For a long time, I've been feeling like I've lost control of my life. It's kind of hard for me to write about; I'm an anti-social person at the best of times and have never been able to express myself very well. I have to DO something though, because I've been doing nothing for SO long and where has it gotten me? nowhere, and fast.
I've always thought I was fat, for as long as I can remember. It never really mattered what the scale said, I always thought it was too heavy and that I was fat and ugly and flawed. When I hit puberty in high school (around 15ish I think) my weight went up to 130 (due to my new figure) and my self-esteem plummeted, and it's been a reciprocal relationship ever since.
I've never really been an active person; I have asthma which flares up with exercise and cold temperatures (which there is a LOT of where I live, I feel like I"m trapped inside in the winter) and shied away from sports while I was in school and whatnot. I've tried halfheartedly in the past, but nothing really stuck and I got back into my sedentary rut. Also, now that I've been pretty much inactive for couple of years I'm starting to get a lot of pain in my back, hips, joints etc. which I think is mostly from the fact that I sit on my behind all day making jewelry and tinkering with my website. (and also my awful, awful mattress
)In the past few years, I've had what could be considered a DIABOLICAL amount of drama, which has led to a lot of stress and depression and weight fluctuation. I got married way too young {150lbs} (six months out of high school to a man who didn't know what it meant to respect a woman, of course I didn't know that at the time), got pregnant {185 at heaviest}, had my daughter {155 within a week after birth, ridiculous, I know} and then slowly gained most of it back over the next 9 months or so. Over the next year I started realizing that there were some serious issues with my marriage. I moved in with a friend, (my daughter stayed with him, I continue to judge myself harshly for this decision even though I know it was the right one) and for few months I told myself that I was going to go back to him, but after some time away I realized how much happier I was being away and that the 'me' I knew was being crushed when I was around him. I made the move permanent. By the time I told him I wanted a divorce I'd lost around 20lbs from the stress {155}. That was mid 2007. I'm sure any of you who have gone through similar can imagine the next few months/years etc. I didn't end up with primary care of my daughter, but I can say that she is happy and healthy and she stays with me most weekends, and although it hurts when she's not here, I still believe it was the right decision. (I just feel like everyone and their dog judges me for it. I also have some issues with feeling like everyone judges me for everything.)
Well, it's been a year and a half (ish) and I'm back up to {167}. I've had a couple of jobs, one I liked and one I didn't. Currently I have my own business designing jewelry (although not as successful as I'd like, but i'm a perfectionist and I"m still relatively new), although I have to go out and find a part time job to help pay the bills. Part of me feels like a failure because of this but I know that's horseradish and that I shouldn't beat myself up because of it! I am trying to re-train my thinking and nip the self-destructive thoughts (and I have a lot of them, a LOT) in the bud. I battle with a lot of thoughts of being inadequate and like nothing I do is good enough. (some of this comes from my childhood, some of it scars from the failed marriage.) I used to bottle up all of my feelings, but I'm slowly learning how to deal, although I do have my setbacks.
I've found a man who treats me the way I should be. (there's a lot of drama related to him too but I think I'll leave that out here, I've babbled a lot already.) I am slowly figuring out who I am (or who I am not, mostly) and am making gradual progress towards being a happy, healthy existence but there's a lot of hurdles to get over. I have a beautiful three and a half year old who is SO smart, and I have a lot in my life to be thankful for.
I still spend a lot of my time right now in varying states of anger, frustration and blubbering (i.e. crying, lol) but right now it's not a bad thing, I'm just expressing instead of internalizing. There are a lot of things that I haven't dealt with, I just never knew how.
tl;dr
So, to anyone who managed to slog through that sea of self-analyzing, I applaud you, and thank you for caring enough to read it all. I feel better after getting some of that down, and I think that maybe I'm finally ready to pull myself up out of this hole that I've been digging for so long. (now if only I had the upper body strength
)Tiff a.k.a. The Frozen Rose
