More naked

Panic. I am panic tonight. I decided to wear my favourite shirt and it was too big. All of a sudden I felt terribly naked. I still feel it, more naked than just my skin would be. Isn't it ridiculous? All this time I thought that carrying extra weight was a sign of weakness, when really it's been the sign of an ongoing battle with my own body. As the extra me sort of whittles away, I'm left feeling exposed and unsafe. I'm not trying to lose weight, I'm just trying to create harmony and order in my thoughts and actions, and this is how my body has responded. I feel...what? I feel just as out of control of this as I did of my weight.

I had a childhood friend tell me once that she remembered me when I was 'thin and pretty'. I'm thinking to myself that I might always have been pretty. What does it mean?

I know for certain that my body and spirit have never responded to restriction with anything but rebellion. I know that I have never shamed myself into any lasting change. So maybe what scares me so intensely is that this feels like a greater change than weight shed. It feels more profound, like I am just touching the edges of some greater understanding.

In the meantime, I will notice myself being afraid and uncomfortable, and I will ask a husband to hug me, and I will do my best to let the fear go.

Mind full

I feel bruised today, not outside, but in. I've begun sessions in a mindful eating course, and it has kicked up a lot of very old stuff for me. We were discussing the basic human needs, based on someone's (whose name I can't remember) psychological model. First came survival, then security, then love and acceptance, then self-realization. Our group leader explained that each of these needs is first encountered and met in early childhood, and that having been put on a diet as a child threatens those needs, and makes it more difficult to meet them later in life. She also said that the more basic the need, the greater the emotional response to it. And I was sitting in that room, thinking that it's a miracle that I made it through with a personality at all. All of those needs were threatened all the time when I was little. It wasn't until I was adopted by the Lepards that I had any sort of foundation of security at all. I'm forty-two, for heavens' sake. Why does it still hurt to look back at that little girl? I mean, yes, I'm looking at present behaviors and working to make myself healthier. But oh, the issue of food and safety is still so intertwined. Add to that the IBS, where I'm not sure what I can eat or whether it will hurt, and I'm finding some very old wounds aching a bit.

I have had a LOT of therapy. Thank goodness. I have come so far that it just astonishes me some days. But this hurts, and I didn't expect it to. I expected it to be an intellectual process. Ha! Delusions of normality, I know. What I'm looking for is freedom from food as an emotional crutch. In many ways, it feels like my emotional eating is the last tie that binds me to that old childhood. Dieting wasn't just supposed to make me thin, it was used as a punishment. If I failed to meet weight-loss expectations, there was a beating. I don't own a scale, because when it gets to numbers, I get nuts. It's the same with good-food and bad-food. I'd like there to just be food. I'd like to eat what I want when I want it, and to know when I'm full. I'd like to know when I'm hungry for food and when I'm hungry for a hug. I'd like not to feel so bruised, but I feel it anyhow.

Sigh. I must be doing the right thing. I feel like crap.

Small steps to big results

So I got connected with the Coach Approach with my local YMCA. It's a program designed to help people with chronic health problems get into regular activity, and stay that way. Today was my second appointment, and I was feeling really queasy and anxious about it, because it just doesn't feel to me like I've done enough. But when we sat down and figured it out, I've been getting out for a decent walk at least twice a week, and I've just been making more of a point of walking places. I've also been making a more concerted effort to get outside each day, even if it's just out on the back porch. I've noticed that I feel better on days when I do, and that I feel vaguely restless on days when I don't. But it still didn't seem like much. I'd committed to going to aqua-fit classes three times a week as well as walking, and every time I'd thought about the classes, my anxiety level went through the roof. So today, Roxanne (my facilitator) said that sometimes it's worth figuring out what the block is, and sometimes it's better just to go around. I have a new plan for the next month. In the meantime, both my stress and fatigue levels (as measured by me) are half what they were six weeks ago. Granted, some of that is my IBS calming down, but even when it flares I don't feel quite so devastated by it.

I'm not doing all that much, really. I'm not doing workouts that kill me, but I like to walk briskly. And this has been enough for me to (so far) mostly avoid my standard winter depression. How bizarre is that? I tend to be so all-or-nothing, you know? I succeed or fail, and I have precious little room in my emotional landscape for doing enough. I never see what I do as enough, but...it seems perhaps that in this, I'm doing enough. I'm going to do a little more, to see how that feels. I like not feeling quite so anxious or exhausted. I can't help but think how nice it would be to base my opinion of myself on degrees of success, rather than of failure.

The truth about me is that I do my best. Another truth is that I tend to set impossible expectations of myself, where I would treat all other people with compassion and gentleness.

Tomorrow I'm going snow-shoeing, something I've never done before and look forward to immensely. Whatever I've done before brings me here, to a new experience. That feels good to me.

I did some writing today. Not quite my usual thousand words, but I'm going again. I remember how this goes. I wake up early, I spend some time with Kelly and have breakfast, and then I sit down and write. I miss my coffee, I must admit. It isn't really that hard. The hard part is believing that what I've written has merit. Still, I looked back at the previous chapters, and I liked them. The last book was so much about self-sufficiency, and this one is so much about inter-dependence. I didn't set out to write it that way, you know, it's just sort of...happened.

What really kicked me into starting again today was money trouble. I have to laugh, but why does it take that particular thing to make me work? I was thinking about how I should look for a job. It's ridiculous. I'm barely making it through my days now, and I know this. So I told Kelly, and told him that I thought it was insane, and he said 'Work when you're ready'. When we got home I explained that I wasn't talking about writing, and he laughed at me. *chuckles* Add to that the fact that he and I had some wonderful, useful conversation about his new project, and when I got home, I just opened up Word and went.

It didn't feel easy. It did feel good. And the words were all just there, waiting for me to pluck them out of the air and set them in the right order. I don't know exactly what happens next, but neither do my characters, so I suppose we'll all find out together. It's faith in the process that I've lost, somewhere. Not faith in my story or my ability, but in the spinning of the story. As I recall, I only came by that faith by repetition. Success is making the effort, I think. Money troubles will sort themselves, or not. The stories in my head want out. That's the important bit right now.