Change, Growth, Progress, Hope

I have been really anxious for the last several days and I had some trouble pinpointing exactly why. It is incredibly frustrating and I am not sure what the cause may be or if I need to look at making adjustments to my medication. I still frequently wish that I could just be normal and not have to struggle with this, but that just doesn’t seem like it is going to happen. For better, for worse, for the rest of my life I will fight with my mental illness.

But suddenly that does seem quite so bad anymore. JD and I both had a rough weekend and it resulted is some depression and anxiety on both our parts. That led to us having some more long, honest talks and it is amazing the things we can learn just by doing so. Communication is always something I have been kind of awful at (at least if I am having a face to face conversation) but I have been forced to get better if I want this relationship to work. And I do very much.  So I am trying. And we are growing together as individuals and as a couple. It is absolutely wonderful to be perfectly honest.
And I learned something that I should have already known, but because it wasn’t something I had ever really experienced before in my entire life I missed it completely. It was literally something that is just integral to our relationship and I couldn’t see it or feel it happening all around me. It was so glaringly obvious that even JD agreed with my assessment of my own stupidity on the specific matter. He doesn’t really think I am stupid, of course, but for him to have agreed with me even a little shows  just how big of a deal this is for me and for us.

Additionally, I am coming up on the end of my 2^nd AmeriCorps term and have been looking for a job where I can keep learning and growing as a professional. That doesn’t mean that I am definitely leaving where I am at, but I do have an interview at another local company tomorrow that I am a bit nervous about.  I have been doing some prep work for it and trying to come up with some good answers to wide a variety of questions that I may be asked and I am going to see what questions I might want answered as well. It is important to me that I do well on this interview even if I do not get the job.
The 2014 season for my local derby league is coming to our close and after our final bout we will have a significant amount of time off. I am not sure what exactly I am going to do about staying involved next season as there has been some drama that I just don’t want to have to deal with if it continues. Also, I am still not in shape to skate, although I would have quite some time to work on it in the off season. And I am seeing where some of our retired skaters may be making a return to the track as well so I am interested how that goes since that could influence my decision. Of course, having a job where I can afford to pay dues is also going to influence my decision so we will have to see how things go.

I obviously can’t tell the future and I do not know how things will go, but right now I am very hopeful that life will only keep getting better. I am feeling secure enough to really, really take a good long hard look at how my life is going to go with JD in it. I have never doubted that he would leave me, but I had fears that I wasn’t good enough or that I asked for too much from him and since this weekend those fears have been greatly allayed. And that lifts a weight off of my shoulders that I didn’t even quite realize was there.

But despite my mental health issues and my body issues and everything else that I stress over and worry about, I feel like I am starting to grow and change and improve again as a person and I haven’t felt that way in a long time and it is a good feeling. I know that I will have bad days where I don’t make any progress and I may even lose some ground, but I am still fighting for the good days to outnumber the bad and I think I will get there eventually.

Thoughts on Expose with Jes Baker and Liora K

So I have been trying to learn to love myself after having gained roughly 75-100 pounds. And it has been very difficult for me. I have always struggled with my body image and gaining a lot of weight has only made those issues worse. I will allow, however, that having a wonderful man who loves me for me and not for what I look like, who makes no judgments about my body, does help more than I can explain. Even if I have to remind myself that it is OK for him to love me the way I am because he sees me far differently than I see myself. I frequently wish that I could see myself the way that he sees me. That would be incredibly different and probably really helpful for my self-image.

I have also been following Jes Baker of www.themilitantbaker.com and working on leaning my own #bodylove as well as semi keeping up with Whitney Way Thore and the No BS campaign (http://nobodyshame.com/) Hopefully being able to follow these two amazing women and see how they are successful regardless of their size and how they love themselves (again) regardlss of their size) will help me as I keep trying to accept and love my body. I am still hoping to get back into the gym once I my life settles down a bit, but whether I do or I don't, I still want to learn to love me for me.

The latest offering from Jes Baker is linked below and it is a photo project that she has done with Liora K called Expose: Shedding Light on Collective Beauty It made me stop and think for a moment about my body and how I feel about it and wonder if I would have been brave enough to have gone and posed in my underwear with almost 100 other people. And the answer was a definite no.

Then, I thoguht a little harder about it and I became aware that 100 pounds/two years ago I would have probably done this. I might have been anxoius about it or worried or nervous or whatever, but I would have done it. And I would have done it with pizzazz if not style. And now I wonder, what changed? Is it simply the weight gain? And why would I have done it before when I had no one to tell me I was fabulous, but I won't do it now, when I have that someone in my corner? I really don't have an answer for these questions right now. Perhaps I will at some point. But I hope that someone, anyone sees this and is moved by it. And if you are that someone and you want to reach out to another person who struggles, feel free.

I can find beauty in anyone that I see. Except myself. And the women of Expose are beautiful. Every single one of them. But I cannot see myself in them.

Summer update

So I haven't been doing a super great job at keping up with my tumblr that is supposed to help my body issues (that is turning into a ex positive tumblr) and I have been just as bad at keeping up with my writing on here.

Lots of hours at the office, plus derby has ben pretty tiring. And being back into derby and dealing with the drama and whatnot has also been rather tiring. I am thinking about walking away again, but it just breaks my hert to leave it. At the same time I don't know if I can keep dealing with it. i just want to be part of a league/team where I can skate and play derby and promote and not have all the crazy shit that goes on. I understand that there is always drama, but if eveyone who helps out or is involved could just be treated decently, regadless of their sex/gender/whatever that would be great.

Anyway, I am still working quite a bit, no gym, and I am on track to make my contract even though I was out yesterday with JD for a dr appointment and I was out today because I just could NOT function when I got up this morning. I was shaky and sick feeling and had not slept well enough to have driven at all. And I knew that if I slept I was not going to wake up in any sort of time to make it to the office. So I emailed the boss and went back to bed. I woke up about 330pm. Tomorrow I am off because we are supposed to go stargazing tonight and I knew that I would be up late. But I may have misjudged the peak of the meteor shower (it might have been last night) and we wouldn't have seen anything anyway because STORMS. We had some power outage issues and JD thought his monitor was friend, but it does not appear to have been since he is currently using it. He did just mention to me that it is damanged from the storm, but not dead...yet. So hopefully we can find a way to get him a new monitor, but I know how difficult he can be about things like this and I am going to try very hard not to push him because it just stresses him out. And we don't need that.

Especially not since we have both been sick. I got a cold, he caught my cold, and I think it is turning into pneumonia for him. Not fun. And he is having some dental issues that are miserable because toothaches suck. That is out life in a nutshell. Oh...and we also celebrate two years this week. We dubbed the 12th as being our anniversary, but it could basicaly be the 13th as well because we went stargazing on our first date (hence the reason for trying to catch the Perseids shower every year.) But yeah...life goes on. I will finish my contract and either stay where I am or get my ass in gear and find a new job ASAP. And I don't know which yet, but I need to hurry up and figure it out because my contract ends next month. But my own mental health and whatnot has made me procrastinate somewhat. I wish I could be normal and boring and not have these issues. Mental illness sucks.