Thursday As My Bond-Mate

I've spent the past six months hopping from idea to idea, scheme to scheme, point to point like a bad 1940's film about a man just trying to get on the 'next big idea' with his get rich quick schemes. I couldn't figure out why I was feeling so pressured to keep lifting roots every time I'd planted them, but I figured out last night that this is simply my own "Darkest Hour." I've been hopping because I've been sad. At my heaviest I don't ever remember being this sad. Perhaps time has mitigated the damage, perhaps I simply don't remember the pain in the same way, but I don't remember feeling exactly this same way.

I remember feeling hopeless and lost, but what I feel now is so much worse: Purposeless. For two years I've dedicated the entirety of being on this one, single project and now that my project is coming to a close I'm left remembering how good it felt to be eyeball-deep in the project's inception. How amazing the adrenaline rushes were when I was beating records I'd previously kept.

I've so meticulously kept this blog that when I look back through the pages I only see happy memories. Excitement about a fridge full of food has turned into a floundering disdain. Happiness with my shrinking body has turned into uncertainty. Choices so simple, so straightforward got complicated somewhere along the way. Interest turned into something nearing obsession and that, naturally, always changes the lens through which a person's view is seen.

I am sad with how my life has changed these past six months. I wouldn't be happier if I were a larger person, that would be too easy a fix. Instead I've come to terms with the facts that I have excavated the coffin I had managed to keep buried under hundreds of pounds of extra fat for my entire life - from preteen to adult. I just got this body, just worked so hard for it, only to discover that 1) I don't like it, and 2) I now have to deal with the skeletons in my closet. There's nothing more annoying than getting a degree in a field for 2+ years, only to find once you're done it doesn't actually help you at all.

I don't have regrets, I don't feel like I have excuses either. I just have a deep, thrumming sadness over many things. How I let myself get so big that I even needed a plastic surgery consult. Was the years of reckless eating worth it? Was I happier then? My relationship with food was certainly a different one, but it was just as unhealthy as it has become.

I can pinpoint the moment that my attitude toward this life changed, and the people that I feel so ruthlessly spearheaded that change. I have moved on from it, but just because we've move on from our past doesn't mean it hasn't also inexplicably changed who we, as people, are.

The consult for plastic surgery went well. I spun, naked, in front of an early middle-aged surgeon that poked, prodded and calipered his way around my body - my temple. My body put out to be judged, to be marked with invisible lines of correction, to see if I even could be corrected. My flaws on display, but worse - my flaws to be corrected by someone else. My entire journey done solo only to be turned over to this man I've never met before. This entire journey done thus far inexpensively now turning into a $28,000 affair. An abdominoplasty because through years of reckless eating my abdominal muscles have drifted. Hernia repair because there are no muscles there to hold things in place as they ought to be held. Inner thigh lift because my skin hangs like curtains of pale, peach meat. A swatch of skin, some 6" tall cut from around my entire midsection, from the front all the way to the back, in a last ditch effort to rid myself of the skin just hanging on to me for dear life. Will it make me happier? I don't think it will.

I felt so caged last night, so unhappy and restless, that I threw clothes on and I ran. I ran, and I ran, and I did not stop. It was dark and I couldn't see, but I still ran. I was trying to run away from all of this sadness cascading down on me, only to realize that no amount of distance will put enough space between me and myself...

Overall I am a happy person. A content person. I feel I am a loving, and giving person. I try to include, not exclude and to tolerate and encourage differences. I am not a bad person, I don't believe - but I am struggling with the consequences of my actions of years past and that is starting to make an already full cup overflow.