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.

10:52pm June 3rd, 2014

I have been trying to write a blog post for several weeks now and I haven’t once finished it in a timely enough manner that I wanted to post it. Here goes…(again)

I have been fighting with my weight and body image for a while and fighting with feeling as though I am not sexy or desirable. And I know that a lot of this ties into the fact that I am surrounded by and bombarded with images of what society deems to be attractive and I don’t fit any of those stereotypes.  My solution has been to start a private tumblr where I can focus on non-mainstream ideals of beauty and sexiness and desirability. So far it seems to be helping. Hopefully I can keep up with it and it will be helpful.

I have been back on skates several times lately and I feel better about it every time I lace up. I have not made it into the gym though. I am doing a good job of not beating myself up about that. Between work and derby I am spending easily 60 hours a week doing this outside of my house. Sometimes I just want to sit at home and veg. But I do need to keep trying to make an effort. I will get there.

Meanwhile, I am working, working, working. I have a set number of hours on my contract and I want to have it complete no later than probably the 12^th of September (it officially ends on the 16^th.) So far I have been holding my own to get the hours that I need and while it is going to make for some long weeks I am not feeling nearly as drained by this as I was when I did ALL those hours in one month last year. I am still watching the want ads for a job, but if nothing materializes then I will stay here until something does. And maybe a full-time spot will open here. That would be pretty excellent.

JD and I have had some rather long and introspective conversations as of late and it has been really good for us to have had these talks. I think we are continuing to grow as a couple and it is wonderful. We have some plans for next weekend since I am doing derby stuff this weekend and the following weekend and things are progressing about as well as I think they can be.  We are coming up on two years together in August and there are some days that it seems like forever and other days when two years seems impossible. Here’s to many, many more.

And after several weeks of trying to write I have managed to complete a blog post. I think I will email it to myself and put it up on the blog later since I am at the office right now. It is 530pm on June 2, 2014. How long before I remember to post this one? LOL (And the answer is roughly 29.5 hours from the time of completion.)

Further discoveries of self

So I am over my sad about missing Texas (although I admit I will still miss it) and I am trying to get back into the swing of being me again. I have noticed over the last few months as I settle into a good routine with my meds and try to get enough sleep and eat better (that last one still needs TONS of work) I am getting back to a person that I was a long time ago.

If anyone that reads this knows me from high school and remembers the IDGAF attitude that I sported for those 4 years, that attitude is definitely starting to make a comeback. Two of the biggest things that I have noticed about myself in this regard are the fact that I don’t really care if people look at me and think I’m fat (that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be healthier) and that I have returned to being much more outspoken than I had been. I don’t think either of these are bad changes in my life.

I am looking at getting more involved with the local roller derby league again and doing something other than announcing, but it will be a bit before I know for sure what I am doing. Skating isn’t back on the radar quite yet. But I have finally figured out WHY I keep saying I am going to go to the gym and then I flake out on it. Long story short I pretty much hate any kind of cardio that isn’t fun so that leaves me with skating and some biking. I don’t actually own a bike and riding a stationary is NOT the same. And since I’m not ready to skate yet, what is a girl to do?

I mean I can beat the hell out of myself on the elliptical trying to lose a pound or two but it isn’t going to be terribly effective if I half ass it because I’m bored. Or I can look at ways to use weight training as cardio and do something I find enjoyable that helps me gain muscle and shed pounds when I combine with better eating habits. And as I do those things I will feel more like me and more ready to get back on my skates with the newer skaters and get my skills back. Even if I choose not to return to competitive derby I will feel better and enjoy myself just getting to skate. So I think is going to be a goal that I work towards. I am also going to eventually see about learning to lift free weights in addition to the body weight stuff that I can do at home without the gym. And maybe yoga, but that remains to be seen. I feel like maybe I am being almost too ambitious, but I think that is fear talking to me and I am going to tell fear to go the hell away and STFU!

No matter what I do I will never be skinny and there will always be people out there that will call me fat or ugly or too this or too that and not all of those things will be favorable comparisons. I just can’t waste my time caring about that crap any more. I don’t have the energy for it and I want to be able to get a good night’s sleep instead of being restless and worried and scared. So I am going to finally do something about it.

Texan til I die

Every time I take a trip home it always breaks my heart to leave. It seems like it must be true that you can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take the Texas out of the girl. I’d give anything if I could move in the fall when my contract is up, but I know that JD would be miserable in Texas and I just do not want to do that to him. I’d like for us to find a place to live that we can both agree on, but we have such different climate preferences that I don’t know if that is going to work.  I feel like we are going to end up in a place where one of us is less than happy. And that sucks…

He has indicated that he will follow me to Texas if that is really what I want, but that just seems so unfair to me and bothers me on a level that I struggle to comprehend. And I get scared that he would go with me to Texas and then decide that he was terribly unhappy and it would cause problems between us. That isn’t something that I want.

Annoyingly enough, however, because I am so stressed about coming back here from Texas and wanting so badly to go back that I am having some very strange dreams about what might have been if I had taken a different path that didn’t include getting married at 18. And those dreams are weighing heavy on my mind for some reason. I think it is only natural for people to wonder what might have been if they had lived differently, but I’m so depressed at being back in NY that I am having a hard time shaking the memory of those dreams. I don’t want to give up what I have now and I certainly have no intention of doing so. My subconscious mind is just acting up because I miss Texas.

Of course, my subconscious mind is also feeding into my sexual fantasies and poking me about what it might have been like with a certain male friend if one of us would have had the guts to speak up a decade ago and suggest that maybe we should date. Apparently said friend feels the same way about me, but neither of us ever had the courage to act. And at this point I’m not willing to give up what I have for what might have been and he is a good enough friend that he wouldn’t dream of seriously asking that of me.  So we will both be left to wonder, but it will go no further.

Reaching for normal

I have been doing better and better lately at taking my meds and not being a mess (although I forgot them yesterday morning and I was mostly OK) and I have also decided that accepting my body for what it is should be something that I focus on. It all kind of clicked in my head when I was really sick last week that the time and energy I was wasting on hating myself just wasn’t worth it. So I’m working on changing my outlook.

 And in addition to that I am also looking at trying to remove negative people, attitudes, and forces from my life. I am negative enough on my own and I don’t need to be surrounded by a bunch of people are negative especially living in a community where negativity is the norm. Instead I will work to be less negative (notice that I did NOT say more positive J ) and to let negativity that I happen to encounter out and about not get to me.

 My tattoo craving has been in high gear lately and I have been really doing some looking about what I want to do about getting new tattoos and repairing some of the ones that I feel like could use some brightening up. I am also looking at finding some new artists to work with because I am tired of all the drama that seems to pop up at local shops. I have a list of pieces that I want to get and I am always adding to or changing the list. Currently I am trying to decide what I want to put on my feet and where I want to put the teapot that I am looking at getting as well. And I just had a flash of inspiration and it looks like I will be getting words tattooed on both feet, but may or may not add any kind of flowers or design or anything. I’m sure on that point yet, but I will keep puzzling over them.

 And I am out of crazy tattoo stuff and positivity to share for the moment so I’m packing up and moving on with my day. More another time!