Food for Thought...

Ok. Let me start this blog with a disclaimer: psychologically, I am not always rocking out with a full band.

Now, I'm not being self-deprecating, I'm not looking for affirmations from anyone, I'm simply stating the obvious. From one day to the next my ability to process the multitude of mental factors vacillates as radically as the plots and characters on (fill in your favorite soap opera title here). I feel it necessary to add here that I am not saying I am not an intelligent person, either. True, much of the knowledge I've retained over the years could fairly be qualified as "the definition of trivial", but some of it has served me well. SOME of it. I have forgotten all of my spanish, most of my animal biology (see blog #1), and I feel confident in saying I was never even in the room with someone teaching geography. For Christmas one year, Jeff gave me a magnetic set of countries with a flat placemat type of thing to order them on. Thank God the earth is flat or getting all those countries on would have been brutal...

Now, in all seriousness, I started this blog thinking it would be all fun and games. But I'm going to seize this opportunity to blog about my morning and be really honest. This morning, I had an appointment with my therapist. I started seeing my therapist, Jan, about 4 years ago. She specializes in treating adolescents and adults with eating disorders. So, why am I there? I've struggled with anorexia since I was about 14. I've been incredibly ill. I was told after a bit of testing that my heart's ability to support my body was failing. My kidneys are damaged with reduced kidney function. I have had stretches of time where it was like seeing the world through someone else's eyes. When I was pregnant with Ava, I felt like the poster child for healthy pregnant mamas. I didn't count one calorie, I didn't push my activity level, I loved looking in the mirror. The weight change on the scale fascinated me. If you've heard anything about Sophia's pregnancy, you will understand why I'm not including that here. But, whether I was striving or merely surviving, that anorexic voice was always there; sometimes it was just hushed a bit. At this point in recovery (because, do not kid yourself - a person with an eating disorder is as much an addict as an alcoholic), I am working only with my therapist. I no longer see a dietitian or a psychiatrist. I don't have to schedule weekly weigh-ins anymore either. What I do have to do that is harder than everything else combined, is be honest. I have to walk into Jan's office, sit down, and as she says, "own my emotions". I'm not good at this. The anorexia pushed me to a point where my emotional self shut off. There was no way you could distinguish between happy, sad, angry, excited, etc. unless I straight out told you how I felt. But, that was a bigger problem than it seemed since I had also stopped feeling any of those emotions. After years of what some days appears as a lot of busting my ass to get healthy and other days seems as though I'm merely gliding by on my Zoloft, I still struggle to face my reality.

Our schedules got crazy around here and I had to cancel a couple appointments. Cancelling those appointments throws me off my rhythm a lot. So, today I walked into Jan's office after not having seen her in two months. And it was rough. My favorite thing about my therapist is that she doesn't pull her punches. She calls me on my bull, she makes me "own" my everything; well, she tries to make me own my everything. This is a skill I just haven't pinned down. Today was the culmination of having almost 2 full months to kick around all the 'filler' in my head. I went in really feeling that I didn't have much to say. Turns out, I was full of eating-disordered thoughts. The root cause(s) of my anorexia is something I have to wrap my head around fully before I go blogging it to the rest of the world. But, here is what I learned today: I need to take the bad that has happened and I need to own it and what I have allowed it to create in my world. I need to take away the power I've given to the unfortunate parts of my past. I need to acknowledge that the damage, the pain, the struggle exist. And then I need to let go of all of that. It doesn't serve me in anyway. Nothing can be gained from picking it apart again. When this funk rises up and starts to swallow me, it is because I still let the past pose as my present, my future, and my reality. So, today I start working on putting my past away. Today I have two healthy, beautiful little girls who need to have their Mama around for a long, long time; even if I can't see me being needed. I will gladly accept input on the best way to let go of the trash that has polluted my essence for 29 years. That sounds straight forward enough, right?

My mom has a favorite saying she learned along her very own path of letting go and becoming the incredible woman she is today, "I have let far too many people live rent free inside my head".

This property owner is pissed. It is time to evict.

10/4.

One small step for our monthly budget, one great step for my communication skills.

Ok, I tried to think of flowery words that would make the subject of this blog witty and forward-worthy, but I've got nothing. I'm just going to jump right into this.

Today, I got a cell phone. Good God! These things are incredible! Good job team. Everyone on the floor. Neat-o!

It is quite possibly the most scaled back, basic, knob-proof phone out there, but holy balls is it cool. To me. All you I-Phone users; God bless you, because if I was presented with one of those new fan-dangled 'place a call only by thinking about it and your phone does the rest' kind of things, all I'd be able to muster up would be, "shiny". Which mine is. Shiny, I mean.

So, now I will address your main concern. Who has been holding this woman hostage in a dark cell phone tower-less cave??? Well, I did have a cell phone once upon a time. But, I never answered it. I never heard it ringing. It annoyed me more than anything, which in turn annoyed the great number of people who were trying to call me on said phone. Fine. It wasn't a "great" number of people per se, but they were annoyed all the same. I decided 3+ years ago that I needed to simplify my life. Step 1 in the simplification process was to ditch the cell phone. It was glorious. But then situations began to arise where a cell phone would have been kind of nice. Case in point, the other night it was Jeff's turn to put the girls down for bed. I ran to the store quick and when I came home I found I had locked myself out of the house. 3 doors and not a damn one open. My keys were tauntingly visible on the kitchen counter. I tried to pick the locks with my fingernail clipper. I tried sending ESP messages to the cat in hopes that she would rise to the challenge of letting me in. I know this seems impossible, but neither of these ideas panned out. I ended up knocking on the sliding glass deck door with one finger until it started to sting. Jeff and I both have a habit of falling asleep with the girls. And because I didn't want to bother the neighbors who have keys to our house because they were likely doing the same bedtime mele Jeff was, I figured I was in for the long haul. Jeff finally stumbled into the kitchen from the girls' room, walked over to the sliding glass door, saw me standing outside in my flip-flops with the groceries and my bag, no coat (a bit chilly that night), and mouthed to me, "what are you DOING?!".

So, yeah. Today I got a cell phone.

10/4

Do you read much?

I've received a bit of gentle nudging in the direction of my very own blog. Of course, I'm not sure that this is because I'm interesting so much as I just don't ever stop talking, and people find if they suggest I start a blog it derails my train of thought enough for them to escape. Regardless, here I am to chronicle my world as I see it unfolding. I don't know who will read this, but I figure it's similar to finding someone's lost grocery list in the parking lot. If I didn't pick it up and read it, maybe no other stranger would and then all that list making work was wasted. Yeah, I'm that woman.

I once came home from running errands and told my husband, "I saw a house that just has a creepy feeling emanating from it. It seems like the kind of house a stalker might live in. I drove past it three times but still couldn't see anything inside because the blinds were turned just enough, so I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure they're up to no good".

This is the kind of thing I'll blog about, just to forewarn you, because my world would most certainly be incomplete without the constant and perplexing backward thought process that has gotten me this far.

I'll end my first blog with this: owls 'distribute' pellets because they cannot urinate, and someone near and dear to me once told me he could "breathe through his butt". Unfortunately, he had only figured out how to exhale, he could not yet inhale. This is true. Well, the second part is true. I just found out about a week ago that the first statement isn't. Owls can pee. I did not see that coming.

10/4.