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.
Friday afternoon. OK, I know I've been Little Mary Sunshine for a while now, and I have had requests from folks to let some of the negative stuff out in order to prove that I'm human. Rest assured, dearest readers, I am all too human, it's just that I'm starting to know what's really important and what's just noise.
Important: My mother's health Noise: I haven't lost any weight since early December
Important: I've hurt someone important's feelings (several, actually) Noise: Products that I have components in are not going to go on schedule (several, actually)
Important: For one of the products referenced above, I missed that fact that we were lacking approval to ship and neglected to send out a "do not send this product" email. Now the programmer is in big trouble from his project manager because the product has to be pulled out of testing and off of the latest CD. His words as he came through my door ("You told me they would be approved") and the look on his face ripped my heart out.
With everything I've got going on, it's inevitable that I'm going to miss something and product release dates slip nearly every day, but it's the fact that my lack of action has hurt someone else that has tears pricking the back of my eyelids. No, I won't cry. It takes more than this to make me cry at work, but, frankly, not a lot more. It's the end of a really poopy week here in my little corner of the VLSCI world and my maximum number of simultaneous (work-related) crises has already been exceeded. Is it 5pm yet?
You know what I'm thinking about, though? "Man, that 60 minute walk after work tonight is going to feel so good!"
Important: Knowing that even a bad day will pass and that food is never, ever the right answer to a problem.
Thursday night. It was a long, arduous day at work followed by a 65 minute high-intensity cardio workout and I'm beat. Yes, I am truly dragging my butt at this point. To illustrate how tired I am, I'm actually contemplating skipping dinner because I'd have to stop off somewhere to pick it up and I just want to go and collapse on the couch. Denise skipping dinner? Has the Earth stopped rotating around the Sun???
You know what's cool, though? Even through all of today's travails, even as I was slogging through my workout, there was this little glow of contentment inside me that nothing could extinguish. It's there when I wake up in the morning and especially as I go to sleep, when I stop to count my blessings and give thanks. Throughout the week, people have been stopping me to tell me how fabulous I look, asking how much weight I've lost, and my former boss even said, "girl, every time I see you lately, you've just got this glow - you look fabulous." I won't pretend that the compliments from others aren't wonderful, because they are, but the best feeling of all is knowing that I think I am fabulous. At 206 pounds and holding. In a size 18/20. With a generous food baby. Just...as...I...am.
Tuesday night. Am I the only one that seems to have certain absolutes about life that, when I approach them, just intimidate the heck out of me? Let me give you some examples of what I mean.
I have only been under 212 pounds twice in the last six years and the last time it happened, I was on my way up, not down. When I approached that landmark number on the scale, along with the sense of pride and accomplishment came some trepidation as well. I know how to be when I weigh more than 212 pounds, but I never really mastered handling myself when I weighed less than that amount (which is probably why I eventually crossed back over the line and gained it all back). I was scared, and then I did it and I went a few pounds further just for good measure. Life is good, nothing bad happened, and no monsters have assailed me as yet.
I have to stop right here to say dear God, it's raining AGAIN! I thought it was supposed to let up? Seriously, folks, this has ceased to be amusing and we've all stopped saying our usual, "well, but we need the rain." We need about 10 inches a year. We've had 21 since Christmas. And it's not stopping. Someone MAKE IT STOP. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes...
With my workouts, there are certain milestones that have huge emotional baggage attached. One such milestone is the transition from walking to running. I have always loved running because it makes me feel light and graceful which, especially for a girl that's always been fat, is a feeling to be treasured. Just thinking about making the transition, however, makes me a little crazy because I know that it will mean I can't pretend that I'm not strong, not capable. Seeing any patterns?
Essentially, what I'm looking at here is a fear of success. Both stories - both milestone moments - are invisible walls representing success for me that, once scaled, leave me out in the open without my protective coating of failure to cloak me from the gaze of others. And, if people notice me and I'm successful...well, what would I do then??? What indeed.
I've never been able to handle success or praise or any sort of positive attention, no matter how deserved or sincere. Never a problem with the opposite - criticism, failure, and condemnation are my long-time companions - but success throws me for a loop. I don't know what to do or how I'm supposed to react when good things happen, but, for the first time in my life, I know that I'm going to figure it out.
I'm done playing down my successes so that others won't feel slighted. No more tossing aside compliments because they don't fit with the stereotypical "poor little fat girl" image of myself I've been buying into since I was a little girl. Success is all about living your life with zest and with passion and you can't do that if you're afraid to be noticed. The next time one of those invisible barriers pops up inside my head, I'm going to walk right up to it, knock on the door, and walk through the threshold with my head held high. I can handle success in the same way I'm handling everything else - one foot in front of the other, one minute at a time.
Monday night. Remember me? I'm the girl who sits on the couch all night and every minute of the weekend, watching bad TV and eating huge amounts of food. I have no friends because I never go out and because I drop everything when a man notices me because maybe, just maybe, he'll be the one that will save me from myself. Maybe, if he likes me enough, then it might be OK to like me, too. Work is just something I do to make money so that I can go home and do nothing and then eat. My biggest fear is, well, pretty much everything outside my door. This is my life.
The above paragraph could have been written by me at just about any point in the last seven years, since my divorce, and it's all completely true. Up until June 6, 2004, that was my life and, as awful as it was, I was still afraid to dream of anything bigger because of the risk involved in trying to get there. Risk? I was worried about risk when I had no life to speak of? Yup, you bet. Scared, small (even at over 260 pounds), miserable, and dying, slowly, each and every day a little more.
And now? (I just had to stop typing because it's all just too much suddenly and I have to cry with the sheer enormity of just everything.) That girl is virtually gone and I really don't think she'd recognize me if we ran into each other on the stairs. Yes, the best parts of her, those that were buried really far down inside all of that misery and unhappiness, are still with me, but, like the "good china" after the divorce, they get used each day now instead of sitting in the cupboard waiting for a special occasion. My life is a special occasion and I'm not waiting for company to bring those good qualities out any more.
I have this fabulous life, one that I'm just coming around to realizing is mine, and I did all of this. I had the choice of sitting where I was and killing myself with sadness and loneliness and food, or getting up, taking a risk, and doing something and, miracle of miracles, I chose the latter. No man brought this to me, my parents didn't bail me out, and it wasn't my friends that threw me a lifeline, it was me. After all of that fruitless searching, it turns out that my Knight in Shining Armor, the one who would save me from my tower of pain, was really only a fairy tale from my youth and, now that I'm finally growing up, I've no need of him.
And so I sit, glowing with the realization of what I've accomplished, celebrating the many miraculous blessings I've got in my life, happy at last. I have everything I've ever wanted and so many things I didn't even know I was allowed to dream of and my life is full and complete. It's like the end of one of those vision quest stories, where the protagonist goes on a long journey, slays many fierce creatures, and then wins the ultimate prize. No handsome prince needed for this fairy tale ending. Bring down the curtain, bring up the lights. Except...
Except that it doesn't end there. Just when I thought I'd figured it all out and that I had everything in my life that would fit, well, let's just say that God still has one more surprise up his sleeve for me. A surprise that wouldn't have worked for that girl last June or, truth be told, even the girl from October. No, it's taken every minute, every step, and every revelation up until now to make me ready. And I am ready. Ready to face this latest beautiful, amazing surprise with the grace and strength of a woman who knows and likes who she is, what she does, and where she's going.
So, this story's not over yet - not by a long shot. Hold on to your hats, gentle readers, because someone's just put some Etta James on the phonograph, he's beckoning me to come join him for the spotlight dance, and, with a lump in my throat and too much joy in my heart, I'm stepping out into the light.
Raise your hand if your workout tonight totally kicked your behind
Sunday night. That would be me with my hand raised. Well, sort of. At this point, I don't have the energy to raise it all the way, so it's sort of like I'm hailing a cab or making a left turn. I guess that's what burning nearly 600 calories in a workout will do to you. I'm not sore, so that's a good thing, just sweaty and exhausted.
Would whoever asked for southern California to be washed away in a torrent of rain please take it back? I know we can be obnoxious and self centered and oblivious to the rest of the country (because we are our own country...but I digress), but really, truly, we're not bad folks and I promise we're all ready to play nicely with others again. Really. Just make it stop raining!!! In the name of all that is holy - and I'm someone who loves the rain - to go from firestorms that came within two miles of my house last year to flash flood warnings and rain pounding down relentlessly for three straight days, well, all that I can say is I hope you all enjoy paying a lot more for your citrus, berries, lettuce, and other produce because this little cloud that's parked itself over the Golden State is going to do very bad things to all of the crops that are growing in the San Joaquin Valley, to say nothing of my poor flowers and plants on my balcony, which are looking really peaky from too much water. Who knew such a thing was possible in a desert?
Who finally got off her duff and got all of the Christmas stuff down?
Sunday morning. Yes, that would be me. I didn't put much up, to be honest, because I was busy at work, busy with my CASA stuff, and busy working out as much as possible to combat all of the fattening foods being eaten, and still it took me until after twelfth night to get it down. Bad Denise, bad!
I had a great time at the Junior League meeting yesterday and met some great girls. We were broken into smaller teams, in order to really get to know one another and feel comfortable, which I think is a fabulous idea, and I volunteered to put together a Yahoo group for my team, in order to facilitate communication. It's already up and running and it looks like most of the girls have joined without any problems, which is always a plus. We have a General Meeting on Tuesday and a few of us from our small team are going to get together for dinner prior to the start of the meeting which ought to help us from feeling overwhelmed at the enormity of the entire League.
I went out for my walking workout yesterday in the rain and, surprise!, when you're prepared for it, it's actually a lot of fun. I sort of overdressed, though (Goretex outer layer, Polartec mid-layer, CoolMax tank top), and ended up having to unzip the Goretex and Polartec to let air in. Lesson learned - less is definitely more when you're working out. I just didn't think I'd be pushing myself hard enough to work up a really good sweat, but I was definitely wrong. By the time I got home, after an hour of fairly easy walking, the Polartec was completely drenched and gross. Thank goodness for washing machines.
Speaking of washing machines, it's laundry day at Chez Denise (and not before time, either!), so I'm going to go switch loads before heading out for today's workout. A (geeky) girl's work is never done!
