Sometimes I feel like
everything that spews out of my mouth is pure garbage and crap. This concept of
change and self-love and growth is complete BS when I am faced with a little
adversity and seriously my fucked up brain’s first response is destructive
behaviors. Is it possible I’ve learned a single thing in 10 plus years?
Apparently not. Apparently the only
saving grace in the situation is that even though I instantly resorted to
horrible thinking that I can sit here this morning and realize how absurd my
thought process is. Perhaps that’s progress?
Let me explain.
Yesterday I was still not feeling well, but perhaps that is also the
whole catch 22 thing coming into play. I
have a lot of stress and it’s a never ending cycle, do I feel bad because of
all the stress or am I partly stressed because I feel sick? I am sure they are both feeding into one
another. Either way, I am super stressed
that I don’t feel like my workouts are where they should be. My running has been crap for 2 weeks. I can’t breathe at some points. My allergies
flare up and come and go. I get winded
far easier than I should. Generally
speaking my energy is just drained. This angers me. This is also called being a
human being. A feat that I often think
for some idiotic reason I am above. I
must barrel thru and am somehow superhuman and immune to bad periods of times
where my workouts suffer. Reality is a
bitch.
So I was not feeling great pursay but I had every intention
of going to the gym last night. I had mentally decided that perhaps I should
not do cardio, that this was causing my exhausted body too much unnecessary stress
and instead I should just lift. That was the plan. I even made a cute little
workout plan. I was getting ready,
almost excited and then the shit just hit the fan. At like 4 Pm I got a group text message from
my older sister stating that if anyone had the desire to see my grandpa before
he died we better do it soon because he was bad. In really bad shape. And then this was followed by the idea that
our collective parents (this text message was sent to me and my sisters and a
bunch of my cousins) were really struggling right now with this and to give
them extra love and support because they were hurting.
This obviously put me in a shitty mood. It’s heartbreaking and I feel very bad for my
mom and aunts who have given so much as of late to their father. So knockdown 1 in progress. I felt my body tense up and my desire to move
lessen. Suddenly my head spinning felt
worse and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to actually go to the gym. Knockdown 2 came in the form of about 4:30 PM
when my husband started texting me about stupid trivial shit and we ended up
getting into a big text message fight which are the worst because most of them
are completely avoidable if you’d just speak to one another instead of read too
much into a stupid string of words.
Pointless. Plus being super sensitive to feeling like shit already and
my grandpa situation it was enough to push me over the edge and snap
uncontrollably at my husband. It was another
nail in the coffin and I lost it. I said
mean hurtful things and he said things that hurt the shit out of me. Probably unintentional but thus in my
ridiculously fragile emotional state and extreme body hatred it was all just
too much. As I drove toward the gym at 5
PM, tears streaming down my face and in a rather uncontrollable emotional state
I decided fuck it, I’m going home. So I
turned the car around and just headed straight for my house. I literally had not an ounce of anything to
give to the gym as I literally walked in my house and lied down on the
ground. Yes, this is dramatic but this
was the emotional crazy town place I was at yesterday.
I was having a mini temper tantrum over life I suppose. And I suspect lying on the ground is the
adult version of the 2 year old kicking and screaming. I wanted to yell at the
world and profess how fucking unfair shit can be sometimes. And the reality is that everything feels massively
out of my control and I feel like everything is imploding at once and I have no
options.
And enter the fucked up destructive behaviors that are the
go-to in such situations. I have never
felt inclined to be a “cutter” you know one of those people who causes
themselves physical pain presumably to mask emotional ones. But I understand the concept. Because as a means to cope my first thought
it punish and torture myself. It’s
really fucked up. As I lied on the
ground in protest to life my very first raging destructive thought was to quit
eating. That’s it, I’m such a fucking fat failure that I am going to quit
eating from here on out. Starvation diet 101. And fuck this shit, let’s weigh
myself. So I literally willed myself up
from the ground and pulled the scale out to weigh myself at 5:30 PM fully
clothed, tennis shoes on, on a random Tuesday.
Where does this come from?
I am certain that my brain was in unnecessary overload and I
wanted to punish myself for my lack of ability at the gym as of late because
this is the only thing I have any control over, kind of. When your world is spinning out of control
you are fighting desperately to hang onto any shred of control. I wanted to beat myself up emotionally to
help numb the pain, thus identifying with the girl who cuts to give herself something
else to focus on. Something “real” to
direct her attention to instead of the crazy inside the head. That is the scale for me. So I hopped on,
hopped off. And as I suspected the
number was skewed given the irrelevant and irrational factors of the day. But I wanted to see that fucked up number
because I was seriously looking for torture and confirmation of my being a fat
cow. Yup, I needed a reason to tell
myself that the starvation diet I was going to embark upon from here on out was
a fabulous idea. The scale was a good start.
But once you are full on into crazy town simply stepping on
the scale once or twice is not enough.
Oh no, as if for some reason I thought that number was going to magically
change I kept stepping on it. I think
this speaks far more to the mental agony I was feeling because I kept wanting
to punish and re-punish myself. There
you go, all your hard work over the past two years, who fucking cares, look at
that fat ass number on the scale. Yup,
mental torture. And why on earth was I
doing this to myself?
Because for a few moments in time I had allowed all of the
negative voices to win out. The voices that told me I was actually a failure
and not good enough and would never be good enough. I had let my fight with my husband crush my
self-esteem on top of already feeling less than stellar about my abilities
given my lack of performance at the gym.
I was already hyper sensitive to feeling like a failure because my body
simply is not doing what I ask of it. Because
running seems so hard that even doing 3 miles right now is torture and I
mentally panic about running even 13.1 yet alone 26.2. And this doesn’t even touch the pain I am
feeling about my grandpa and mostly my sadness for my mom and aunts as they are
dealing with this.
And in a nutshell the end result was this most fucked up
30-60 minutes of thinking. That If I
could somehow control my own actions the rest of the uncontrollable situations
in my life would be less relevant. I would focus on this scale and my fat ass
and the rest of the pain would seem less important. Replace one pain for the
other.
I actually lay there thinking why on earth is my first response
to starve myself? Because this is the most horrific form of punishment I can
think of? Because there is clearly some loose screws in my brain that naturally
want to go to this crazy place. If I
ever needed confirmation that I consider depravation and the scale as the
truest forms of my own personal hell I have it.
Confirmed. The scale is an okay
tool, it’s an inadamate object that does nothing by itself, it is simply a tool
for measurement that is harmless if used properly. Clearly somewhere in my past I have abused
its power and it is all messed up in my head.
I was grasping at imaginary straws hanging on to a sinking
ship. Anything to shift the pain. And then I went numb. That kind of numb that can only occur after a
psychotic break down where you have simply felt your limit of feelings and you
have nothing left. I had gone thru my “steps” of crazy town. Insanity, denial, pissed, bargaining, and now
numb. Knowing fully well that weighing
myself or declaring myself a starvation diet was not the answer. That all of this was simply the convergence
of a very trying time in my life and I needed to back the fuck up.
I didn’t want to be alone. Aside from fighting with Chris
and feeling pissy with him, he was also at work. He had to work the late shift
so I was alone at home. I got in my car and drove the less than a mile to my
mom’s house. I knew she needed me too.
As I went in, she had been crying. She
is very close to her father. Always has
been. We’ve known this part was coming
for about 8 weeks now. He was diagnosed with cancer and we knew he was going to
go downhill. It was inevitable. But it
doesn’t make it any easier. My mom has
been going thru so much.
She looked at me and said, “I knew this time was going to
come, but I can’t help it, I don’t want my dad to die.” What do you say to that? My heart broke for
her. I generally don’t do good with
death or situations like this. But I
tried. And my heart hurt. This woman,
who means the world to me, was in so much pain.
I try to put it into an ounce of perspective. If I was going thru this situation with my
mom that would be it, game changer. I couldn’t imagine. So I just hugged her. She hugged me extra
tight back and said I love you so much.
It’s VERY hard. And I wanted to cry.
And I know based on what my sister and my mom were sharing
with me that we are literally talking days before he passes. It could be today,
it could be this weekend which brings me to other elements of guilt. I will be gone this weekend. I won’t be here.
And I’m fighting with my husband. And I do feel like shit. And my body is
simply rejecting all of this. Allergies, death, stress. Oh, should I try and
pack for said vacation? Don’t even think about it. Should I really be working out more? Yes, my
insane brain tells me. Because I’m just not working hard enough. I’m just not
doing good enough, because I am simply not enough.
And that is all how my crazy train brain works in crisis
mode. And at 8:30 PM, sitting on a chair at my mom’s house my body finally
wanted to give out. It had had enough
emotional abuse and I told her I was going home because I could think of nothing
I wanted to do more than sleep. So I went home, took some sleeping pills and
put myself to bed. Because it was just
one of those nights.
Perspective in the morning tells me this. I am going thru a lot right now and I need to
be kinder to myself. My body is feeling the effects of the stress I am dishing
out. And I need to ease up on the
negativity towards myself for not feeling 100%.
So what if my workouts have been less than stellar. It’s not forever. So what if running has been
unusually difficult for me. Doesn’t mean I’ve lost it. Get thru this part where your body is
fighting off allergies and stress and things will return to a normal status at
some point inevitably soon.
Get thru this week, just manage thru and then go to Vegas
and relax. Let your hair down, enjoy your life.
Whatever is going to happen with Grandpa is going to happen and it’s
completely out of your control. Love the people that matter to you. Hug them.
Tell them you love them. And live your life.
When I return from Vegas I can really get into my marathon training and
get back to running and exercising and making a consistent solid effort. I can’t belittle myself for my actions this
week. This is survival mode. And
honestly I’m not doing too horribly all things considered.
Tonight I plan to go to the gym. Especially since I did not
go last night. I need to keep my emotions in check a little better today. I am
not super human and having some off workouts is perfectly acceptable. It’s
normal. It’s human! Allowing stress to
get the best of me is also human. I may
not like it, but it makes me a real life living breathing human being.
I can’t exactly explain with 100% clarity to anyone why the
convergence of these issues resulted in my mini psychotic break down last night
but clearly it was how my body was going to handle it. Self-punishment is
pretty much my go-to. But thankfully no real
harm done. Weighing myself obsessively
for 20 minutes ultimately doesn’t really damage me. The negative self-talk is
retarded but I am able to put it into perspective when clarity returns to my
brain. Obviously I can’t starve myself
and have no such intention.
I am human. I make mistakes. My brain copes the way it copes
and I move on. Now imagine if I didn’t have better coping mechanisms how
someone with similar brain thinking can end up in all sorts of trouble. I’ve
done that before in my life and I really have learned how to cope much better
on the back end. I’ve let the crazy
train lead me to some pretty bad dark places. I’m learning. Despite it all, I am learning. I will take this whole evening as proof that
I am learning from past mistakes. Doesn’t mean the tendencies for destruction
aren’t there. I don’t think they are ever going to go away but ultimately it’s
how you deal with it that matters more.
It’s in the coping that proves that progress is occurring.
I deserve self-love. Probably in this difficult time more
than ever. I am still and forever more a work in progress.
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