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SHAGADELIC's Recent Blog Entries
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Sunday, September 06, 2009
My fiance almost died. Again.
They told him that if he hadn't come to the hospital yesterday morning he would be dead today.
I want to cry. I have cried. I folded my hands together last night and prayed harder than I've prayed in a while. I don't want to lose him this way.
This happened a year ago when he was in Italy on a business trip. They told him the same thing then that they told him yesterday. If you hadn't come when you did, you would have died.
I honestly don't know what I would have done if I had lost him.
These last few weeks all I've been doing is feeling bad for myself, beating myself up, doubing myself. Worst of all, I was questioning if losing weight was something I really wanted to do. I was sabotaging myself by not working out, eating late at night, having larger than usual portions. My fiance wasn't eating. He would only eat once a day. He's a diabetic and that's the last thing he should be doing. He lost 66 pounds from not eating. Why aren't we taking care of ourselves? Why do we do these things that we know we shouldn't do, things that will kill us in the end and rob us of the beautiful life we're meant to have with one another?
Are we scared? I know I am. All these things keep cropping back up on me. These doubts and fears and insecurities. The anger and resentment. I started to remember why I donned this fat suit in the beginning and started to see the logic in it again. Dangerous territory! When you start rationalizing your harmful behavior and BELIEVING in your rationalizations, you're in trouble. I'm not sold yet, but I'm doing a hell of a job convincing myself.
Then, too, I am feeling overwhelmed. I hate that I'm still fat. This body really really sucks. Being around my skinny sister has made me feel terribly insecure. I'm not jealous of her but I see her walking around with a body that men want and that people find attractive. I see her wearing great clothes and looking great. She spends nearly an hour getting ready to go out. Even if it's just to the grocery store, she takes 20 minutes to get ready.
I don't do that. It's not that I don't want to but I almost feel like it's a waste on me because no matter how great my hair looks or my make up, I'm still in this terribly unattractive body. I really do wish I could just unzip it and step out of it. God, wouldn't life be much easier? LOL I have to work for my body and while I'm ready, willing and able, I'm overwhelmed.
That's the second time I've said that. That's the word of the day, I guess. My fiance and I were talking this morning and he begged me to keep losing weight. I don't want you to get sick like me, he said. Please stick with it. I don't want to quit at all. I have no intention to quit. I just want these other distractions to go away so I can focus. If my luck with games of chance were better, I'd play the freakin' lottery, win and quit my job. Then I'd have time to write, bake and sell my cookies, and stay in shape. Well, that's the dream.
While I was praying for my man to get better, I promised God that I would stick to my plan. I will get through this rough patch if its the last thing I do. And I'll come back with a vengeance. I can't break a promise to God. I shouldn't break a promise to myself either. I can see my body as I imagine it. It's there.
My fiance is sounding a lot better today. They're going to release him. I'm just praying that this will be the last time. I'm hoping that he will dedicate himself to eating better and exercising so we can live a long life together.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
You ever see those movies that are supposed to shed a positive light on the image of fat women and turn a more introspective eye towards weight issues in America? I hate those movies. For one, they very rarely use real fat actresses. And if they do, the give them the shabbiest of material to work with. I can just see some trim little writer sitting at her desk, trying to imagine how miserable she'd be if she really were fat and working from there. Or worse, some insanely fit man trying to write from the fat woman's point of view. And then, those movies rely heavily on stereotype and none can seem to resist the urge to throw in a couple of fat jokes.
I started writing my novel to work out some issues I was having. Some with being fat, but mostly with not knowing who I really was and why I wouldn't allow myself any happiness. It's not as if every day of my life has been filled with misery just because I'm carrying extra poundage. I've had some pretty happy times. High school was awesome. How many times do you hear someone who was fat in high school say that high school was awesome? But it so was. I was happy. I was genuinely 100% Antoinette Nicole Wood. I was sort of "famous" for my writing, having done stories in the literary magazine and writing that manuscript. I'd sit and watch people reading my stuff and see how engrossed they were and how they rarely looked up until they were done. Boy, what a feeling. That's my life's satisfaction. I love to do things that interest people, make people happy, make them laugh and smile and cry (in a good way) and think. I wanted to take the fat girl image and make it into something different in my book. I didn't want my main character to be a stereotype. And I didn't want her misery to be solely based on her weight because I don't believe that it's all about the fat. I really want that agent to see what I was trying to accomplish. As the due date draws nearer to hear if they want to read the rest of the novel, I get more nervous. Please be interested, I pray. I'm beyond ready for this. I hope God is listening because I'm shouting at the top of my lungs for this to be it.
I'm like The Bride from the Kill Bill movies.  First, if you've never seen Kill Bill, you're missing out on some truly great cinema, but if geysers of blood isn't your thing, it's probably best to avoid it. The Bride got done wrong and decided to get her revenge. She is the ultimate warrior. Far more superior than any man has ever been in a revenge story. What I love about her is that she's focused and the best at what she does. She knows it, they know it, and even though they talk big, in the end they are trembling at the point of her Hatori Hanzo sword. She is cool and determined, purpose-driven. She gets knocked down but she fights her way back up again and does whatever it takes to get what she wants.
It's not so much that I've been done wrong (who hasn't?), it's more of the getting back up thing. Right now I'm feeling like outside forces are trying to pull me from the path I'm on. I love my sister but we're not characters in a Jennifer Weiner novel. I don't make enough to support her and myself. She's in school but she's not working at all so who do you think she comes to when she needs money? I don't want to be focused on that and I certainly don't want to be miserable because I feel like I'm doing something I don't want to do. She's perfectly capable of doing for herself; she just isn't doing it and she's looking for someone to support her while she does whatever. Not gonna happen here.
I can't seem to focus on my goals anymore, which pisses me off and frustrates me. I'm all tense in the shoulders and back, keep having headaches. Stress sucks. And stress is my trigger. That's when I do most of my emotional eating. Normally I don't eat late at night. The last two weeks, I've been having a bowl of cereal or two here and there, a bag of popcorn, standing in front of the refrigerator with its blown bulb, searching the darkness for something I can just stick in my mouth to anesthetize me. And as soon as it hits my tongue, it calms me. The world snaps into sharp focus and I feel like smiling and dancing. My mind wanders the kitchen even when I'm not in it. I'm planning my binges.
I'll tell you a something if you promise not to judge.
I hear two voices in my head. One voice is me. The real me. The sensible, smart, funny, vibrant girl who's usually always laid back. The other is the panicky worry wart who always jumps to illogical conclusions and lets the imagination go in all the wrong directions. She's always bummed out and a real killjoy in mixed company while I'm pretty cool to be around and can converse on different levels. But she wins by sheer size. See, she's the fat one. She's like the sibling who gets more attention because she has more problems. She likes living in the past while I look more toward the future and enjoying the present moments. We're not exactly polar opposites but it's close enough.
The problem is that I've been trying to get rid of her, expel her completely. But I can't. For better or worse she is part of me too. And she comes in handy sometimes. Her worrying has stopped me from doing dumb things and her caution has helped me make better decisions. She relies totally on the past but that's not always a bad thing because there are lessons to be learned from the past. If I can get her to let go, I can move forward too. We have to merge but the only way we can do that is if she takes off the fat suit, and in essence, let the old wounds heal.
God, that's gonna be a lot of freakin' work. But this is where I turn into The Bride and start cleaning house.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Let's check the scoreboard again to see the progress of our fair Nettie in the battle royale.
Emotional Eating: 2 Nettie: 1
Drat. Still one ahead.
Well I suppose that's my own doing. Sabotaging myself in the race. I gotta tell ya, it doesn't help to have the fighting spirit if you're going to pretend to pull a hamstring in the middle of the race. We always say when we have a setback that we couldn't help it or control it, as though there was some force outside of us forcing us to eat. But I've never been held at gunpoint until I finished a pint of Coldstone or ate an entire pizza. I've always done it willfully, knowningly. It's a nice idea, to believe that we're not in control. It takes the responsibility for the mistake off.
But the issue isn't so much what I ate. Before I typed this sentence and the sentence before it, I wrote out all the food I felt guilty about eating. Doritos, Coldstone Ice Cream (the yummiest of mistakes), a Burger King meal (no soda), a pretzel, pizza (a DiGiorno that I shared with my sister), and those Duncan Hines microwave cakes (one two days ago, and the other yesterday). Did I eat all of this stuff in one sitting? Nooooo. This was over a period of a week and a half. It's not great but it's not so damn horrible that I should feel like like a complete loser.
Yeah, I've been stressed. My sister is staying with me, although I don't really want her to. She's 22 years old and all she wants to do is hang out late at night and party. She goes to school but she doesn't work. I don't make very much money, in fact, I'm just getting by. I've been giving her money just so she won't be broke, bought extra food. I can't afford to support her, especially when she's able enough to go out and make her own money. But this is how she got kicked out of the last few places she stayed. She just sat around all day not working. She was living off these other people and was angry when they got upset about having to take care of her. She lived with a family that treated her very well. They are her uncle's in-laws. But because she didn't obey their rules, they asked her to leave. She had her own bed and space and a place to go to every single night. And all because she felt she was "grown" and should be free to do what she wanted, she now just bounces from place to place.
Now I'm thinking she might do the same thing here. She'll sit around and not want to work and expect me to feed her and give her money all the time. Buy her toiletries and give her money when she wants to go out. As if I'm the mom and she's the child. The problem is that I'm not her mom, I'm her sister. And she's not a child. She's a 22 year old woman behaving like a teenager. I know she's not far from it, but she's far enough. I've been stressed out about what to do. I don't want her to be homeless but I don't want to be taken advantage of and have my generosity thrown in my face because I won't let her do whatever she wants on my dime. I know what she'll do. She'll think I've turned on her, that I'm just like everybody else and then she'll disappear and I won't see her for months and months. I'm not sure if that's a risk I'm willing to take. But something must be done.
It's a big head scratcher.
My friend came over to visit from Ireland last week. She said to me, "You have a lot of energy drainers in your life." It's so true. There are so many people around me who exhaust me. I'm not a freakin' martyr by any means. But geez Louise! All I try to do is help and it's for naught. Maybe what needs to be done is that I need to stop trying to help other people "fix" themselves and focus more on fixing myself. I don't claim to know more about life than they do. I just care for them and love them so deeply and I want to see them do well and be happy. But it's hard to convince people to be happy when they don't feel they deserve to be happy or when they've settled into the life they have and don't care to remove the negative stuff.
My biggest fear is turning into that; someone who settles into the life I have. With so much I want to do, and so much still undone, it would be tantamount to digging a grave and jumping right into it. I have too much fire in my spirit, too much drive and determination and ambition. I've always been the type of person who couldn't enjoy happiness unless it was shared. I felt like I needed others to be happy to in order for myself to be happy. But what a way to short change myself! How in the world could I possibly enjoy my accomplishments and success if I can only do so with others in my mind? When will the joy be mine alone?
I suppose when I stop telling myself that I need to be validated in every way. Dr. B says that I do that because I was not validated as a child. It's just like how conflicted I was after coming back from my two great weekends away and then getting that massage. Dr. B helped me realize that the reason why I was feeling so confused and angry was because I associate having a good time with doing something wrong. I don't allow myself to do anything fun and that's not even an exaggeration. How else could it be that I haven't gone more than 30 miles from home in the last 8 years? 8 years??!! I pretend like trips to the grocery store are exciting to me. I'm 29 years old and I'm practically an old woman. I'm in bed by 9 pm most nights. If I'm feeling adventurous, 10:30. I refuse to go out on weeknights because I need to be up for work. Pfft! How ridiculous! I feel guilty whenever I buy something that I really want for myself. I went to the mall yesterday and went to Yankee Candle. I absolutely positively love love love Yankee Candle. I bought mostly everything I wanted but for the rest of the day, I felt horribly guilty. I kept saying, "I wonder if I should take that stuff back." I bought some new earrings and two necklaces. I must have picked them up and put them back three times before I said what the helll and bought them. It shouldn't be that damn hard to buy things for myself. It shouldn't be so difficult to treat myself to nice things I want. I had the money so it wasn't like I spent what I didn't have. I just made myself feel horrible.
I WANT to be out enjoying my life, going places and seeing things, experiencing things. I always thought I didn't just because I was fat but now I see it's a little more than that. Every time I peel back a layer, I'm left a little raw. But the good thing is that that sharp sting passes fairly quickly and you're left to figure out what to do in the aftermath.
Monday, August 24, 2009
If only it wasn't illegal or morally wrong to kill people.
If I could get away with beating the crap out of some people, I'd do it. The only problem would be that they may never fully understand why I'm beating the crap out of them and go on doing things that will make me want to beat the crap out of them again.
Some things I just can't figure out. Like my boyfriend. We've talked about the issues our relationship has. He's acknowledged that he needs to deal with the things in life that are causing issues for the two of us. He's apologized and said that he's ready to make changes, that he wants things to improve. He says he believes we will be happy together once we get our issues sorted out and that we are good together.
So why don't I believe him?
Probably because he doesn't seem to be doing anything about it. I want to be patient but I'm finding it difficult. I'm already in therapy to work on my issues. I'm going for the things I want. Will he? How long do I have to wait for that to happen? What if it never does and I have to leave him? I will. I refuse to spend 5 more years waiting for him to START getting his emotional issues in check. I have things that I want for myself. I want to get married and have children. He's already been married and he already has children. Maybe we're too different. Maybe it's not that important to him or he's just saying things he doesn't really mean to shut me up.
I just wish he would deal with these things so that we can be happy again. We were so happy. And so in love. He once told me that I was like the sun parting the clouds. He's not prone to romantic talk so when he says stuff like that, I know he means it. We were so affectionate and laughed so much and talked about everything. Then all these outside forces started to afflict our relationship. His ex breezes back into town causing so much havoc and everything has been getting worse ever since. She's so horrible to him and he just lets her push him and push him and push him. It pisses me off because there's nothing I can do about it. That's why, if it weren't illegal, I'd mow her down on the street. Just so she could go away and stop causing so much trouble.
I'm aware that I can't solve his problems for him. I'm also aware that though I am affected by it, the situation really has nothing to do with me. These are things he needs to resolve. He has said he is open to therapy. He really needs it. The way he's been talking lately...I'm very concerned about how dark he is becoming.
In the meantime, I turned to an old friend for support. 
The package says that 1 dose is an ounce, or 12 chips. But I usually take 2 to 5 ounces depending on how severe my emotional state is. It really doesn't take long at all for that cheesiness to induce a euphoric state.
I felt guilty afterwards. Just like I did with the Reese's Puffs. The only reason I even had chips in the house was because my sister was staying with me and she wanted them to snack on.
But it's been rough keep the emotional eating at bay. I get in a state where I need to do something to take my thoughts away from whatever it is I'm worrying incessantly about and that's when I reach for vices. If it's not Reese's Puffs, it's Doritos. If it's not Doritos then it's cigarettes. All in an effort to distract my mind.
After sucking the powdered cheese product from my fingers, I leaned back on the couch and wondered how I was going to fix this. So I got up, changed into my workout clothes and turned on my Wii. I exercised for 25 minutes and I felt proud of myself afterward. It was like, okay so I have had a setback. But I can also get back up on the horse again and keep riding. So that felt good.
I've decided what I'm going to do. As far as my boyfriend is concerned, I can't do much. It's his thing to work on, not mine. But I can add to my goals and start setting up rewards for myself, which I have never done. Occasionally I'll buy myself some books but I need better incentives and ones that add to my growth and inner peace and harmony rather than deplete it. That includes making myself scarce to people who drain my energy. Perhaps I need to just give myself space from my boyfriend. And my family. They're not really support systems for me. My boyfriend was but now he's got his own issues. I'm devoting too much time to trying to fix them and make them happy when I can't. No matter what I do, they'll be unhappy with themselves until THEY decide to take control. I've already decided to take control of my life and issues. I can't just X out all the good stuff I've done over the years and months. And besides that, I don't want to focus on what's wrong. I want to laugh and have fun and enjoy life.
I have to have faith that things will be okay. I have to stay positive. You know, it's hard to say "stay positive" without it turning into one of those empty mantras that people recite all the time but don't do anything about. You really have to mean it every time you say it. You can't just say I'm a good person or I'm strong or worthy or any of that stuff if you behave just the opposite. Then it's all false. Mean what you say.
That's my new thing.
Mean what you say.
If you don't mean it, don't say it. Just be honest with yourself. I'll just be honest with MYSELF. I don't want to be 30 years old and still weighing over 300 lbs. I don't want to feel embarrassed to go out in public because I won't fit into a chair, or a booth will be too tight or an elevator will shift when I step on board. I don't want to catch sight of myself in a mirror and think "Oh my god, I'm huge!" I don't want to be stared at when I walk down the street.
I want to be sexy and sassy like this: 
I want to be who I really am, not this scared little girl who built a huge body around herself for protection. I'm not a timid little mouse. I like talking and having conversation and going places. Not like clubbing or anything like that. I was never into that. Just fun places that interest and excite me. I want to be able to cross my damn legs and show off my shoulders and have room on the sides of me when I sit in an armchair.
I'm going to go pull out that list of my 200 reasons to lose weight and I'm going to post it up where I can see it so I won't forget myself again. Right next to it I'm going to post my list of accomplishments and then my future goals.
I'm going to go do that right now.
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