New year, new...nothing.

So I wrote about wrecking my knee playing roller derby and at that point in time I was hopeful that I would be back on skates by Christmas. No such luck. I have gradauted from crutches to a cane, but I cannot walk long distances, stairs are awful (I live in an upstairs apartment), and there are still days when it hurts just like it did after I fell. I'm pretty sure that my roller derby days are over. That has made me very sad, but I have also had some time to come to grips with it and I think that as good as derby was for me at one point in my life, it may not be good for me anymore. I still miss it.

I also got incredibly depressed over Christmas. And then my moods started getting weird. And now I am just a mess. My insomnia is back in full force, I'm perma-exhausted it, I feel lonely even when I'm not alone, I'm more than sad, and I don't know how to change any of it. JD doesn't know how he can help me and I don't know if he can help me. And sometmes I get really up and manic and crazy, but manic does not equal happy. I also had a really bad episode of intrusive thoughts on Christms Day that basically ruined the entire day, even though we didn't do much. I wish I could have a Christmas like when I was kid one of these days, but I don't see that ever happening again. I haven't spent Christmas with Mom and Dad since I was in high school. Just another point of failure for me.

I am still looking for a job, but there is just nothing to be had in my field so it looks like I will have to start seeing about what else I can do that will pay me enough to live on because I do not feel like I will even be able to complete my contract this year due to some regulation changes. I am also branching out a bit geographically as well to see if there is anything in the nearest actual city that I can commute to. So far, I've found one thing, but given my lack of motivation I can't seem to get myself together long enough to go over my resume and write a cover letter to even apply. *sigh*

Hell, I am struggling to even stay motivated enough to finish this post. And I guess maybe I don't know what else to say. I dont know how to solve any of these problems. I feel like I can't solve them. I don't even know where to begin. I'm scared that things are going to reach the point where I get committed.

November ramblings

One entry in October. I pretty much fail at this whole blogging thing. Mostly because it tends to slips my mind that I should write. Maybe I will try to start setting aside time each week or every few days or something and put it on my calendar.

So I got back to my derby fitness group like I said I would and did my weight lifting research and two weeks into derby I fell and sprained my knee rather badly. I am still unable to walk without crutches for the most part and certainly can't skate or exercise really. I find it to be incredibly frustrating. And if I can't walk then I struggle even with simpler tasks like standing to cook or do dishes or get around the store. And that makes me feel helpless and I utterly detest feeling helpless.

And the knee injury has caused problems for me at work as there have been several missed days due to appointments and whatnot in addition to the mental strain this is causing which is also problematic. I have gotten so that I shake like a chihauhua a lot lately and I cannot find a concrete reason so I starting to think it is all just stress related and I feel like the stressors  I am dealing with are things that I cannot do much about. Or if they are things I can solve I will simply handle thm only to have new problems pop up in their place. If anyone wants to give me a couple grand in cash for my birthday coming up that would probably greatly alleviate some of my stress though.

I think one good thing that is coming of all m y stress though is that I am getting a lot of crochet done because it is one thing that quiets my hands so they don't shake so bad. Today, even typing is hard, but I am trying to slow down so I don't make mistakes and I am proofreading pretty closely as well so I can make needed corrections. Double letters seem to be my biggest downfall right now so don't mind an extra letter here or there if I do not catch it.

I am mostly just rambling now and not sure what there is to say. I don't want to rehash all the random things that are bugging me and the crochet project I am working on is a Christmas gift and since I'm not certain of my readership I won't say much about it, of course. I will be 30 soon and it amazes me that so many of my friends who have turned or are about to turn 30 are having such issues with the idea. Age is nothing more than a number. Sure, sometimes I have bad days where I feel awful, but often enough I have days where I forget that I'm not 25 still. *shrug* Despite my mental health issues and my current knee injury I'm not doing too bad, although I could stand some weight loss. And as soon as I can do so it is on the agenda for sure. At the rate my knee is healing I don't expect to be able to play roller derby next season as much as I would like to be able to do so and recognizing and accepting that seems to have been good for me. I think when I am cleared to workout again I will get back to the gym and back to the derby fitness group and focus on that for a bit. If I can do more then I will, but I am not going to push so hard that I risk reinjuring my knee. That just seems like a poor plan on my part.

The weather is turning cold and snowy already and I am wishing I could have just another month of fall. I'm not ready for snow. Granted, I am never ready for snow. And JD keeps threatening to throw me in a snowbank. Not cool. Well...cold, but whatever. I hate snow. That's never going to change. And since I am running out of odds and ends to prattle on about I think I will go back to my crochet. Or maybe take a nap. I am still tired even after plenty of sleep and I just feel kind of meh.

Hello Fall

So I absolutely skipped September. I was finishing up contrac hours for the first half of the month, as well as finishing out the season with my derby team as bench coach and may or may not have had time to think. When all of that was over i just needed to decompress and take some time to be with JD so we could talk and be together and we ended up growing a lot, even if some of our talks were stressful (because I am bad at talking.)

Now we are in COtober and the month started off a little nuts when JD woke me up at 730AM on a Saturday morning to tell me that I could not set foot in our bathroom. There was a swarm of European Hornets buzzing around. I peeked in the door and definitely agreed that I was not setting foot in the place. And we called the landlord, who called an exterminator. Several days later the bugs are mostly completely gone and I feel almost safe taking a shower. So that is good news after the crazy that was Bug War 3.

The bad for me is that I am struggling again with a nasty toothache because I was hoping that I could ignore it and it would go away. No such luck, however, and I am going to have to suck it up and call the dentist's office. I should probably do it tomorrow, but you know...avoiding things I don't wanna do is something I am really good at. JD helps me be better though because he isn't afraid to push me, no matter what the "thing" is.

Yesterday for example, I was really freaking out because of a new workout that I was going to be starting that lets me combine exercise with roller derby and is really awesome since I have gotten really out of shape since my skating days. Mind you, I was never in the best shape to begin with. But anyway, my anxiety was tripping me up and giving me fits and JD looks me dead in the face and tells me that I am going to do this, that I need to do this. Not because he wants me to lose weight or get in shape or anything. He wants me to exercise more simply so that my back will get a good stretch and the muscles will get used and I will have less back pain as a result. When I got home last night he poked at my back muscles and pronounced them to feel like "overproofed bread dough." And my back felt way better.

Even beyond that one single benefit though, he pushses me to go. Not because I am the best, not because I want to play roller derby again competitively, again, not because he thinks I'm fat or unattractive, or out of shape, although I would call myself at least two of those things and the fact that I don't call myself all three says that I have come a long way. But I am rambling as ususal. JD asked me last night, "Why are you going?" And I wasn't sure what he meant. He explained it to me that I was going to lace up my skates and play roller derby and exercise with a group of people of mixed skill level to be better. And not for any other reason. And that I was going to do it for me. Not for anyone else.

And that really stuck with me. Later on at the event another skater who has known me for several years told me essentially the same thing and said that I had done well (she knows how out of shape I let myself get) and encouraged me to keep pushing and do it for me. So hearing from both the most important man in my life who isn't my father and from someone that I call a friend was really good for me I think.

Today I am researching proper weightlifting form and technique and I will start that maybe this weekend when I don't feel like I have been hit by a truck with a license plate that say RLRDBY. It's my own fault though...skating til I thought my legs were gonna give out, stopping to rest when I had no choice, and then skating some more. I don't have a stubborn bone in my body. Not at all. :)

And that has been my skipped September and my early October. Hopefully I will keep up with my writing more, but I am also back on a crochet kick (which also mad me forget September) and I have a project I am working on now that I want to get done and then I will start making some Christmas gifts that I can hopefully complete quickly. But now...dinner because my man can cook!!!

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.)