slipstream becomings

two weeks in and my collar bones have begun to reappear.

that’s cool. really cool.

i have a terrible cold, and slept most of the day away.

i have to go over to the school and then to the pool. exercise is supposed to make you feel better when you have a cold right?

i took some “begin” pictures this morning. i’m overweight, to be sure. 

i’m also unhealthy. sometimes i get it. i indulged relentlessly for 15 years in everything. now my body reflects the decrepit state of my soul. i’m alone. i’m unattractive. i don’t “take care of myself”: shave, wax, prune, pick, style, dress…you name it. i really don’t care. i’m a single parent. surprise suprise. and worse than all of this is that i don’t believe in my heart of hearts that i’m worth changing it. i believe i will always be mediocre.

so.

change. change. change. 

believe.

i swam today. another one of these 12×100m workouts. and i must tell you that i feel like crap on a stick. i pushed myself through it. oh please, let me always believe that i can push myself through it.

that vision of who i could be, who i want to be, that more successful, more content, loving and beloved woman just over there…let her never fade from view.

(shelley remains virtually unread, nevermind written. so so so many things are so so so wrong.)

today is a rest day. it feels dangerous and scary and irresponsible and wrong not to be going over the gym.

yesterday was weight day though, and the rest is necessary.

but i feel like i am standing on a very slippery slope; as if tomorrow i will make some excuse not to go do something.

part of taking good care of yourself is getting enough rest. part of making sustainable change is to make the changes gradually. part of burning out on life renovations is to start 42,000 things and finish none.

i want to go swimming. but really i just can’t bring myself to finish this shelley paper. this has been hanging over me for a year. something is very very wrong with my ability to write. and it’s tied up in this paper. i have to finish this paper and as it stands right now i’d rather do anything ANYTHING more than even read the work i’ve written so far. 

it’s awful. i don’t know what’s wrong.

it was weight day in clock world today, and i’ve been really thinking about this body image/visualization problem i invented.

today i really looked at myself in the many mirrors that are stationed around the gym as i moved through the stations of my workout.

whatever the number on the scale is, i think i have a better idea of what i want to look like. 

the fat has deposited itself at the top half of my thighs in different ways on my right and left legs. i want the inner curve of my thighs to be much more symmetrical. i might also invest in some plastic surgery to correct a subdermal hematoma scar on my left leg. vanity might out on that one.

my belly will be like a very small loaf of bread, round and warm. it won’t hang over anymore. more importantly, my abdominal muscles will be rock hard underneath and will hold me in a gorgeous, powerful posture.

when i stand with legs shoulder width apart, my arms will rest at my sides. the will not have to contend with the overbearing presence of my hips.

my hourglass figure will be closer to symmetrical at top and bottom.

my arms will be strong and leaner, with distinct muscle definition. gone will be the bow shape of my forearm and the overhang in my upper arm. they will be shapely and strong.

there will be visible muscle definition in my thighs, and my calves will be strong and taut.

my face will thin out just a bit, and hopefully my terrible double chin will tighten up, though i suspect that genetics will trump me here.

i won’t be nearly as w.i.d.e. man, am i wide.

so i still don’t have a super clear picture of what the whole package will look like, but i have a better sense today of what i’m striving for. i’m going to call that progress.

and i caught myself in the rear view mirror this afternoon and realized, not for the first time but for the first time in a while, that i am terribly pretty. and the voice in my head chose not argue. for today.

a successful day. string it with the other pearls.

as i was swimming today i was arguing with myself, the normal mental noise that accompanies the back and forth of lap swimming.

i was thinking about school and my future mostly, but i was also thinking about the progress pictures here, and the tools for living and trying to visualize how i am going to look in the next year.

i can so much better embody how i want to feel. i know i want to be able to run without losing my breath. i know i want to be able to climb stairs without feeling the heaviness of myself, like i am dragging 2 bags of dogfood in my pants. i know i want to be able to stretch and bend without hearing the snap-crackle-pop of abused and neglected tendons. i want to wake up refreshed and ready to go. i want to jump on my bike and get there quickly. i want to walk lightly, not feel myself tremble and shake about with every step. i want to be full of health and energy and light.

i look at so many progress pictures here and i just cannot picture how i will look. i know that at 17, swimming 9 times a week i weighed 170. i know that i could barely wear esprit clothing and that anything smaller than a size 12 wasn’t going to fit me. i was in supremely good shape, and i honestly don’t believe i will weigh much less than that when i feel like i listed myself above.

i am a little scared, because one of my main reasons for tackling this is clothing. today i went to look for a rain coat. the xl at lands end barely fit. the l did not fit. and on-line, the plus sized coat is not available in yellow. it makes me seethingly angry to be dressed in ridiculous colours, bad cuts, cheap fabrics and pay more for the privilege of looking like nothing fits (because it doesn’t. ever.)

so i don’t know what i’ll look like, and i know the number on the scale is not going to dictate my happiness or satisfaction. this is about fitness for me this time, and about self-acceptance, self-confidence and re-discovering my very lost self esteem.

i also know that i will develop a relationship with food that is about pleasure and respect. the world is full of such delicious food! i won’t forego the gorgeousness of rich, beautiful foods. i’ll work harder to be able to enjoy them, taking equal pleasure in the movement of this body.

i just wish i had a picture of what it looks like to feel that way. i have always had a distorted view of myself, and even now when i have almost made my body match the mental picture of myself, the distortion tells me i’ll always look this way.

there is never a lack of things to work on.

today’s swim workout included 12×100. in a 50m pool, that’s 2 laps per 100m and 1 turn.

so i decided i was going to flip turn every single time.

and i did.

yippity!

last week was a pretty great success.

so this week my goals are:

- plan my menu (not right now though - i’m not hungry and nothing sounds good at all)

- swim 4x and do weights 2x

- finish the shelley paper

- help the girl clean her room and no yelling!

- keep blogging

last week i weighed myself at my grandmother’s house, on my grandfather’s physician triple beam weigh scale. i have long suspected that it is a little off, but it was there and i was there and so what the hell right?

it said 248. i couldn’t really believe that, so i entered 245 as my starting weight.

today after my swim i weighed in at 239.

so that feels great, and now i know i have a real starting weight on a more accurate scale.

i also upped the difficulty of my swim plan workout and swam 2100m today, where all week i’ve done 1600m. i wasn’t totally cooked at the end, but i’ll stick with about 2100m for a week and then up it again.

and did i mention that i feel pretty great?

yeah, i do.

my daughter and i locked horns this morning. she was crying. i was screaming like a maniac and stomping around. it all just fell apart. there are a thousand reasons: exhaustion, disorganization, a creeping sense of screen addiction (i hereby commit to leaving the computer OFF until i get to school), frustration, the woes an trials of being 4, of being a single parent, the unmitigated bother of life itself at 9 am.

i have this idea. i think if i can go to bed by 11 (or maybe it needs to be 10…or maybe even 9) then i can wake with vim and vigour. we can be on time for school. we can face the day without frantic rushing, yelling commotion. there would be so many more hours in the day, so much more success.

and somehow magically i would learn to have a neat and tidy house with everything in it’s place. lunches would be made in time, because the kitchen would be clean and sparkly from the night before. we’d have energy and time to dawdle of breakfast, and still be on time. we could walk or ride to school instead of driving…somehow just going to bed early will move me along to my better, more perfect life.

(no need to question just now why i have this ideal perfect life to which i am constantly holding myself up, and from which i constantly fail, continually cycling through self-loathing and despair. not right now.)

anyway.

this morning was an astonishingly thorough catastrophe. 

i ate well, though. and then i had to bide some time until my analyst appointment.

oh that was rich. no need to reiterate the contents of that crying fest. 

the point is i just wasn’t hungry.

so after the therapy appointment i went and got an earl grey tea from starbucks. with the sugar free syrup to try it. reducing the cup value from something like 6 or 7 points to 2. so a 2 point lunch it is, and though i set my goal this week to stay out of starbucks, it was only to avoid 7 points tea lattes.

accomplished.

i am muscle sore today, but i’m going to go over the the gym, warm up, stretch (!!!) and do a light weight round because i committed that i would.

i need to be more like horton: say what i mean, mean what i say.

100 PER CENT.

i have been wanting to use swimplan.com for a long time. so why not now?

day 2. the aerobic part of the workout said some stuff, and then it said 600m freestyle.

and this morning i was all like wtfbbq i can’t do that. i spent the day thinking i could rest at 200, 300, 400…whatever.

and then i started swimming.

and i motherfucking did it.

wow.