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 morning. OK, before I write anything significant, I must tell you how happy I am that I'll be wearing this skirt to work today. Pleats, plaid, buckles...I totally should have been a Catholic schoolgirl!
So anyway, I saw Gloria Wednesday night for the first time since coming home from New Orleans and we had a really good session. I cried a lot (not the bad kind of tears) and shared all of the thoughts and revelations I've been having and she mostly just listened. She did say that I'm right on target with my un-plan to get some exercise most days, do some yoga every week, and try not to binge. I'm sure some of you think that I'm giving up by doing this but it's really just the contrary: I have hope now for the first time in months because I know this is right and good for me. Most importantly, I can do this forever, effortlessly. Frankly, I'm just under a year away from my 40th birthday and I'm over the fussy, the complicated, and anything that makes me feel frustrated and useless. Life is supposed to be fun and I'm ready.
Wednesday afternoon. Alrighty, I give up. Am I the only one whose comment systems (I think this is the fourth I've tried) don't seem to work reliably for everyone that wants to comment? In any case, I've added back the Blogger comments in addition to the Haloscan (the one with the funky link that I can't figure out how to fix), so I hope anyone that gets the urge to comment can do so now. Besides, now you have a choice of commenting systems and choice really is a good thing.
Moving right along, I've got my first appointment with Gloria since before New Orleans, so this should be interesting. I really feel like I've moved some nasty, old blocked energy in the last few weeks and I wonder if she'll be able to tell without my saying anything. (She usually can.) Also, just as an interesting aside, I've been crying more lately and she told me ages ago that crying is a good sign that blocked emotions and energy are starting to move. It's more than a little strange to feel tears well as I watch Alcott's football game, though.
Tuesday morning. If you haven't read the New Orleans post below, go ahead and do that (I'll wait). Done? OK, so here's what I've been thinking lately...
Could it be possible to be happy, healthy, and whole right now, just as I am, without losing a pound? I'm not talking about being a sloth and bingeing whenever I feel like it, I mean getting some exercise most days of the week, developing a regular yoga practice, and eating what I want when I want it but only until I'm not hungry (basically following Geneen Roth's way of thinking). I could never get down to my dream weight of 144 doing that (at least I don't think I could) but I know I could be happy that way.
Restricting calories, strict exercise plans, and the feelings of failure that accompany them when I inevitably "fail" have been my way of life since I was 12 years old. That's 27 years, people. And here's the thing: They haven't worked. I'd love to think that I'll change somehow and they'll start working, but I've watched myself over the last few weeks and I'll be cruising along with the activity portion of things and then I'll try restricting my food and it always triggers a binge. So, what I'm saying is, no more restricting. And it actually sounds pretty OK to me that I will be fat until my dying day as long as I'm getting regular exercise, managing my stress with yoga, and not bingeing.
It was as I was driving home from yoga on Saturday morning that I had the great epiphany: I'm actually pretty darned whole right now, as I'm sitting in this car, my body humming with the exercise and the yoga and the no-more-obsessing about what I'm eating/no-more-forcing myself into tiny portions of food I don't like. And then I remembered the mental picture Gloria had me create in my mind of myself, whole and happy. The picture had always been of me in yoga clothes, slim and serene, but suddenly I saw myself as I am - fat and all - serene and whole. I nearly had to pull over on the freeway because the moment was so powerful and so true. When I'm not obsessing or beating myself up for my dietary transgressions, I'm exactly what I've always dreamed of being.
I have Alcott and he has me. There is nothing - not clothes, not food, not the perfect pair of strappy sandals - that makes me feel as whole as he does. Nothing.
I have a wonderful boyfriend who follows me to New Orleans as a vacation. He stands up in the aisle during our flight because he came back from the bathroom and found me stretched out across both of our two seats, finally asleep. He told me to spend his birthday night at Alcott's first football game because it was once in a lifetime. He coaches youth sports on base and has no children of his own. He is a good man and he loves me and I love him, too.
My job doesn't inspire and excite me any more, but I'm pretty sure I'll be making a change at some point soon and I'm not pushing it right now. Besides, it pays really well and that helps me do the charitable work I want to do, so it all works out.
I love my yoga classes. This is gentle yoga, taught by someone about my size, and I feel totally comfortable in my own skin when I'm there.
The only binges in the last several weeks have come when I've tried to go back to my prepared (low cal) meals on the weekends for lunch or when I wait too long to have dinner (and get that shaky, "starving" feeling). Breakfast is fine, but lunch just makes me feel deprived and then I binge. So, OK, no more of that. I'll do breakfast and lunch during the week and breakfast only on the weekends. Waiting too long to eat has to stop, too, so I need to get some string cheese, fruit, and ready-to-eat veggies for my office - just enough to take the edge off until I can get home and eat.
So, no more elaborate plans with huge expectations (and huge disappointment)...just simple and easy. And, lest you think this is me giving up, I stepped on the scale yesterday just for giggles because I'm feeling soo good that I wondered if there might be a drop and *gasp* there was! I've lost 12 pounds from my all-time high and 2 pounds since I last saw Gloria at the end of September. Again, I'm not worried about the scale, but at least it's headed in the right direction, so I'm taking that as a sign that what I'm doing is good for me.
And that's it right there: It's good for me. Listening to my body, not abusing it with binges or mistrusting it with strict diets anymore, just going with the flow and doing what feels good, well, it's what's right for me right now. I could totally change my mind in a few weeks or months or years, but this is for now, and it makes me happy.
Tuesday morning. I can't remember if I'd mentioned where I'd be last week or what I'd be doing, so I'll mention now that I was in New Orleans from Wednesday to Sunday, working with the Junior League of New Orleans to help rebuild homes and neighborhoods. I knew, or thought I did, that I would be affected by what I did and what I saw in those five, short days. I had no idea.
*****
It started with an email passed along from the Junior League of New Orleans and an intriguing invitation: Come on down and help us rebuild some homes! I'd been so frustrated while watching coverage of the disaster on television last year that I immediately signed myself up, booked a hotel room, and paid for a flight. Once I'd done that, I realized that TCB would be far more helpful because he's got real construction skills, so I emailed him at work and asked if he'd come, too. He responded that he would and so I registered him with the project and bought his flight as well. Then we both went and asked our bosses if we could have the time off. (Such is the way of things when you're on a mission.)
Our flights on Wednesday were miserable, not because of anything the airline did, but just because I was overly tired and very cranky. No position could make me comfortable and TCB spilled cold water on me just after I'd finally found a way to fall asleep. (He didn't mean to, it was a brief moment of turbulence that did the deed.) I'd taken to looking out the window at the landscape below because that was helping the time pass and, as we began our descent into the New Orleans Airport, I noticed that many of the houses had charming, blue roofs. Others behind and in front of me noted the same thing and then someone said, "They're blue tarps. Covering their roofs." And the plane fell silent. This was just the first of many such moments of shock and awe I would experience in the next five days.
You immediately notice something about the New Orleans Airport: There are virtually no planes at gates and very few passengers waiting for planes. Statistics that I saw said that the airport is back up to 60% of its pre-Katrina capacity, but that does not jive with what I saw. I was in New Orleans in March of 2005 and I remember that airport as bustling and crowded. It was neither last week.
The cab ride provided more glimpses of what has changed: more tarped roofs, high schools with no pupils, FEMA trailers on front lawns, and - most disturbing of all - trash and other debris still sitting on a freeway overpass, left there by real human beings who'd taken refuge during the aftermath of the storm. People died up there and I was passing the remnants of their water bottles, still not removed. I felt a chill. It would not be the last such experience. We got to the hotel and settled in, knowing that the real work would start early in the morning.
The sight of 580 volunteers, most of them women, lined up and waiting for buses at 8:00 a.m. is an awesome thing. I don't know that I've ever been prouder to be a member of the Junior League than I was at that moment. All of us had taken time away from our own lives to be there, fueled by a desire to do something to help people we'd never met but still felt a kinship with. We piled on the yellow school bus (they have a surplus of them because many schools are still not open) and drove off for our days work. TCB went to a house on Soniat Street and I got on a gardening crew.
The house we worked on is located in the Freret Street area. This is the area where I did all of my work. The lovely lady whose garden we worked on that first day had lived in her house for over 40 years and was totally dedicated to her garden. Katrina not only flooded her front and back gardens for weeks, it also smashed up the garden furniture and damaged trees, so things were pretty messy back there when we started. Eight of us worked four hours to clear out the mess, dragging things to the curb for pickup and creating quite the huge pile of debris for whoever came by to pick it up. After lunch, we took the homeowner down to the local garden center to pick out new plants and then we planted her garden anew. It looked like the prettiest fairy garden ever when we left, and I cried when the homeowner came back to take a look. She might be living in a FEMA trailer on her front lawn, but she's got her garden back. (She told me that, as long as construction keeps moving, she ought to be back in her house by Thanksgiving. Her situation is very much not the norm - she's taken out loans to pay for the construction and is hoping that FEMA, her insurance, and The Road Home will enable her to pay off her loans when they come in.)
We also took a bus tour of the areas hardest hit by the disaster. I wasn't prepared for how I was affected by what I saw. Old and young, rich and poor, nearly every demographic was hit. The tour guides were members of the Junior League of New Orleans and they told us that about 60% of League members were evacuated from their homes for an extended period of time. There are parts of the city where nearly no one has moved back simply because it's not economically feasible. Most hospitals have not reopened because they can't find the nurses and other staff needed to function. Part of our tour took us past the Musicians Village project, run by Habitat for Humanity. This is a great project and about 100 of the folks who came down to work as part of the Junior League's project ended up working at Musicians Village for the entire time. Then there were the homes in the Metairie neighborhood, right on the country club. You'd think they, of all those affected, would be back in their homes by now, but you'd be wrong. The sight of FEMA trailers on the beautiful lawns of beautiful mansions is so strange that you can't, at first, process it. House after house, the tell-tale flourescent orange markings still on the front door and the 8'x20' trailer on the lawn. These are people much wealthier than I am and yet they can't "fix" this. (Who can, I wonder?)
I met so many wonderful people: the Honduran immigrant and her daughter, watering the trees we'd planted along the side of their house; the 12-year-old who reminded me so much of Alcott's 12-year-old brother except that this boy was living in a trailer alongside his uncle's house with his mother because their house is unliveable; the wheelchair-bound 82-year-old lady out in her garden giving her half-blind 76-year-old husband directions as he replanted one of the planter beds in her side garden. Each house represents a life and each trailer, each tarp, each fluorescent orange "X" on the front door is a life interrupted, a life changed forever.
After our last day of work, I was dying for a shower. I let the hot water run over me and then, unexpectedly, I started to sob. I cried for everyone that we couldn't help, everyone who feels alone and abandoned...as though they don't matter; I didn't want to leave. I'm someone who solves problems. Whether it's crosswords, brain teasers, product release issues at work, or things that might affect Alcott's life adversely, I fix things. I couldn't and can't fix this and that's not a situation I'm used to. I wanted to stay and keep working. I wanted to call everyone that I knew and tell them to pack up their tools and their Home Depot or Lowe's gift cards and come down for a week or a month. Ineffectual is not a nice feeling.
I'm home now and it sometimes feels like a lifetime ago, as I go about my mundane daily tasks and take all of my little life luxuries for granted. People ask me about it, but I see the glazed look in their eyes as I ramble on about how much it affected me. It truly is as those in New Orleans told me: people in the rest of the country have moved on. There's Darfur and Iraq and the upcoming elections and the earthquakes in Hawaii and "surely New Orleans must be OK by now." I'm here to tell you that it's not. Oh, sure, if you go to New Orleans for a conference and only move between the French Quarter, Bourbon Street, and your Canal Street hotel, you'd never notice the difference. But venture past those carefully cleaned up parts of town and you'll have no choice but to see how small the clean up thus far has been compared to the areas still devastated. Rebuilding New Orleans will be a many year task and it's going to take a lot more help from people outside the region to accomplish. Please consider making a donation to one of the rebuilding efforts I've mentioned, or, if you're able, go down and work on the Musician's Village project with Habitat for Humanity - I absolutely guarantee you'll never find a vacation that will leave you so changed.
