The Last Time

Today is the last time I'll ever have a first day.  I'm weighed and measured and on my way to the life I want.  I've lived with being over weight for 30 years and there's no one to blame really.  I had bad eating habits.  Never learned to cook healthy food and I gained too much weight during my three pregnancies but it's been a long hard 30 years of poor self esteem and aching joints.  I blamed my appearance for so many lost opportunities.  I didn't measure up to the skinny girls and I envied the ones who could eat anything and stay thin.  I looked at the pretty clothes and longed to feel fabrics cling to me in ways that made me feel beautiful.  I remembered what the felt like as a young woman.  Before I didn't "fit" anymore.  Not my clothes or my life.  Oh I paid for it.  Every day I paid for it when I looked in the mirror but I don't think making that connection ever really stuck.  I lost weight over the years with so many programs you name it I tried it.  Any one of them would have worked if I'd been able to believe in myself.  If I'd been able to stay motivated or just put that next foot in front and keep going but I never could.

So what has changed?

Well, it's a couple of things actually.  I want love in my life again.  I've successfully buried the past and had my funeral for it and I'm okay.  That last part is HUGE.  I carried around this torch for my past relationship for too long and I finally let it go.  I finally realized that the person I loved no longer existed and smiled to myself after so long of thinking all I needed to do was change ME and everything would magically fall back into place.  Well it won't.  It never could.  I know that now and my reasons for doing this completely changed.  I don't think even my best friends get how gigantic that was for me.  It opened up all the space in my thoughts and all this room in my world for new and fun things.  I was living in the past and as much as I wanted to change I couldn't.  I was stuck.  I'm not anymore.

Ya that was me too.  Always the bad-ass, LOL.  There was a lot.  A daughter with cancerous tumors that almost took her life.  Four failed attempts at marriage, two annulments and two marriages.  Three amazing kids that made it through their teenage years after so much angst I was sure I would never survive it.  Many jobs that took little pieces of my self esteem and bosses that were cruel, sexually harassing and stereotyped women into a corner.  I'm working for myself now and it's a peaceful life mostly.  I sell little adorable bulldog puppies.  They just wrap up my world in cuteness and I love that.  I worry about taxes, try and manage my money as best I can and hold tight to my heart until I'm ready to open my arms to someone again.  I don't know when that will be but I'm wanting that again.

My son Christian is getting married to his sweetheart Kate in September.  I waned to look my best and this began the attempt last year to chisel away at the body I'm in.  I actually started at 250 pounds last summer and I'm down to 237.  I joined Metabolic Research and now I'm officially on my way.  I'm doing the three days of prep and taking all the supplements and getting rid of the toxins in my body.  Big deep sigh.  I'm doing this blog as a daily reminder for myself.  As a journal.  I'm doing this because I need it.  I need to talk myself through this and writing has always been a way for me to understand myself better.  I can write the way I think and it's always just come to me.  Over the years it's helped me remember why I felt the way I did.  Reading back over old journals has opened my eyes to things so many times.  Time will fog over experiences we have and sometimes the raw emotion needs to be remembered.  Writing it all down is the only way we can truly go back.  Perspective changes our memories.  It deletes the bad things and our minds lift up the dreams we weave all around the bad experiences we have.  The rationalizations and the justifications.  They fog it all until it's just not there anymore.  After all if we remembered the pain of a nasty divorce it would never heal.  But those glimpses of reality we write down can help us close the door on obsession.  That's what happened to me.  I kept a journal about my bad years with my children's father.  I kept them in a bookcase I never opened and one day out of boredom I took that journal out and read it cover to cover.  It was full of how ugly I felt.  How messed up my life was and how horrible I thought i was.  Unworthy, fat, ignored and unacceptable.  I was shocked that this sad little woman used to be me.  I was amazed at how far I'd come and how I fantasized over this relationship that made me so unhappy.  Why?  Why did I do that?  Because somewhere inside us we want to make it right?  No matter what the cost?  Suddenly I didn't want it right anymore.  Suddenly I was grateful it was no longer my life and I was far away from it.  I couldn't get far enough away. 

That's when I knew.  I wasn't doing this for the past I was losing weight for my future.  For me.  REALLY FOR ME.  I love who I am.  I love that I can help people and give to them.  I love that I have a forgiving heart and that even people who hurt me are given forgiveness so that it doesn't come back to hurt me, not ever.  It doesn't make me weak it makes me strong.  Strong enough to let them go and move on with the business of life.  They can't hurt me unless I let them and I CHOOSE not to let them anymore. 

So this is day one.  I might not always have time to really dive into my reasons for things or have the kind of experiences that inspire but it's me, in all my ups and downs it's just me doing this for myself.  Doing this for the hope and faith that one day I will feel so good about myself that it will shine like a lighthouse and someone else will see it and be drawn to me.  Maybe I'll help them too and they will help me.  I'm happy alone but I feel like I have so much to offer that it would be fun to hold hands again.  Fun to share popcorn and fun to laugh with someone else.  I like that thought a lot.