{rut rut rut!}

I am officially in a rut (in case yesterday's post didn't tip you off..haha).

I know what to do.

I just can't find the will to do it.

I feel like my mind is one of those glass boxes that shoot dollar bills into the air and the kid has to catch as many as he can in 15 seconds. Swirling, swirling. Seeing it all, but just out of reach.

I asked my husband, what I have done for the past 3 weeks? I asked him because I like to think out loud to him. I was really asking myself.

And I don't really know. I feel like I've been so busy, yet I don't feel like I've accomplished much. I think that's just life sometimes. It's so easy to get caught up in it and then time slips by quicker each day.

But I don't want that! Shouldn't life be lived with purpose? I want to be more mindful of what I'm doing. moving forward each day, not treading water.

Which makes me wonder, what is compelling me to make these same choices day after day?

{back to basics}

So as it turns out, it's super easy to talk about being ambitious...to want it so much. I fell short in the actually being aspect of it. And so here I sit. Stressed out. Frustrated. Feeling literally sick to my stomach.

The scale is up 2lbs from the end of the competition, not horrific, but I know I've gained back some inches.

This morning I bailed on my friends who invited me to go to boot camp (again) and I tried making up for it by lacing up my running shoes and resuming my 5k training. About 5 minutes and 30 seconds into it, I felt like I was going to die. I wasn't prepared. At. All. Sure, I'd stretched and all that, but I wasn't hydrated and I'm fairly certain cinnamon sugar on toast and a diet dr. pepper doesn't qualify as a balanced breakfast (Seriously Deborah?? You know better). Realizing it would be foolish to continue running (jogging? shuffling?) in the desert without having had a drop of water in the past 12ish hours I headed home.

So it has me thinking about preparing myself and what choices need to be made so I'm not where I'm at right now, because let me tell you, it bites.

12 years

It will be 12 years this coming Thursday. Mother's Day is usually the hardest, but a little more sweet than bitter, now that I have my own children. I spent most of this morning just feeling very sad for no particular reason...until I realized that I felt incrediably lonely, as if no one in the world cares about me. My eyes watered, but I wasn't really crying, they were involentary tears brought from the intense pain that crushed me so unexpectedly. While that day has been on my mind all week my emotions still caught me by suprise..the twenty-third of June. That morning my mom took my brother, my sister and me to Denny's. We laughed and ate our pancakes, she gave a birthday card with a twenty dollar bill tucked inside and then she left. And that was the last time she would be apart of my life. The last time she would hug me without timid hesitation, awkward from the years of absence.
I try so hard to be everything that she wasn't to me, but I struggle with never really knowing if it's enough and cringing a little when I find myself doing some of the same things that my mom did, even if they are things that left me with the sweetest memories I have of her. I try to love myself so that my children can see their own worth. It's so important that they know our imperfections don't make us worthless. That they are okay where ever they are in this life, I know they having growing to do. And if they need to try harder to be who they are meant to be, I'll love them while they figure it out. They have to know they are loved absolutely and unconditionally. Always.
In 12 years she missed high school graduation, wedding day, the birth of my children. But it's the normal every day things that sometimes hurt when I find that empty spot where she should be. I wish I could call her for advice. Or send her pictures of her grandchildren. I wish that despite anything that might happen to me, I wish I could know I have someone cheering for me. And I wish that I could know that she would do everything in her power to be here with me. Most of all I wish that she had made different choices. Maybe she could have seen that doing the hard thing is always worth it. She could have made choices that would have made her stronger, wiser, happy even.

Working through it..

I haven't given up on my weight loss goals but I'm realizing that, for me, there are some emotional issues that go hand and hand with my weight issues. For so long writing has been my outlet, from when I was a young teenager scrawling out my emotions with a highlighter in my college wide notebook to writing in journals (with real pens-ha!), to the notepad on my computer to blogging. There is something therapeutic about it, it won't be pretty and edited, but it will be real and part of me. So things might get a little random around here, but I hope it'll be a good thing.

Junk.

I remember the first time I thought I was fat. I was in the 4th grade and I was wearing blue and black hounds tooth patterned tights. We had just come in from recess and as I plopped down in my chair I saw that my thigh looked bigger when I rested it on the seat of my chair. I lifted my leg up and down several times watching the shape change. I was horrified. Ashamed. It was completely ridiculous. I wasn't a "fat" child; I wasn't rail thin as most 4th grader (I had started developing the previous year) and in my 9 year old mind that made me fat. Things got worse as I continued to develop; with curves and a training bra came taunts and name calling, relentless teasing. I remember a boy who teased me every day as I walked home from school. He would shout that I had hidden melons in my top, making the other kids laugh. I would fight back tears and the urge to flash him just to get him to leave me alone. In the 6th grade a girl called me "fatty" in front of the entire classes. It crushed me. I could go on and on. Rumors, people talking about me when they thought I couldn't hear, putting glue on my chair during art class, name calling right to my face. So many hurtful things said and done over years and I took each one as truth. I had a big nose. I was fat. I was ugly. Worthless.
I wish I could go back and help that young girl. Help her to see herself differently, but I can't yet. She's still a part of me and that's something I need to deal with. Part of me feels that I'll only be worth something if I lose these 79lbs. Another part worries that even that won't be enough.