Update!!

I've had a really hard time focusing on just about anything lately, which is why I've sort of actively been avoiding trying to write an update for the blog. I'm a little all over the place, but a couple things have been on my mind lately - and organized or not, I'm going to try to write about them now.

1) Focusing on fun.

As many of you Regular Readers know, I've been struggling with depression for a little over a year now, and recently it's been creeping back into the "worse and worse" area from the "improving" side it hung out in for a few weeks back in March/April. Week before last, after going through 3 days of arguing and screaming with my husband about how I want to move forward with my career/lack of one, I sort of resigned myself to being miserable and slept a lot of the weekend away. But then last Monday my husband asked me a very important question: "Do you ever have fun anymore?"

I replied, "I like hanging you with you." Then he said, "Liking me isn't the same as having fun." Which is true. And I realized, no. I don't really have fun anymore. I'm too busy with work, being angry and depressed over work, trying to be Super Wife/Mom at home (and feeling like I'm forever failing), and generally being frustrated and irritated with everything/everyone to really focus on enjoying myself or having fun in anything I do. I realized I had only done 2 things recently that I really considered "fun" - one was going to play trivia with a group of friends (which has become a weekly gathering), and the other was baking a pie for my dad for Father's Day. "But I can't go to trivia EVERY night or bake a pie every day." Well, no. But I could do those things a couple times a week and have a little enjoyment...

So, the other day it was kind of hot and disgusting here in Virginia, so I set up the baby pool with Nolan when we got home from work/daycare in the evening. I was sitting outside with him, dipping my feet in the water, while reading a book - and he kept trying to dump water on my head. I started to get frustrated and angry, but instead decided to put the book down and play with him. It made him super happy and in-turn made me happy. It was fun. And I realized, I have to do these things. It's not going to fix everything - it may not fix anything - but at least if someone asks me if I ever have fun anymore, I can say, "Yes, sometimes." instead of having to honestly realize, "No, never." and wallow in how depressing that is.

The #356daysofchange campaign/challenge/whatever-you-want-to-call-it was supposed to be about mental wellness as well as physical wellness, and focusing on fun is a step in the right direction. I continued the trend by going out Friday night for the margaritas and Mexican food I've been craving for weeks, seeing my good friend's band play Saturday, and attending a last-minute pool party Sunday afternoon. I am now a bit exhausted and looking forward to a few nights in this week, but I felt like I was able to really enjoy my weekend for the first time in a long while.

2) It takes a long time to get fit/reach the body aesthetic/weight you want.

Not for everybody, but for lots of bodies. It's easy to get sucked in to the "success story". The person who lost 100 lbs (or more) in a year (or less), the person who switched to a Paleo-style diet and cured their Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure within a matter of months, the person who shed 10% of their body fat in 6 months. These are major successes, but rare is it to read the success story of the person who reached their goal (whatever that may be; weight, body fat percentage, clothing size, cholesterol level, etc.) over the course of 4 or 5 (or 6 or 10) years. I sometimes feel as if people don't consider those to be real successes; that if you can't do it within a year, it really isn't worth celebrating or acknowledging.

In September, it'll have been 4 years since I started really working on losing weight and getting healthy. There was a pregnancy in the middle there, but losing weight and getting healthy was still on mind throughout the entire process. I couldn't tell you what I weigh today, but I betcha it's about 192 lbs. I've weighed right around that for 18 months. Sometimes I feel like this is a failure. But when I look at my body, the way my clothes fit, how I feel in the middle of a run or a workout - I'm a success. My body is completely different at THIS 192 lbs than at 2013's 192 lbs... and even more so than JANUARY'S 192. I gained a lot of fat over the winter...

But that's part of my point: it's not always a direct line from A to B. Many more people struggle over the course of several years to reach their goal. It takes time to find a good nutritional balance, the type of exercise you enjoy/respond best to, to make things like diet and exercise a constant top priority - but also to find a balance between that and letting loose and having fun sometimes without obsessing over calories or "is this the healthiest choice" or feeling like "I'm going to have to run this off later".

I still have fat on my body that I don't want or feel is unattractive. But overall I'm beginning to feel really comfortable in this body and to really like the way it looks. I'm also starting to focus more on buying/wearing clothing that is flattering on my body now instead of what my body might look like in 2 years. That's helped a lot in the self-esteem department.

3) I'm finally free from food.

Okay, that's maybe a weird way to put it... but I am finally free of calorie counting. A lot of this has come along with my body acceptance, as well as my realization that I just can't "heathily" track calories. Meaning, no matter what I've said in the past, I just get too wrapped up and obsessed over calories and macros and end up just feeling horrible about myself most of the time instead of feeling like I'm accomplishing something worthwhile. Because I was so obsessed for so long, I now know what types of foods I need to eat in order to regularly meet my nutritional needs without tracking everything. I have no idea how many calories I usually eat. Some days I'm sure it's close to 3500, some days probably 1900. I don't care. I'm continuing to build muscle and lose fat and my clothes fit and look better every day.

I'm learning to enjoy my food and eat more mindfully. I've fallen in love with salmon lately and have been eating tons of that and other fish. Same with vegetables. Especially grilled! All the salmon and grilled vegetables all the time!! I can't wait to buy a new grill this weekend so I can start grilling things outside vs on my George Foreman.

I can't tell you how good it feels to be able to eat the ice cream if I want it, or drink the beer, or go out to eat without feeling like I need to exercise to compensate for the calories. And on top of this, I've noticed I don't feel the desire to eat junk nearly as often. Nothing is off-limits, and therefore I don't ever feel deprived. If I'm hungry, I eat. Without guilt. It's amazing.

Kitchen Ghosts

It’s 1:30am and I’m standing in my kitchen eating a bowl of granola cereal, hoping I don’t throw up and wondering if there are demons in my house trying to possess me. I want to cry, I’m so tired. All I want is sleep. If I lie on my left side, my left arm and leg go numb, my cheek tingles – if I roll to the right, the same thing happens on that side as the pins and needles subside on the other. If I lie perfectly still on my back, my neck hurts slightly, my feet want to cramp. I had dozed off for a little while, but then I saw these flashing lights above my bed… and I was so hungry… I’ll realize later that I was seeing migraine auras. This doesn’t occur to me when I’m standing in my kitchen in the middle of the night worrying about the supernatural. I have the hood light over the stove on, because it just seems unnecessary to turn on the bright pot lights overhead… but right here, in this moment, I’m a little bit scared of the dark. I don’t want to fully admit it to myself, but I'm also scared that if I turn the “big light” on it might just make it easier to see the boogey man that is surely lurking in the shadows of my living and/or dining room, keeping me from sleeping.

I eat as quickly as I can. I’m so hungry. I don’t remember ever being so hungry that it’s woken me up in the middle of the night, so hungry that I almost feel like I need to vomit from the tempest of stomach acid churning inside me, forcing me to sleepily slog downstairs and find something quick and hopefully filling. I finally finish my late-night cereal, shove half a banana in my mouth and chug a large glass of milk.

I half-almost-run back up the stairs. I leave the stove light on. I don’t want the shadows to get me. The upstairs hall is so dark. I’m 5 years old again at my grandma’s – if I can just get down the hallway I can hide in the bed. Deep breaths while reminding myself that I’m adult and this is my house and nothing scary or bad has ever happened here, I make myself walk slowly, walk quietly, to the bedroom. The only ghosts that are chasing me are the ghosts of a familiar irrational feeling...

I’m so scared of the numbness. My mind starts telling me that if I fall asleep I’ll probably just stop breathing altogether because my lungs will go numb or some other weird thing that’s probably not even possible. I’m panicking as my husband snores. He’s slept more soundly in the last two weeks than he feels like he ever has, he tells me at dinner Monday night.

I lie in corpse pose (ironic) under the covers and try to breathe deep into my belly, slow on the inhale, slower on the exhale. I think it may have been close to 3:30am before my mind finally gave up on creating horrendous organ-failure-due-to-numbness scenarios and the yoga breathing allowed me to pass out. The baby woke up at 5:50am.

I slept on the couch from about 6am until close to 8am. I didn’t go numb at all, I didn’t imagine my organs failing once. I just slept… but on the way to work, it started again. My right hand was all tingles, my hip, my foot. I was starving. Again.

I had breakfast (two breakfasts, actually) and popped a bunch of B Complex thinking that all this tingling crap might all be some kind of bizarre migraine side-effect. It seemed to help a bit.

You know what else B vitamins are good for? Keeping stress and anxiety hormones in order.

I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s a pretty clear sign of high stress/anxiety when one is awake in the middle of the night concerned about being possessed by demons due to seeing some migraine auras. …this could also be made worse by the fact that American Horror Story can be scary. Or late-onset paranoid schizophrenia. Let’s just really hope it’s not late-onset paranoid schizophrenia.

Tomorrow I go and meet with a new therapist. Tomorrow can’t come fast enough. I also called and scheduled a physical/check-up with my regular doctor for later this month. Sure as hell couldn’t hurt to have some blood tests run, check hormone levels, etc. I don’t know that I’ve had a regular check-up since I was 17 or 18.

The point of this bizarre story is not to make you realize that I’m even crazier than you already thought I was (though I am sure it probably accomplished just that!), but more to show myself what a breaking point I’m reaching.

I had made a promise to myself within the last couple weeks, that come April I would be making some serious life and lifestyle changes. Some of those changes I can begin working on immediately, some of them I originally felt like needed to wait. I’m not sure how much longer those other things can wait anymore. More and more I wake up in the morning and think to myself, “I can’t live like this.”

You’d think I was in some kind of abusive situation or something… I know I seem a bit dramatic, but it feels very stifling, smothering. I can’t even get into a lot of it here because it would be unprofessional and could get me into trouble. Even in saying that I feel as if I’m not being quite vague enough.

Something’s gotta give, and as much as I want to say, “This is what I need and want and this is how I get it, so I’m doing it right now!”, I know that it’s also a delicate situation and a delicate balance and these decisions are ones that I cannot take lightly or be reckless with. I’m hoping within another couple weeks I’ll be able to have the energy and focus to put a plan into place and start taking responsibility for bettering myself and my life so that I don’t have to spend any more nights cowering in my kitchen over a bowl of granola worrying about the boogey man and organ failure as I listen to my husband’s quiet snores coming from upstairs.