I'm just your average, everyday, divorced 38 year old girl -- overweight, tragically unhip,
and trying to make a life for myself. I live with two furry beasts, Dave and Abby, whose
feline mission in life is to choke me with their fur. Nothing special.
Saturday night. Don't you just love the sound of the rain hitting the ground outside your window? Something about the rhythmic tapping relaxes me and makes me think that somehow, some way, everything will be OK. I think it has something to do with the symbolism of water washing things clean. I so want to be clean and sparkly and happy and new. Why can't you buy that at Nordie's?
Saturday morning. "A state of mind or a manner marked by easy coolness and freedom from uncertainty, diffidence, or embarrassment. Confidence stresses faith in oneself and and one's powers without any suggestion of conceit or arrogance." So says Webster's in defining Confidence. I have spent most of my life in pursuit of this quality and have rarely found it.
Generally, on those rare occasions when I feel strong and capable, I ruin things by also bringing along conceit, which just makes me look stuck up. Nothing further from the truth could be possible, but that is the impression that I give. Nine times out of ten, I walk out into the world feeling the very opposite of confident - full of self doubt and embarrassment (about my looks, my clothes, my body, my manner, the sound of my voice...everything) and wishing most fervently that I could know what others thought of me while also, simultaneously, dreading that information for the possibility that knowing the depth of their disdain would crush whatever passes for confidence within me.
Reading my words here, you might wonder what makes me so hesitant and reserved, as I do try to keep this site light and fluffy for the most part. Everything that is good and clever and entertaining about me is here, with as little of the dark and the ugly as possible, but that's not a very accurate picture of me.
I am the grown up version of the little girl who was teased and taunted by classmates from kindergarten straight through graduation from high school and beyond. I was fat, I didn't wear the right clothes, my parents didn't drive the right cars (and they were fat, too), I didn't go skiing with my family every winter, or head off to Hawaii each summer. I wasn't smart in the cool sort of way, I was a geek - although I don't think the word existed at that point. I followed rules, I behaved well, and I didn't do any of the things that the cool kids did. Everywhere I turned, I faced ridicule and scorn and those things burrowed down into my heart and made themselves a tight little home there, ensuring that confidence would never find its place. You can only hear things so many times before you start to believe them, too, and 37 years is a long time.
So, I sit here and wonder: will I ever - no matter what I do, how many pounds I lose, how much plastic surgery, how many charm schools - be truly confident? Is confidence something that takes root and grows throughout your life and, if so, isn't it too late after I've spent a lifetime wishing to be anyone but me, to try to cultivate it?
A charming stranger that I met on my recent trip to DC was so shocked at my blushing reaction to a compliment he'd paid me that he said, "you need someone to say nice things to you more often." I'm sure he's right, but I don't want my self-esteem and confidence to come through seeing myself through someone else's eyes because, and here's the important thing, no one else is forever. I can't keep building confidence through relationships only to see it disappear with the person who brought it.
Friday night. I'm sitting in front of the computer wondering if I'll come up with anything even mildly interested. Imagine that, Denise at home, alone, on a Friday night. Gee, how typical. I'm going to do Leslie Sansone's Two Mile workout at 7pm (need to wait the proper amount of time after dinner) and then, I suppose, watch some telly before bed. Man, I'm even boring myself tonight!
Of course, if I could be doing anything in the world, this is probably what I'd be doing, but I wouldn't be doing it alone. This is where having friends that live locally would be a real plus, don't you think?
Thursday (Thanksgiving) afternoon. It's Thanksgiving afternoon, I'm alone, and I'm doing just fine. I had a lovely dinner (from Susan's Healthy Gourmet, my usual source for prepared meals) complete with turkey, gravy, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, broccoli, and even a mini pumpkin pie. Yum! I did the 5K I was planning on this morning and came very close to a walking personal best (48:18 and I was shooting for 48:00). After the race, I hit Starbucks for my usual - decaf, nonfat, sugar free hazelnut latte - and then came home, read for a while, and then napped. Two kitties cuddled up with me on the couch, wonderful books everywhere around the house (current read is The Reluctant Metrosexual and next in line is The Lost Boy, the continuation of the story told in "A Child Called 'It'"), and a warm, full feeling - what could be better than this? I am so blessed! So, on this day set aside to count our blessings, I am thankful for my life - every bit of it - and my friends, both online and off.
To everyone reading this, whether a long-time reader or just-passing-through, my thanks for your support of this site (and me!) and best wishes to you and your families.
Wednesday morning. Today, kids, I'd like to share a little story with you.
Our story starts a few years ago (not that many!), in a land very close to here where a little princess - let's call her Princess Denise, just for laughs - lived with her wonderful parents in a wonderful castle (all 2,800 square feet of it). Princess Denise had just about everything her little avaricious heart desired and was pampered and cherished (rightly so!) by her parents and other, assorted family members. She loved to play with her dollies, especially Barbie and her friends, and make up elaborate stories involving international travel, handsome men, and efficient housekeeping staff. Her dollies had extensive collections of clothing which included one of the largest Barbie shoe and handbag collections in Orange County, California. Life was good for the princess, right up until she entered the dark, scary forest known as High School.
High School was awful for Princess Denise. The commoners were mean and hateful and no one appreciated her special qualities. Everyone was thin and blonde tall and beautiful in that "cover of Seventeen magazine" sort of way, making her feel short, dumpy, and inadequate in comparison. Her mother, the Queen, would console her, saying, "it's OK, Princess, one day you'll find the place that you belong and a prince who will love, cherish, and adore you." The princess held fast to that thought, praying each night for the prince and the special place that would make her feel pretty and wonderful.
Now, if this were a real fairy tale, this is where our princess would fall under the spell of an evil doer, falling asleep for 100 years, only to be awakened by the kiss from her true love, after which the happy couple would live happily ever after. The reality is, as it always is, a little different. Here's what really happened.
The princess met a really wonderful guy in college and, after a few years of friendship and dating, they were married. (It really was a fairy tale wedding - that part of the dream was true!) Unfortunately, this wonderful man wasn't enough to bring the happiness deep down in the princess' soul that she had longed for her entire life. She was still beset with self-doubt and the uncertainty that comes with trying to meet society's expectations when you're 5'3" and hopelessly curvy where you ought to be thin and angular.
Her unhappiness lifted, briefly, when she lost 110 pounds and maintained that loss for a whopping six months before separating from her husband (still a wonderful husband, but not for our Princess) and regaining every pound and adding a couple more, just for good measure. Chalking up another failure on the blackboard of her life, Princess Denise looked outside herself for a source of happiness and found instead too many toads and not a single prince. "What will I do without my handsome prince?," she thought. "Who will save me and make me happy?" And she looked and she looked, but no one - no matter how kind or how handsome or how rich - had the magic kiss to wake her from the spell of unhappiness she had unwittingly cast through her unrealistic expectations of herself.
What I've learned in the last few months, or, honestly, throughout my life's experiences, is that no one and nothing external is ever going to make me happy. Not the deep-down-in-my-soul kind of happiness that I want, need, and deserve. That's the bad news. The good news is that I don't need anyone else to do that because it's within my power to do it all by myself. I'm not there yet, but I'm on the road and I think my compass is (finally) pointing in the right direction.
No "happily ever after", but the story's not over yet.
Tuesday afternoon. I was chatting with someone charming today and shared that, in all seriousness, I cannot imagine writing up a "100 things about me" list because there just aren't 100 things about me that would be interesting. Also, I'm not nearly clever enough and it would end up being a laundry list of boring facts about me (like the fact that I worked at Disneyland in high school and early college) that no one needs or wants to know. For instance, I have two cats, Dave and Abby. (I always give my cats human names because, well, I don't know why I do it, I just do.) Blah, blah, blah. Yawn, yawn, yawn. Is it Wednesday night yet? Wednesday is the new Friday, you know!
Tuesday morning. If you're looking to cut the calories on your Thanksgiving feast, take a look here. I won't be cooking on Thursday, but if I were, these recipes sound pretty darned good (and not too complicated, either).
Monday evening. The lovely and talented Michele mentioned that she's been having trouble commenting on my site, so I thought I'd check to see if anyone else is having the same difficulties. If so, just drop me an email (the link is on the left) to let me know. Thank you and have a nice evening!
Monday morning. This morning, the day after my visit to Hometown Buffet with my parents for Thanksgiving, I received the shock of my life. When I stepped on the scale, I saw "212" pop up on the display. I checked again and saw the same thing. Wow. This means I've reached the goal for two Ten Percent Challenges in just 24 weeks which is, to my way of thinking, not an entirely unimpressive feat. In those same 24 weeks, I've lost 44 pounds, averaging about 1.8 pounds a week - right in line with the recommendations from nutritionists. Not too shabby, I must say.
In an even more startling sign that something I'm doing must be going well, my mother actually noticed that I'd lost weight yesterday. Now, I don't think I've written about my mother and my weight before, and I probably shouldn't now, either. It's not a pretty thing, to be honest. My mother is a wonderful person, really. I love her, she loves me, blah blah blah. However, she is a big part of my weight problems. I cannot count how many times she told me "you'd be so pretty if you just lost weight" (including while I was in high school, a size 8, and 120 pounds) or tried to beg/cajole/guilt me into losing weight once I'd gained a ton of it (my usual response was "gosh, Mom, you're right, I should lose weight, shouldn't I? Why hadn't I thought of that???"), so my weight is a very loaded subject with us. For the most part, she stays out of it, a tactic that I wish she'd employed yesterday because she made one comment that has been playing over and over in my head ever since. We were talking about how ill-fitting and baggy my trousers were and I told her that I was uncertain whether I would get them tailored or just give them away, as I'd been giving away bags of stuff for weeks now. She said, "that's what you did last time (you lost weight) and then you had nothing left to wear when you gained it all back." Yes, she really said that, bringing up the fact that I'd done all of this great stuff before and, ultimately, failed. I love my mother. Love, love, love, love, LOVE.
