world, I really do not care what people think when they look at me. They either like me for me, or they do not, and I do not lose sleep either way. However at home, alone, I look in the mirror and think "Wtf happened to me?"  When did I get so complacent that I allowed myself to get this way? ( By MY standards, not society's unrealistic ones. ) I know WHEN it happened. When I got sick, and was diagnosed with a potentially fatal health condition, I left my job as a restaurant manager, took a few weeks off to get some tests done, and figure out how my life had to change ( not much it turned out ) and went back to work and then got laid off 2 months later, I got depressed, and became a statue. I sat ( and up until recently, as in days, still did ) on the computer constantly, eating because I was bored, because I was depressed and feeling sorry for myself, and because food was my constant companion. Now before you get the wrong idea, please do not have the mental image of me stuffing myself full of candy and junk...I am not that kind of chick. I ate ( and still do eat ) healthy stuff, just a lot of it, therefore making it UNhealthy.

Add to that the facts of I do not like the heat ( I am red headed, very fair skinned, and am very prone to getting burned and heat sick ) I like bugs and biting creatures even less than hanging out in the Florida heat, and I have a bad knee that I have had multiple surgeries on, and you have a woman who never went outside unless she had to. Winter has always been my favorite time of year until last year, when it was so freakishly cold for so freakishly long, and I used that to increase my list of excuses as to why I sat on my ass all day, every day.

My bad relationship with food goes deeper than that, I had a father who would constantly tell me as a child that I was fat, when I was not,he was not a very nice man, we lived out in the woods, with no kids, so food was my friend. I got over that, only to turn into him when it came to how I looked at myself later on. It did not help that after I had my second son, who was about 6 months old, and I had just had the first of my knee surgeries and was walking around on crutches, that my son's father, after having a conversation with my dad, came up to me in my parent's kitchen where I was making our son a bottle, reached around my and grabbed my stomach and JIGGLED it, asking me why was I still fat, was I pregnant again? I was horrified. I was in the best shape of my LIFE when I was pregnant with my son. I weighed 120 when I got pregnant, and I walked everywhere as we had no car, and I only gained 28 pounds with him, and he was a TEN pound baby when he was born. At the time of him grabbing my stomach like that, I weighed 130 pounds...that is it...I was 19 years old, in pain from surgery and doing my best to take care of our infant since he was no help, and he did that to me. So it comes as no surprise that I am the way I am about food, but that is not a good excuse to continue to be that way anymore.

Now I am an intelligent person, and I knew what I was doing was bad for me, but I am a horrible procrastinator, and I fully admit I will put off things as long as humanly possible. So I told myself I needed to eat less and exercise more. Eating less was not a problem, in fact, I got so good at it I only ate once a day, at dinner. Oddly enough, that made things worse. I was still sitting in this chair 15 hours a day, online, and the eating once a day was sending my body into "starvation mode" which is when your body thinks it has to store every bit of food as fat since you are not giving it enough regular fuel to do what it needs to do in a normal way. I made plans with online friends, to co-diet so to speak, but did not follow through. I could not bring myself to eat small meals 5 or 6 times a day as recommended by health experts, because that seemed excessive to me, especially because I was not increasing my physical activity enough to warrant me eating all that extra food. I was going to start walking, but never did, for a few reasons, one being there was a guy on the loose in my area kidnapping and beheading women and dumping them in the national forest not to far from where I live, and because I live in Florida, and it was Summer. Nuff' said.

Then about two weeks ago I was having a conversation with Jack about something, I do not even remember what it was about, grocery shopping most likely, and I ended up getting irritated with myself over my weight. I said to myself that enough was enough and something had to be done, I had to get up and do something instead of sitting in this chair all the time. Then this Monday that just passed Mother Nature decided to give me some motivation. It was 56 degrees outside when I went to take Alex to the bus stop. I felt that spark I get when Winter sets in, and in a spur of the moment decision, I got her on the bus, and instead of going home, I turned right and proceeded to walk down the loooooong dirt road adjacent to my road. I have been walking every morning for four days now. I take my pistol now, since you never know when I might need it, I DO live in the woods, with wildlife all over the place, and for protection against any human who decides fat people are not so hard to kidnap after all. I feel better every day, I walk 3 miles every morning, and on the first day I went, when I reached the bridge that is my turn around point, I was blessed to see a beautiful brown barn owl ( Owl is one of my totems ) 4 feet from my face, sitting at eye level on a branch at the little creek the bridge crosses. I spoke to her and she hooted at me a few times, and I thanked the Mother for giving me her blessing and showing me that I was doing the right thing.

Today I came home and got online to do some research. I took out bad fats from our diet ( not that there was many, I am not a fried food fan, and I seldom use oils or butter unless I have to ) a while back, I cook healthy, but I know there is more to it than that, so I spent my morning checking out various tips and advice and lifestyle change plans so I can help myself even more. For the first time ever, I am excited and feel that I can actually DO this. I have made small changes, I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I will have to actually eat to lose weight, which is easier now since I am walking, I actually get hungry, and that calorie counting, something I had always scoffed at or thought was for people who had no will power, is actually a pretty vital tool for some people in their quest to have a healthy lifestyle. I live in the south, and grew up on sweet tea, and since I have been walking I have been doing my best to only drink it as dinner, and drink water the rest of the day. So far since Tuesday I have done pretty good. I did have a soda last night, because I have been getting migraines which I attribute to the lack of caffeine from laying off the tea. So I took a BC powder and chased it with a Pepsi, but I also learned that as long as it is in moderation, I can have just about anything I want. The point is not to diet, which is a short term thing, the point is to make a life change, to where this becomes the norm for everyday life, not something I do to lose a few ( Okay a persons worth ) of pounds.

Part of why I am writing this is to put it out there in black and white, to have some sort of accountability for my actions, because if I tell others, then the chances are better that I will stick to it, even though I am doing this for me, because the thought of someone asking me how the weight loss is going while I sit here day after day is a little horrifying to me. I have made so many internal changes over the last 2 years, and now it is time to start working on the outside. I want to see my kids grow up, to maybe play with a few grandchildren one day, not die of a heart attack or diabetes at an early age because I was to lazy and to busy letting my past influence my future. My new life started Monday. I hope to make it last until I draw my last breath...

The Reclamation of Self

After my busy weekend, I was worn out. My body was tired from the physical work, my soul was tired because I had been in a mood while the house was tore apart, my mind was tired from trying not to explode due to the house being torn apart, and Jack seeming to go out of his way to add to it, coupled with an extremely long moon time, and by Sunday night I was just weary to my core.

I decided to make Monday "Me" day. The race was cancelled Sunday due to it raining in Virginia, so they showed the race Monday instead. I got up, got something to drink and my book, and settled in on the couch to read and watch some TV.

I got up later and did some light cleaning. I swept and mopped the kitchen and bathroom, washed Alex's bed clothes. Later I made a kick ass dinner of cheese, onion, and bell pepper stuffed meatloaf, made with ground chuck and Italian sausage, mashed potatoes and gravy, and butter beans, and I watched a couple of movies ( Valkyrie and The Informant ) did the dishes, and did not get online until almost 10 PM.

It was a great day, a relaxing day, and yet I still managed to be productive. It got me to thinking however, how little I do just for "me".

Most people think that because I am a stay at home Mom, that my life is filled with sitting on my ass eating bon bons all day and lounging around like the Queen of Sheba. As any stay at home Mom will tell you, that is total bullshit. Granted, we do not get monetary compensation for the work that we do, but that does not mean it is not still WORK. I do not have to go into all the things we, as SAHM's, do on a daily basis, but we run our households, tend our children, and up to 400 other things on any given day. I have always put myself last since I reached adulthood, always making sure everyone else had what they needed, while I went without. Even when I was working, I spent most of my extra money on things for the house, or for Jack or Alex, or my other kids, or gifts for my friends and for the people who worked for me. That is just the kind of person I am, and it is the part I miss most about working outside the home, the ability to buy for others.

Anyway, the point of all that is in everyday life, I come last. Alex is the Royal Princess and she makes sure you will not forget it. Jack is demanding in his own way, but with him it is not intentional, it is mostly having to clean up after him. ( he is one of those types that will leave every light in the house on, and then bitch about the light bill being so high, and swear it is my computer that takes up all that extra money lol ). I "work" long hours, and the only "me" time I usually get is after 1 am, when everyone is in bed, the chores are done for the day, and I can relax and chat with my friends when they are around and play around on FB. Normally, this really does not bother me in the least. But sometimes, like after this last week, and I felt like I had been running in circles for days, I realized that sometimes I HAVE to put me first.

The problem with that is guilt. I am an internet junkie, I admit it freely. Even if I am not at the computer, it is still online, so if anyone does decide to talk to me, I will not miss it. And gods forbid if I have to actually be offline for any length of time. I lose my damn mind. Yet if I am online, which makes me happy, I STILL have guilt because there is always a book to be read, something to clean, time to be spent with Jack and Alex, or something else that could be done instead of me being parked in this chair. Then there is the total disregard for myself, to the point that if I want a cup of hot tea, I feel there is no point in making it, because it is just me that will be drinking it, after all, so why bother? How fucked up is that, lol?

I tried to compromise a while back, to try to spend time online and still do other things, like reading. I have dial up, and it takes some things forever to load, so I read my book while I was waiting on things to load. That worked for a while, but the more I sit in this chair for long periods of time, the worse I feel. As sore as I was after all this painting the last two weeks, I still felt GOOD to be moving and doing things and having that sense of accomplishment. I need to improve my body image, but hate exercise. Added weight makes my bad knees and back pain worse, but it also hurts them to exercise, so it is a catch 22. It is not even all about the physical however. A little while ago I posted about who I am as a spiritual person, but the honest truth is, my sense of spirituality suffers just as much as my body does.

After I wrote that post, and in the days that followed, I started to notice a shift in my life. First one of my best friends moved to another country, and while I knew things would change, I thought I would be upset and depressed and lonely, because I knew she would not be around as much, she had a new life to start after all. Turns out, it did not effect me a fraction as much as I thought it would. I should explain that, before she reads this and goes " Oh I see how it is bitch, you don't even miss me!" Rofl.

I DO miss her, but it is different. She is happy, after years of being unhappy. In the last two years she has been unhappy way more than she had been happy, and that is only since I have known her, not counting her life before I came into it. We have a bond that transcends the miles, and we are always with each other, it is an unspoken bond we are both aware of, and I could FEEL that she is happy, and that makes me happy. Granted, you miss that person who is not there like they were, but how can you honestly begrudge someone when they are so obviously happy? What kind of best friend would I be if I moped and whined and made her feel bad about living her life in the way she should? Not a very good one!

However, all of this made me turn inward...not withdraw in a fit of despair and sadness, but to turn an objective eye on myself and realize that at much as I adore my friends, and no matter how much of an integral part of my life they are, I still need to be able to be content within myself, in those moments where there is no one to talk to but myself. It goes way beyond being able to entertain myself, it is about being able to have only me, and that be ENOUGH. To not be lacking anything, when all is quiet, and no one is around.

I have started to realize that I MATTER. My wants and needs, my desires and fantasies, they are valid and just as important as making sure everyone else around me is happy. Monday, when I was offline until late, for the first time in 3 years I did not feel guilty about not being there. I knew I had people wondering where I was, but for once, it did not effect me. I did exactly what I wanted to do that day, and I was happy. I have been lacking in mental and physical energy for so long, depending on others to make me happy, that is was so refreshing to rely only on myself to provide me with that inner contentment I so desperately needed. I felt more alive, and more spiritual that I have in years. I did not run to get my tarot cards, or go "do" something spiritual, I was just totally present within myself, and within my world as I know it. I felt connected with the universe, and m mind woke from it's dormant stage. I felt ALIVE. Not a zombie going through the motions. Alive!

I decided last night, laying in bed, waiting for my mind to slow down so I could sleep, that I would start taking two days a week for "Me". One day to do whatever I want, be it read, watch a movie, clean if I feel like it, ANYTHING I wanted to do, I would do it, and answer to no one's schedule but my own. The second day would still be for me, but it would be in the form of blogging. Even my blogging, which I love and am passionate about, felt old and stale. I started a new blog for my writing, thinking it would help, but all it did at first was to add to the guilt I had about not writing, because now I had THREE blogs I did not seem to be able to write in.

I realized that I have to let all that guilt go. It is not easy, because there are somethings I have been dealing with my whole life, but the truth of the matter is, I can not go back and change them, so what is the point of letting it eat at me for the rest of my life? Why should I feel guilty for wanting some time to be me? I do not need to go anywhere, it does not even really cost money, so why did I feel so bad about it? The world will not stop spinning if I am not online for a few hours. My computer chair will not run off in a fit of jealousy because I sit on the couch for a while. My bed won't hate me if I do not make it right away.

My energy is different. My mental processes are shifting. My life is changing again, and I finally realized waiting on everyone else to make me happy was not a life at all. I woke up this morning, and laid on my couch for 30 minutes, in a sunbeam, letting its light and warmth recharge me. Enjoying the silence, no sound at all except for the ceiling fan. Sunlight meditation. I let my mind drift, and every time a bad or unkind self thought entered my mind, or a guilty for not doing something else feeling came over me, I imagined it being vaporized by the powerful sunlight streaming down on me. I basked in the glow of the sun, inhaled the rich scent of my sun warmed leather couch, and was totally present inside my body and mind, and there was peace.....

If I want that cup of tea, I will get up and get it. If I want to spend the day reading in the comfort of my couch, I will do it. If I want to take a shower at midnight, I will do it. If I want to lay in a sunbeam like a cat and recharge ( cats are solar powered, you know! ) then I will do it! If I decide to kick up my heels and dance with self abandonment around my living room, then I will do it! If I decide I want to mop my floor and dust my house, then I will do that too. And if I don't? Then I will not feel guilty about it.

Because I am reclaiming myself, and I will not let go ever again.....