Chris:1 Mindscrew:0

Hello, back from the pit and ready to go. I spent three hours tonight riding around and passing by burger joints, mexican restaurants and chinese takeout,making deals with myself. Eat and you can start again tomorrow. Just this once, medicate yourself with food. Then I would say , "No, pass it up there will be another one". Finally I talked myself into going home by saying, "you can have whatever you want, but you are going to have to cook it yourself". I got home and said to my husband, "I am going on a walk." I walked three miles, in the dark, to the end of our road and back. I didn't take a knife, just my tennis shoes. I came home and ate a meal within my calorie budget. This last week would have been the sort of thing, in the past, that would have put my diet and exercise into a death spiral. The night after I wrote about working in that caboose and figuring out that it wasn't really my home and those choices weren't my choices triggered all these memories. I couldn't sleep because they would flood back in when I closed my eyes. Screaming and the whole nine yards. I ignored my childhood for the most part...the bad parts anyway. I think to get healthy, I am going to have to face things and deal with them. I have really been digging through stuff in the last four months. The Pain is in Layers, and it isn't always nicely packaged. Patty said that two emotions can't occupy the same space, it may be true...but I think they can follow heel to toe, so to speak. Like, when I had my kids I loved them immediately and unconditionally, right on the heels of that was anger at how I was raised. How could someone who loves their child treat their child like dirt? Didn't that make them a bad person? If my mom was a bad person for letting it happen, how can I still love and respect her? Well, people aren't all black and white. That's how.

I don't know how many of you have ever cleaned out a chicken coup. A really bad one that has built up a while and has a nice hard crust on it. It doesn't stink too bad until you chip beneath the surface. Boy howdy, then it stinks....and it doesn't stop stinking till you clean it all up and hit dirt. Well, When I stopped using food and had to start dealing with my feelings, things started to stink. Where I am right now is where I used to quit. Too much, Too hard, Too painful. Cover it back up and let it harden back down. Add a few more layers (pounds). It makes it that much harder to hit paydirt. It was alot easier saying that about my mom to people I don't have to look in the eye, than it would have been to people I know and love. It would have been too much. I don't want to see pity or something. Saying it is like lancing a boil. It lets the poison of silence out. I am tired of letting things eat me from the inside out. Those weren't my actions, they weren't my choices. The only thing I really have is now, my husband and my kids and what I make of the rest of my life. I can't undo anything, I am who I am. I can learn from other's mistakes, I can choose to forgive, I can choose to do the things that scare me. It really all ends up at paydirt. Goal weight. That is when I will have cleaned most of the crap out. Then it's all maintenance, keeping the crap off. Making choices about who and what I want in my life, who I really am and how I want to live. For those of us that have been stuck in a mental and physical rut that we not only carved,but had carved for us...the idea of creating something out of whole cloth seems daunting. It feels like a mountain sometimes ( or a crap packed chicken coop) . One step, one reach, one truth, one layer, one pound at a time.
Hugs,
Chris p.s. I am thinking I like this queen song and will make it my weightloss anthem. It rocks.