Quick Update, cuz I am TIRED!

I arrived in my beloved GR Thursday night. It has done my heart good to be here. I had no idea how much I needed to come for a visit and am so very glad I am here. I would like to say that I love this place simply for the people I love dearly here, but it isn’t just that. Driving down the familiar roads and I just feel at home. Like this place is mine. I feel more alive here than anywhere else. IT is weird. The minute I crossed in to Kent County Thursday night I just felt better, more at peace, more in control, more at home.

Yesterday, I went for a run along a trail system we have here called Kent Trails. I have never been on these paths before since I wasn’t exercising outside…in PUBLIC (GASP!) But since I am so over that, I went out. I initially thought I would run out 1 mile then back for a 2 mile run. But as I hit the 1 mile mark, I thought…you know I feel good, I can do another. During that first mile, I ran almost the whole way! I was so excited. I have never run so far. Is it common to build up so quickly? Or am I pushing myself to hard? The 2nd mile, I also ran almost the whole thing…and when I got to the next marker I looked at my pedometer and it said I had already gone 2.73 miles. WHAT??? But I thought it was 1 mile between street crossings! Guess not! So I turned around….and ran back….I did a bit more walking this time. Since I have NEVER run more than 2 miles, I had already exceeded that by a lot and with my actual running time being far more than ever before. My hips were getting tight and I could feel my right knee getting tight too. I ran about half of the way back in shorter intervals. Total mileage? 5.54 miles! WooHooo!!! So proud! I need to stop doing so well,lest this become the normal expectation! What if I don’t feel like running 5 tomorrow? But because I know I can….I will have to…cuz I can’t not do what I know I can….right?

Today, I did the final filming for my audition video. I needed a shirt that said that”I am kind of a big deal” because if you saw the equipment these guys brought in , you might have thought that a serious movie was taking place. I mean there was a dolly that the camera sat on with a camera guy manning it while someone else pulled or pushed it next to me while I ran. It was ridiculous overkill…but OH SO FUN! Even if I am not picked, I am gonna have one sweet video of myself! By the time we were done on the track and the treadmill I had run or walked over 4 miles. And on the treadmill, I pushed it to 7! Yeah I’ll do anything for a camera!! 🙂 We moved on to the spin room where we got some extra special footage with Coach and Adam riding next to me! Not as much fun in here, but the footage will be worth it! I hope…I trust my video guy…I trust my video guy…I trust my video guy! We ended the day in the pool where I learned my video guy thinks I don;t clown around. He doesn’t know me very well. He has only known me under these circumstances where I am not in my most comfortable state! Ahhh for him to get to know me under normal circumstances! Needless to say I started clowning around a little in the water…flipping, doing handstands, and the like.

All in all, I am not allowed to see the footage. He is afraid I will eliminate possibilities if I see the footage in its raw state. Sooo I wait while he puts something together for my approval. I trust my video guy….I trust my video guy…I trust my….

Good night…..I started all that at 1 PM….I got done about 6:30 PM…I am tired!

A rough "journal" entry

First bit of news. I am in a happy place (physically). I am HOME in GR for a few days! So refreshing..now if all my people would come home from work, so I can see them all will be perfect!

Second thing: This blog is first and foremost for me. It is my version of a journal. I can’t seem to stay committed to writing in a journal for more than a week, but I can here…don’t know what that is all about but it just means that at times you are gonna get something that is a bit raw and unpolished and I refuse to edit it to make it nice! (this was added post writing!)

Now on to the rest of this blog entry.

I tend to be a head person. I figure things out in my head first and by the time it comes out of my mouth (or fingertips) it is very well packaged with the struggle and the answer to the struggle. Part of this is a “look good and put together” mentality, part is just who I am, and part is a way to talk my way through something and maybe if I have the right answer, the right behavior will follow. Regardless of the motivation for it though, this does not serve me well, not emotionally anyway. (By the way, this happens so fast, I don’t even realize I am doing it, and is often subconscious. I can’t stop it from happening, but I can add to it!)

For years, I had been what I call emotionally bankrupt. I would feel the extreme emotions (about once a month 🙂 or happiness, but the everyday little disappointments or sadness or anger just was not there for me. I wasn’t depressed, I was just “good” or “fine”. IN the past 2 years I sought counseling on this and came to know that my emotional health and my ability to feel my emotions ties DIRECTLY to my weight loss. When I am fully connected and present in what is real for me I am better able to manage my eating and even my exercise. This whole emotional connectedness really took off in my last 6 months in GR. I was experiencing emotions all the time! I felt a little crazy at times! Crying one minute but full of true laughter and joy the next! Emotions were not all consuming as I once thought…they just were. IT was a good thing.

The other day, I was talking to Coach about an email I sent him re: some hard conversations I had with mom about my weight loss journey and the hurtful things she says and does at times. I reported the facts, relayed the conversations and ended the email. While the conversations were uncomfortable, I was fine! I was good! The next day while chatting Coach asked me. “So how ya holding up?”

I wanted to say that I was good or fine, except that suddenly my eyeballs were filled with a salty water like substance and I could no longer see my computer to say anything. I realized I wasn’t sure exactly how I was but fine or good did not fit. Coach pointed out that is my body telling me that my heart was hurting. GO figure! What struck me though was that 1 month back at home and I was already back to numbing out my feelings and living in a state of fine-ness. I wasn’t connected to the emotional reality of those conversations or to how I was really doing in my new home. It took so long to get plugged in to those emotions and one change (although a BIG one) and I am unplugged so quickly!

I don’t want to be FINE! I want to be great! fabulous! I want to experience all the emotions again. I want to be able to write what is really going on for me and not the packaged stuff that has been of late. Not that what I have written has been untrue…it just hasn’t been fully true, because I didn’t realize what was going on.

I was and am still trying to adjust. Figure out my routine. And in a way who I am as a 32 yr old woman living in her mother’s house? Am I adult or child? (feels like child at times) It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what I should be doing. And I am great at self talk. You know the stuff that sounds like “I can do this!” “I am doing this!” “This time is different!”

While these statements are true, the other truth is this. I am terrified and feel very alone in this in my new place. I keep thinking, if I can just make it to 75 lbs then I will have lost more than ever at one time and maybe, just maybe, then something will stick and I will be able to keep going.

Coach asked me how all of this (the conversations and the fact that I realized I wasn’t feeling things again) were impacting my food/exercise. I wish I could easily say that it wasn’t…at least not yet. But if I look at it really, sure I have still been counting my calories and if anything have been under eating, but the quality of what I have been eating has not been so good. Eating for comfort again has most likely been happening because all my old comfort foods are around and readily available, this time I just count them. But that doesn’t allow me to feel whatever is going on. And this journey is NOT just about being physically healthy. It is also about being emotionally healthy and spiritually healthy. If I am really honest, if I had to choose between physical or emotional health. I will take teh emotional health anyday. I would rather feel everything and be fat than feel nothing and be thin.

It has certainly affected my motivation to fight to get to the gym when I just don’t want to. In GR, it just wasn’t an option to not go. Granted many times, I could call or text someone to coordinate a time to go together, but there were plenty of times that I had to choose to go myself and then to stay there the entire time, actually working!

So here is the recap of my crazy off the cuff journal entry above….My heart hurts. Everything else is self talk.

Home is Where…

I feel most loved.

Most accepted.

Most challenged.

Safest.

Where I feel enCOURAGEd.

Where I feel the most able and willing to take risks.

It is not always a physical place.

It is where when I need a hug, I don’t even need to ask, because it is already given.

It is where when I don’t want to be alone, I am not.

It is where I am listened to, and heard.

It is where I can be the most vulnerable.

It is where I can be the most afraid and the least afraid at the same time.

It is where the people around me know me better than I know myself and are not willing to let me settle for less than the best.

Home is where the people around me ask the hard questions and don’t let me squirm away from the answers.

It is where I feel like I really CAN do anything because those around me believe I can.

It is where I am stretched beyond myself.

It is where I can be silly. Where I can laugh until I pass out and know that I am being laughed with and not at.

It is where help is just a phone call away.

It is where I feel beautiful, talented, fabulous, gorgeous.

It is where I feel most alive.

It is where I am known.

It is where even my unspoken words are heard louder than my spoken ones.

Home is the closest thing to Heaven on earth and the only place I want to be…

and I may have to leave it soon…and my heart breaks.