But I cover well

July 27th, 2010

So…I was just reading through a website talking about various anxiety disorders.  I can’t tell for sure whether or not I have issues with anxiety.  I tend to think that I probably do.  Health professionals tend to tell me definitively (without doing any investigation) that I “don’t seem like someone with anxiety” and drop the subject. …Except for my psychiatrist, who (without doing any investigation) is convinced that my anxiety level is off the charts, completely debilitating, and clearly requires sedation.

At any rate, this website listed telltale behaviours like collecting a great deal of information about things, so as to be as well-informed and well-prepared as possible.  And I thought that might sound like me.  So I immediately started collecting all the information I could find about anxiety self-help treatments, strategies, resources, etc. to try just in case.

…Somewhere in there is the answer to my question.

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Posted in anxiety | 4 Comments »

Write write write die swear swear punch swear write write write

July 26th, 2010

Still feeling pretty glum, but I’m hanging in there.

Wrote a complaint letter the other day.  …Not about how I’m feeling (though if you have an address for me to send one of those, do pass it on), but for an unsatisfactory product.  My step-father is the master of this.  He could give Wombat a run for her money on the returns.  Not only does he take stuff back, but if he’s even the slightest bit dissatisfied, he writes a nice letter to corporate headquarters telling them about his previously loyal patronage and disappointing experience and they almost always send him boxes of free stuff or at the very least a whole pile of coupons.  I was venting to my husband about a particular product a while back when I realized suddenly that I really am a loyal customer.  And I really am disappointed with my purchase.  So I figured what the heck.  I like free stuff.  Nothing to lose.  Bring on the stationary supplies.

In other news, I think the combination of blogging and being away from my professional work environment for so long may be affecting my “normal” writing style.  I’m not sure that I’m capable any longer of attempting a serious letter without producing something that my husband wants to forward to his coworkers.  …Although I’m oddly okay with that.  More disturbing is that I didn’t really realize there was anything unusual about the letter I sent until he read it over and started laughing at me.

Dear Paper Mate Representative,

I have been a staunch Paper Mate user for a very long time now.  I go through an obscene quantity of pens every year, partly because I am a teacher, partly because I make a bizarre number of to-do lists, and partly because my bag seems to eat them.  I have long ago given up buying anything but your products because I have found them so consistently reliable – no blobs, no inconsistencies, no complications or frustrations.

However, my most recent pen purchase was a rather large box of your comfortmate pens.

I love a good black ink retractable comfort grip pen (it’s my standard go-to writing implement, next to a good mechanical pencil), and normally I am absolutely satisfied with this type of product, but this batch has been more frustrating than I can put into words.  Half the time there are big globs of ink when I click to use them, and the other half they abruptly stop writing for a while in the middle of things, then come back some time later only to die again over and over while I’m trying to get whatever it was written down.  I’ve been through a pile of them now thinking it must just have been a fluke with one bad pen, but they’re all like that.  It makes no difference if they’re kept inside, outside, right-side-up at all times, or if I shake them, hold them still, turn them gently, press harder, press softer,…they all do this with clockwork regularity, and it is exceptionally frustrating.

I know that might sound silly, but I am really sincerely disappointed, as this is the first time you’ve let me down, and I have purchased your products so consistently in the past to prevent exactly these types of issues.  I do not want to have to begin my search all over again for a brand that I can trust.

If this was a temporary problem, I would greatly appreciate a new box of retractable comfort grip black ink pens to replace the ones I am currently swearing at.  If not, I hope that perhaps you will consider raising your standards back to their previously high levels so as to prevent this frustration for the people who will be buying your pens in the future.  Seriously.  You have no idea how frustrating it is to be trying to make a note of something when the only pen you have with you is only willing to write three quarters of a word at a time.  It’s like it’s laughing at me.  I am not laughing back.

Thank you for taking the time to hear my complaint.  I really do appreciate it.  Let me know if the issue has been resolved and it’s safe to start buying your products again.

Sincerely,

Curiosity

Perfectly businesslike.  Were I actually trying to make it entertaining, I would have included a diagram or two.  Or transcriptions of my swearing.  Or written the letter with one of those m@th($f*$#ing pens and let them try to make the damned thing out.

Yup.  All fascinating stuff these days around here.

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Posted in Real Life | 10 Comments »

Rewiring

July 21st, 2010

So I’m a little caffeine sensitive.  This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s read any of this, or is familiar with my medical history, or has, you know, exposed me to a permanent marker.  I like to think that my body is just enthusiastic.  It likes to go all in with things.

When I was younger and not a regular caffeine drinker, I used to get absolutely high off of one cup of coffee.  I called it “happy juice.”  That flood of extra blood to my brain made the whole world a brighter technocolour place.  I still get a little of that, which I’m treasuring these days.  …Despite the difficulty of trying to plan my day so that everything happens within the span of an hour or two after breakfast.

Anything with caffeine in it is pretty much guaranteed to leave me a dry and shriveled husk afterward, but it’s generally worth it.  I actually have to be careful not to drink too much in any given day (like, two drinks rather than one), because I’ll get a bit of a caffeine hangover the day after.  Not kidding.  Tongue made of cardboard, throat parched, raspy phone sex voice, the whole bit.  Warm caffeinated beverages also have the side effect of making me poop.  Immediately and dramatically.

(That was fun on the days that I was running late and decided to have my coffee at work.  Extreme Poop Challenge!!!)

In the last year there have been periods in which I needed to stop having caffeine temporarily for various medication-related reasons.  I’m currently doing tea rather than coffee most mornings, as the perk is definitely more than enough, and it tends not to give me the over-the-top jitters.  I am alert, but not quite ALERT.  …Which is probably for the best.  Anyway, my experimentation has led me to the official and very scientific (and by “very scientific,” I mean that there was both a ruler and calculator in the room with me when making that determination) result that my body is now trained to poop only when I have tea or coffee.

Tea or coffee + ten minutes = dramatic pooping

No tea or coffee + five days = no poop at all

I’m like a Pavlovian experiment, except with less salivation and the occasional need for a fan.

I am generally okay with this so long as nothing comes between me and my tea again, but a few days ago I ran into somewhat of a problem.  I was going about my morning routine as usual.  Took my pills (which, through a combination of medications and supplements, have now progressed to the level of granny pill organizer.  …Or two.  It’s epic.  We had to clear out a cupboard), had a bit of food, and a mug of Orange Pekoe.  Leisurely sauntered at full speed to the bathroom.  Er…”painted the toilet.”  And then as I was getting up to flush and preparing to go finish my tea, I noticed something small and white floating in the toilet bowl.  That pill went right through me.   In tact.  And with amazing speed.

So of course my first reaction is to Google all manner of things involving pills and poop.  …Well, okay, my first reaction was “That’s SO weird!  I have to tell my husband!” followed shortly by “I should totally blog about this,” but at least the third or fourth reaction was definitely Google.  And lo and behold, I am not the only one passing pills.  In fact, it’s apparently becoming a bit of a problem for the New York sewer system.  Weird.

Anyway, they all attest that some pills just aren’t as dissolving-friendly as others, which is easy to see with a quick vinegar test.  Dang, I think.  My pills aren’t dissolvey.  Will have to find new ones.  I plop a couple different ones in a small glass of vinegar just to confirm. …And don’t they start happily dissolving.  Dissolve, dissolve, dissolve, like that’s just their favourite thing in the world.

So now I’m not sure if my stomach fluids are made of milk, or if the coffee really does fire things through me as quickly as it honestly has always seemed to.  But I have determined that I’m probably better off taking everything with lunch rather than breakfast, just in case.

Because had I instead chosen to skip the tea this morning, this entry would have been more along the lines of “Eeeeeeeeeenh.  Poop pill.  Uuuuuuunh.”  …Which gives me the overwhelming urge to start up a zombie blog, but would be otherwise uninformative.

Also, how come “shit” and “crap” can both be commonly used to refer to general “stuff,” but poop cannot?  Yo, dude.  This poop is awesome.

In general news, things are happening, and I feel stuff about it.  Er…feel poop about it.  Still feeling mostly like crap.  Er…poop.  I’m fighting the balance of trying to try enough different things to give me a good chance of successful recovery without trying so many things at once that I won’t have any idea what I need to continue with if something happens to work.  This is annoying, because to see any one change through to the end takes multiple months.  Have gone off my birth control pills.  Am taking SAMe.  Am redoing the meditation course I took on my own (all ten-weeks-of-hour-every-day of it) and kicking myself now and then for having ever stopped doing the much more manageable 10-15 minute “maintenance” sessions and requiring a full fresh run at it to change my brain pathways again.  Am resisting the urge to launch into other forms of treatment, but am probably still doing too much at once anyway.  Cannot bring myself to care, as I don’t know that I could tolerate waiting months to see if the birth control makes a difference, followed by months to find a suitable alternative, followed by months to do the meditation, followed by months to investigate the SAMe, followed by… Not happening.  I’m trying to time it so that changes in my emotional state will still be as informative as possible, but it’s rather like a really bad science fair project in which I’ve chosen to report on volcanoes and space and mould and salamanders in one large bright cardboard display.

But really, who wouldn’t want to see an experiment involving moldy space salamanders in a volcano?  That poop is sick.

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Posted in Mindfulness Meditation | 5 Comments »

Hulk no understand why internet not amuse Hulk

July 13th, 2010

The last few weeks I’ve been a little lax in writing here mostly due to spending a great deal of time sitting in dumbfounded wonder going “I don’t feel like crap.  …I don’t feel like crap!”  And then looking around in confusion about what to do with myself.  It’s been a while.  I amassed a whole list of brief tidbits and observations about completely inane and lighthearted things that I thought I might write about sometime.  When I felt like it.  Because who wants to waste time writing when one could be, like, breathing, or walking around or something.

…Which means that when, in the last week or so, I found myself suddenly surrounded by those dark grey clouds that follow around gloomy cartoon donkeys, it was a bit of an unexpected kick in the teeth.  I don’t know exactly what’s gone awry.  I don’t know if it was just such a relief to not be completely knocked flat that things felt temporarily better than they were.  I don’t know if the pressure and stress of What To Do Next started getting to me.  I don’t know if my chemistry was a little fried from the past year of medicinal craziness.   Am I getting enough sleep?  Enough sun?  Enough caffeine?  Am I getting too much natural sugar?  Not enough sugar?  Did I step on a crack?  That mother’s back thing always seemed a little suspicious if you ask me.

At any rate, the last few days in particular have kind of sucked.  Kind of sucked like a cute little all encompassing vortex of despair.  I’ve been a bit loathe to admit that here, to be honest.  I was so happy to be doing better, damn it.  Plus, putting it in writing makes it all somehow more real.  And it already feels deceptively permanent.  I would probably be a lot less disappointed a lot less often if I could sincerely take each day as it comes, but as it turns out I am less good at that, and more super super great at taking the feelings of the moment and projecting them over the next several months.  So those two days I was feeling super productive mean it’s time to plan for a return to work, and the last couple days of crapitude mean I’m doomed to another lasting stretch of boredom and hopelessness and bad T.V.

All in all, I just feel sort of lost at the moment.  I’m so eager to just GET ON WITH THINGS already.  Filling in a quick depression inventory scale gives numerical backing to the fact that yes, I am indeed feeling much like crap.  Except for the thoughts of self-harm (which inexplicably but thankfully seem to be missing), I’ve got every symptom off the charts again.  Fuck.  There are still things to be tried.  I am way too stubborn not to kick this thing eventually. …But sheesh.  How freaking long am I supposed to wrestle with this??  …And why did my brain just provide “moose canoe” as the appropriate profanity to follow that statement?   At least I know that while I may not be in any danger of recovering in the near future, I am also apparently in no danger of becoming normal.  Phew.

This time around has some new bits to it too.  I used to rate fairly minimally on the whole “irritability” side of things.  I’m more likely to burst into tears than to burst into a room through the wall.  Not so this time, apparently.  This time my husband gives me a dirty look for accidentally brushing his face with my foot in my attempt to get off the couch (from my admittedly unconventional positioning), and I go from “meh” to “KILL!!!” in ten seconds or less.  Except that I haven’t lost the other symptoms either, so now I’m crying and angry and the back of my mind is telling me that clearly we’ve lost all of our closeness and our relationship is doomed.  And I want to smash things.  And swear.  And swear about smashing things.   I’ve gotten pretty good now at telling the difference between sincere emotions and the bizarre parodies induced by chemical changes, and let’s just say these ones are having a little chemical parade.

So mostly I am just waiting things out for the moment.  I go through the motions of low-energy activities during the day, and try to roll as gracefully as I can with the waves of “Aaaaaaaah” that tend to hit me in the evening.   And try to keep in mind that this could all be dramatically different tomorrow.  It happens that fast.

On the plus side, this gives me time to do normally not-as-engaging things like sift through my older Google Analytics stats and learn that now in addition to the multitude of hugging animal searches, antidepressant questions, bits of random Russian, and quests for stick figures doing various (mostly dirty) things, I’ve now also welcomed in a not insignificant number of search hits from “hulk no understand” and several variations on “amuse me, internet!”  Love it.

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Posted in Struggles | 6 Comments »

He’s also a little bit roguish, but in a completely responsible way, I swear.

July 9th, 2010

It’s our anniversary on Monday, so we’re celebrating this weekend.  Second year of marriage, ninth year together.  I end up saying that a lot, because I don’t want to let those extra seven years go.  He is bright, and clever, and determined, and witty, and charming, and spontaneous, and devoted, and stubborn, and rebellious, and ingenious, and honest, and passionate, and perceptive, and introspective, and adaptable, and trustworthy, and generous, and bold, and just the right amount of both cheeky and geeky for me.

And I’m kind of smitten with him.

Tonight I surprised him with a nice dinner, because he’s got a bunch of work to finish still later on this evening but I wanted us to be able to carve out a little couple time together (normally he does the cooking except for on major holidays, which suits me just fine, but every now and then I do make something.  You know.  So I don’t forget how the stove works).  I realized partway into the preparation that the theme of the meal was pears and thyme.  …Pairs.  And Time.  How appropriate.  Sort of.  …Okay, it’s a stretch, but it’s closer to romantic than asparagus and salt.

Plans for tomorrow revolve around cotton, in honour of the traditional gift for a second anniversary.  Also around fresh baguette and cheeses.  I’m sure I read that on the list somewhere.  Second anniversary – cotton, bread and cheeses.  Next year is leather, bread and cheeses.  Could get interesting.

To summarize other news, Dr. Douchecanoe was still a douchecanoe while my husband was there, but much much less so.  And I managed to get out of the appointment without an armful of new medications.  Unfortunately I still have to keep seeing him, because the new therapist isn’t a doctor.  On the plus side, the new therapist does seem good.  She took some time at the first session to inquire about my diet, supplements, exercise, and other things that I find reassuring.  She seems well informed (no new information, but at least I wasn’t telling her things she didn’t know. …See Dr. Douchecanoe above).  She seems willing to explore various options for treatment.  And when I mentioned my history with antidepressants, she gave me kind of a horrified/sympathetic look and comment rather than ignoring what I said (*cough* Dr Douchecanoe *cough*).  I will admit that it was kind of relieving to have someone other than me, who seems vaguely competent, taking some responsibility for my treatment.  It’s been stressful feeling like I need to carry it all on my own shoulders.

I think I’m going to continue seeing free therapist too, though.  Can’t hurt, right?

And plus, if I add one or two more health professionals, I can form a baseball team.

Also, it was brought to my attention again today that I have a very difficult time getting angry.  I just take too much personal responsibility for things, so if something goes wrong, I automatically assume there was something more I could have done to prevent it.  Wrong leg got amputated?  Should have double-checked and confirmed with the doctor one more time before going into surgery.  Tree fell on my car?  Should have foreseen that as a risk and parked somewhere else.   There’s not a lot that I can’t claim an active role in somehow.  Meteors, maybe.  Granted, I did choose to live on Earth, but do you know how cold it is on Neptune this time of year?  Plus, dude, I hear the commute is hell.

In other and completely unrelated news, apparently someone in my area was having a yard sale on “Friday.”  They had a big old salmon-coloured sign on the main road.

Does that mean I need to be there by Wednesday if I want anything good?  Are they trying to throw off the cops?  Bending space-time?  Do they not believe that Friday is real?  I almost got out my cell phone to take a picture, but the light changed too soon so I drove away and missed out.  …Okay, I almost got out my cell phone to take a picture, but the guy behind me gave a polite honk as I sat at the green light spaced out thinking about it, and I drove away and missed out.  Still, classic blog of unnecessary quotation marks moment.

In a similar vein, this is pretty damn funny too.

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Posted in Real Life, Therapy, Things That Amuse Me | 5 Comments »

You know, The Scream. Like that expressionist painting, except with more fur.

July 5th, 2010

My cats amuse me.  Both kitties are very attached to us, and delight in following my husband and I from place to place. …Except when it comes to the office.  You see, the office contains many delightfully tasty wires to gnaw on, and as such, is locked behind closed doors unless we’re in there.  And of course, the fact that it’s sometimes off limits makes it ever so enticing the rest of the time.  The boy-cat has picked up enough English to understand exactly when it’s time to leave the room, and consequently makes a break for the farthest corner under my desk at the earliest opportunity.  Then once I crawl under there to manhandle him out, he very consistently resorts to what we like to call the flop defense (this may be trademarked, although I haven’t actually seen him file the paperwork yet).  This is that mode in which wherever he is and whatever he’s doing, the slightest touch drops him to the floor in a floppy mass of purr.  And floppy masses of purr are infinitely endearing, but also infinitely difficult to pick up and/or manoeuvre.  He is aware of both of these things, which makes it the perfect action when he’s somewhere he wants to stay and doesn’t want to give us the option of being annoyed with him for it.  LOVES being removed from the office in an arduous and precarious manner.  Strange tastes, that cat.

Of course, he also has a habit of rolling our doormat over himself like it’s made of money.  Or tuna fish.  Or whatever it is a cat would most want to roll in.  He looks absolutely euphoric there, rubbing it all over his body.  We haven’t yet figured this one out.

The girl-cat is less interested in being in there than she is in making sure she’s living life on her own terms, I think.  She protests loudly when she’s moved somewhere that wasn’t her idea, even when it’s somewhere she’s happy to be.  This afternoon I was ready to move out of the office, so I tried to pick her up out of my husband’s office chair where she’d curled up, and she gave me the indignant saucer eyes and a repeated Silent Yell.  If you have not experienced the Silent Yell, let me just say that it looks much like a Normal Yell, except the sound emitted is in potentially too high of a register to be perceived by the human ear.   All I could get was a kind of light clicking sound.  Like when she’s tracking an insect.  Or swallowed an alien. It was like she was so shocked and appalled that I could be contemplating moving her that she was rendered speechless.  At any rate, today I randomly decided to just roll her into the hall instead.  Where she sat for the next hour or so, looking like she wasn’t quite certain whether she should be incensed or triumphant at this development.

Today was a fairly productive day for me, in which I did many productive things for productive reasons.  I wanted no part of the highest priority items on my to-do list, but I decided for once to just skip them and get some other stuff done rather than run away screaming.

Silent screaming, mind you.

Like somebody was trying to move me off a comfy office chair.

I am definitely not yet quite balanced out, but life continues to be much better in the absence of the Luvox.  It’s sort of like at the moment I’m living in a car with no brakes.  So as long as I’m cruising along the highway in the right direction and nothing unfortunate happens, I’m just as fine as all the other cars.  …But the moment something derails me, or pushes me off course, I’m in a crap load of trouble.  That’s pretty much my life right now.  Fine, fine, fine, BLARGH!!!!!!, fine, fine, fine.  At least there are more fines than blarghs these days.

I’m scheduled to see a new therapist tomorrow.  On the plus side, she came highly recommended.  On the down side, she came highly recommended by Dr. Douchepsychiatrist, so I have to take it with a grain of salt.  I love how at the last session, he was confused at why I wasn’t making faster progress this past year, since I seem to be willing and fairly motivated.  And I tried to bite my tongue and politely remind him that the past year has been a haze of unconscious/nauseous/unstable/anxious/suicidal medication hell.  …Which he seemed to brush off, since in his mind it still “wasn’t a significant problem.”  Yargh.  We’ve decided that my husband is going to come along to my appointment this Wednesday.  We figure it’s got to go in one of two extremes.  Either he’ll treat my husband like just as much of a brainless insignificant peon as he treats me, or he’ll be totally ingratiating towards him.  I’m not currently sure which one will make me more irate, but I’m sort of pulling for the second one on the chance that it helps us actually get somewhere with a treatment plan I can live with.  Maybe he’ll be more willing to acknowledge somebody “sane.”

Seriously, I’m making alien clicking sounds as we speak.

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Posted in cats | 6 Comments »

If I was in an empire state of mind, I would probably invade Bermuda. …First.

June 29th, 2010

We gave my much-younger sister and her friend (who we met that evening) a lift back to their town of residence after a family event on the weekend (it was a cousin’s post-topical-wedding reception, but that’s not really important).  The friend sent me a very polite Facebook message the day after asking if she had perhaps left her cell phone in our car, and if so, could I mail it back to her.  I looked.  She had.  Being a hip University student who I’m sure has…you know…friends and stuff, I asked in my reply whether she was suffering cell phone withdrawal yet.   This is what she sent me.

I think she might be awesome.

So I sent her an envelope containing the phone and two surveillance photos with a request on the back of one of them to “take care of this” by mid July, payment to follow.

The pictures were supplied by Google, so I’m not sure who this woman is, but I hope she has good life insurance or some decent body armor.

Around these parts, things are becoming progressively more stable as my body adjusts to the lack of foreign chemicals (and it does, indeed, look like I’m actually free of the Luvox for good!  Yippee!).  I’m fighting the urge to push myself too crazy hard now that I’m “better.”  …”Better” meaning pretty much right back where I was when they decided to pull me from work in the first place.  ;)   I’m still not handling stress well, but for the moment I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding all possible stresses in my life.  So things are going okay.

In other news, that New York song “Empire State of Mind” with Alicia Keys and Jay-Z was playing on the radio on my way home today.  I have no idea what most of the lyrics are, which isn’t unusual for me, but one line came through crystal clear and I don’t think I’ll now be able to hear it any other way.  Tell me that at the one minute mark, she isn’t singing “concrete fills my red dream tomato.”  I dares ya.

Empire State of Mind on YouTube

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Posted in Antidepressants, Real Life, Things That Amuse Me | 8 Comments »

“So we quite enjoyed your manuscript. Do you happen to look angsty in coffee shops? …Oh. Maybe next year.”

June 24th, 2010

So I was thinking about flags the other day.  Specifically about how there are all sorts of crazy rules about things you can and can’t do with the American Flag, and what happens when they get worn out.  Isn’t there a commune somewhere or something where old flags go to retire?  Anyway, then I got thinking about religious items.  What happens to tapestries of Jesus when they get too ratty?  Could one throw a figurine of the Lord in the trash?  Burn him in effigy?  How does one dispose of religious items if one is a very religious person?

(…Unlike me, who doesn’t to my knowledge own anything I wouldn’t toss into the regular trash can.  Maybe the compost if it’s special.  In a baggie if it’s liquidy and thinking about escaping.  But that’s about as far as I go.)

Today, I’ve been realizing that weight is a very relative thing.   …And not in that “drop a feather and a brick” kind of way, but more in the sort of way of “drop me, and then a previous version of me.”  This time last year I was at my lowest adult weight.  …Which probably shouldn’t be an achievement, but I’m as much a victim of social pressures as anyone, and so it was.  It was exciting to be down that low.  It was a triumph over all the years of struggle and distortion and foolish undereducated attempts to kick those extra pounds in ways that actually made things worse.  It was a nice “up yours” to all of the stupid unnecessary stress since my beanpole frame tripled somewhere in my early high school years.

I’m not sure why the weight loss was so much easier this time, except that I stopped trying to be so crazy extreme about it.  I removed the immediate timelines and made it my goal to get there eventually.  However long that took.  I stopped making any changes that I didn’t think I could live with forever as a permanent lifestyle change.  I learned roughly how many calories are in the things I eat, but didn’t set any crazy low temporary targets like I have in the past.  I started eating a lot more during the day.  A lot more.  But that meant that I no longer got those cravings in the evening so bad that it was either find a piece of cake NOW, or gnaw off my hand.  I stopped keeping sweets and treats and indulgence foods in the house, because I discovered that if they’re there my brain CANNOT stop thinking about them.  And constant thoughts of chocolate don’t do much for staying away from it.  Before any indulgence, I weighed whether I really wanted it, and stopped beating myself up so much for it if I decided I did.  …Although I also corrected my tendency to think that somehow once I had crossed the line of unhealthy eating, it didn’t matter how much I did on the other side and might as well get my money’s worth while I was over there (Dang.  Shouldn’t have eaten that cookie. …Well, this day’s ruined.  Might as well have the whole bag now.  Why did that ever make sense??).  I learned that my body really does get sincerely addicted to certain foods, and that sometimes I needed to hold out long enough to detox.  I came to terms with the fact that I loathe intense exercise, and while I really do want to get my heart rate going eventually for long term health benefit, I was unlikely to stick to any sudden and intense workout plan for more than a month.  But I don’t mind walking.  So I walked most days.

I also started originally with the knowledge that I was getting married in a year.  And of thinking when I first tried on the dress I had purchased that I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I fit into it.  That’s one heck of a motivator.

And who knew?  Being consistent with the little changes really did add up for me.  It was…completely surprising (I really had struggled for the fifteen previous years).   But nice.  …Except for the wedding dress part, which as it turns out when I was done needed to be altered smaller to within an inch of its life.

I say all of this because I need to remind myself of it.  See, coming off of most of my medications triggered cravings like you wouldn’t believe.  And when the only thing that brings any relief from one’s constant nausea is eating, one tends to eat rather continuously.  And apparently sleeping away several months of one’s life (except for mealtimes!), isn’t the greatest way to tone and condition.  Who knew?  At any rate, over the course of the past year I have lost almost all of the progress it took me the two previous years to gain. …Or technically gained what it took me two years to lose.  You get the point.  I am back where I started again.  And that sucks.

I’m not a big girl.  I have, at times, been a bit on the curvier side, but I don’t think people would have ever described me as a large person.  My body mass index is sometimes towards overweight, but that’s partly because I’m short and am carrying half my body weight in arm and leg muscles (I have no idea how that happened, by the way.  They’ve always been like that.  Clearly I missed a calling somewhere.  In…lifting things, I guess.  Should’ve been a Thing Lifter).  The battles I’ve had with weight have mostly been with the same 15 – 30 pounds.  But they’re my 15 pounds, and they make a big difference to me.

So it’s been kind of demoralizing to have lost so much ground.  More so because last year when my new weight seemed surprisingly stable, I intentionally shrunk all my clothes.  Seriously.  The only clothing I have that fits me now came with an elastic waistband.  Plus, since the medications make my stomach inflate like a balloon after eating (and they really do – I look at least seven months pregnant after meals), I’m limited in shirts to the couple of things I purchased in that year in which all new clothing looked like maternity wear.   I’ve had to pick up a couple of extra things to get me through, but we don’t have the budget for a whole new wardrobe, especially when I would ideally like this to be temporary.  So I have a few shorts, and a few shirts, and they all look pretty much as cheap as they were.

It’s tough feeling good when on some level my clothing now sends me the message that I’m not worth anything better (and even though rationally I know that’s not the reason, I think I’ve underestimated how much that’s seeping through).  It’s challenging to maintain a positive physical image of myself when every few weeks I pull out something I’m in need of to see if it fits yet and can’t get it past mid thigh.  I don’t think I would even mind so much being this size if I had clothing that fit me, but having a whole wardrobe of clothes that I’m too fat for just seems cruel.  Thankfully I couldn’t shrink my formal dresses, so in case of a black tie event I’m good to go.  Just don’t ask me to come to a barbeque.

Anyway, I am attempting today to recognize that it’s really only the comparison to how I was a year ago that’s getting me so down about my weight.  There is nothing really wrong with the way I am right now (aside from the sometimes-inflated stomach, but there’s nothing I can do about that).  If I had never been thinner, it wouldn’t be so bad.  So yes, I would like to get back there eventually, but I’m going to try not to torture myself so much.  I rearranged my closet today so that the things I can actually fit into are separate from the rest.  I debated packing away anything I can’t wear right now, but I think it would just look too sad.  Still, it’s a step in the right direction.  And if I’m still this size in a couple months, I’ve decided that I can accept that and invest in some more permanent clothes.  This is a change, but not a failure.

And at least for today, I actually believe that.

Also, I’ve discovered that sitting with my laptop and a mug of tea makes me feel like a writer.  That seems like the sort of writery thing writers do.  That, and look angsty in coffee shops or sit on porches tucked into the forest.  I guess that’s why I haven’t written any books yet.   I’m sure publishers ask about that sort of thing before they’ll take you on anyway.

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Posted in Diet and Nutrition, Struggles | 1 Comment »

My First

June 23rd, 2010

Cool!  Earthquake!  …That is exceptionally rare around here.

Big relief too, as for a moment I thought that something in the air conditioning and/or venting system in my house was SERIOUSLY malfunctioning.  Truly, if the vibrations are causing the couch to actually bounce up and down off the ground, you need one heck of a repair job.

Nope.  Just the Earth moving.  Much cheaper.

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Posted in Real Life | 8 Comments »

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