Twenty five to go...

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

A woman

It is 3 in the afternoon and I just got to work! I was at the new appartment from 10 am, measuring, fantacising, day dreaming, calculating. Such a pleasure - besides the calculating part which involved all the expenses!

I weighed in at 88.2 this morning. I was at 89.4 last Wednesday, so I will delete from my mind the nice 87.7 I saw on Saturday, and will gladly accept the 1.2 loss.

For the last few days, since I realised it is almost the first year's anniversary for this blog, I have been trying to think and feel and remember what was different last year and made me so focused on the weight loss, something

I do not seem to have lately. Surely, I am putting effort on loosing weight, but not with the consistency and the soul I put last year.

I have come up with some thoughts, facts and conclusions.

I will not bore you with them. But the truth is for me to get back with my soul to my weight loss, I still need to fully trust life again. To really get over the fear of the bad unexpected thing that happens right when you think you are at your peak. Like last year. After the glorious weightloss, there were the glorious holidays, the glorious closing ceremony of the olympic games, and mom's cancer followed 5 days after.

I am not looking for a contract that says I will have no troubled times in my life, nor that everyone I love will live to complete 147 years of life and then we will all go together so noone will suffer from each other's loss.

I just need to not be so afraid anymore of something similarly awful happening again. You know, I still have the hospital smell in my nostrils sometimes. When I am having a great time and feel happy, I suddenly freeze inside me with this fear.

Now I think of it, there were quite a few things on my plate since last summer. My partner left to have her baby and I was dealing with a 6 days, 12 - 14 hrs per day working week for four months. For two of them I was dealing with this plus my mother's chemo. Then for a month I almost lived in the hospital with her. And then there was the rehab period for her at home, which was not nice for the first three weeks. February started off nice with the trip to Amsterdam, but then, work became chaotic again, Angelos and I got a bit distant with all the work stress we both had, and then there was the babymaking business. Which really at that time was both a dream and a nightmare. Because I want it so badly, I am afraid it never will happen. And then, there was the festival with the enormous workload, and then my mom had to go to the hospital again, thank god for no reason at the end, but it really freaked me out again and brought me back where I was on December.

(I didn't finish this yesterday, so here I am completing it today :)

I have always been a person with really little patience.

Therapy has also become tough lately. Not only because of the digging into the too deep and unfamiliar territories. Also because of this fear. That when everything finally goes wonderfully something evil happens. So this is really what has kept my soul apart from my weightloss. This is really what has made my weightloss pause in a way. It is really complicated in the most silly way. I am eating so well and exercising too, and then on a day I will ruin everything with eating stuff I should not, and then some more of them. This way I am keeping myself sort of tricked that I am not giving up, and then I give my efforts a slap on the face and ruin them in three servings of chocolate icecream. Combine this with re-discovered feelings of looking good and being complimented by others often, and you are where I am now: Comfortable and afraid to move on to the next level.

The pedometer has given me some of my motivation back. Because it involves walking. And walking for me is liberating. It gives me hope. I associate it with life. If I can take another step for me it means I have a body that really functions. If I can break another kilometer it means that my lungs, besides the smoking - which is still under control and a lot less than 4 months ago, but still is part of my life - have the ability to fill in deep with oxygen.

I am really investing too much hope and too many dreams on the new appartment. First, because this place suits us better. Second, because I am a tad paranoid and have felt weird living in this current one that had other tenants before us. In a weird sense I had always felt that I live with the left over energy of others here. I love the fact that there is a gym five minutes walking distance away. I am dreaming about dinners in the balcony, grilled veggies and fish in our new bbq. I see myself waking up in the morning and going to the kitchen to make my coffee in extreme daylight. I measured the window over my kitchen sink yesterday. It is 2.47 cm long! I could see all the small pots with the fresh herbs nesting there. I could smell them really! The initial sadness of leaving this neighbourhood has almost disappeared.

I am saying this because really, for me this will mark a new era. When I got married with Angelos, although inside me I loved him to death, I refused to accept it and told myself that I did it for the party really. I married him thinking that perhaps by actually accepting his proposal I would break free from him. We have been together forever you know. We first got togehter in 1989. I used to break up with him every couple of months, go out with others, then return, then break up and so on and so forth. Then I left him for a year. Then I got back. Then I left him for another year. Then we got back together again in 1993, and then we got married in 1997. Then in 2000 I left him again for a few motnhs. Such amazing fear of intimacy. Such amazing fear of acceptance of my own feelings.

Also, when I got married I never wanted to have children. And then I got pregnant in 1998, and cried for 2 weeks, and then felt miserable for another 4, and then one night Angelos team in football was playing against mine. And he was cheering cos mine missed a goal, and I remember telling him...yeah yeah cheer now you are just you and me. But soon there will be two of us here cos noway my son is following your team! And the next day I found out that the foetus was dead inside me. Since 2002 I wanted a baby and then we started the company, my partner asked me to give her priority because she was trying and she is 10 years older than me, so her time was sort of limited. And then we were going to start on September, after she gave birth, and then my mother's illness happened.

I am saying all these to myself really. I am reminding myself what has been and what I want it to be from now on. This is why I am putting this down. Because really, my gaining all this weight is really part of what has been in my past. And loosing all those fortysomething kilos is really a part of a healing process. And plateauing for so many months now is nothing but a self defense - resistance mechanism to total change.

But my husband and I are making a new start in a new home and with dreams and plans for us. And if making this body a better place for our baby to start their sweet life is not a good motivator, I do not know what else could be!

Oh...right...a pair of size 30 Diesel Jeans!

Posted by Argy at 3:17 pm

5 Comments:

Kate said...

My goodness, your blog is like a little snippet of a good book everyday. i want to comment but don't know what to say, I just want to read more.
A baby can be a great motivator! I can so understand your worry that when everything goes well, something is going to go wrong. I don't think you are alone in worrying about that!

12:39 pm

theaddict said...

I love the way you write because I feel like I can actually see this apartment in my mind. It sounds very lovely.

1:21 am

Margaret said...

I cry, but I know you do not write to make others sad. I cry, some for the loss, but also for your hope and inspirations and dreams, and that you are out there doing it. Your family is very lucky to have you in their life.

2:35 am

InsaneMind said...

i absolutely agree with you. it is part of a healing process. i don't know if you are like me, but my fat was protection from the outside world for ages. and now i really want to shed it, even though i could get away with sticking at the same weight (heck, my "i looked good" days, i was this size!) but i want it off because i don't want to hide behind it anymore. i don't want to be scared of life, of what it may bring me, of what people can have access to! (note i'm speaking about me me me... sorry!) so a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge hug, and a big nice neat kiss on your cheeky! ;oD

4:11 pm

EMLB said...

This did not make me sad, it is inspiring! I realize you wrote this a couple of days ago now, but you are right! It is a healing process. I know exactly what you mean. Thanks for the thoughtful, honest posts!

11:53 pm