How to begin to have the life you want

I was asked yesterday..
HOw do you begin to have the life you want.
How do you deconstruct your entire life?
The first step is, of course, realizing that you are in a life you DON'T want.
Many people don't even acknowledge the fact that they are miserable.
Or if they do, they think it's normal.
The idea that you have created your normal is hard to believe..
when your normal seems so shitty.
The thing is..
you have to want to feel better.
You have to want to be better.
Or you ain't gonna make it.
You chose your life, remember?
There is a reason you chose it.
Changing your whole life is a bitch.
It's worth it..
but this isn't a 3.5 miles walk-athon for fundraising..
this is training for the soul olympics.
I am going to post something from January 12th, 2000
This is about 7 years before I really began to change my whole life.

January 12, 2000

Well, back here again.
I get frustrated easily
I make a big deal over everything and nitpick Kate.
I am a fucking martinet who eats too much and spends too much.
I am tired and stressed.
I feel like I clean all the time and the house is still a mess.
Life is the same-day after day
Nothing changes
I get up, do useless errands and go to bed.
I have been doing this for six years.
No wonder I nitpick Kate...
I need to figure shit out or I will be STUCK IN THIS FUCKING HOLE MY ENTIRE LIFE.
(and here is why I know the date)
January 12, 2000
TIRED OF ASKING THIS QUESTION
WHY WON'T MY BRAIN ANSWER

and there you go folks.
That was me..fourteen years ago..it took me 7.more.years.  to start changing my life.
I had to recognize that I has lost my voice.
All that up there..
was a product of me...trying to be the picture of what I thought a mother and a wife should be.
The first step is hearing yourself.
And believing yourself.
When you are morbidly obese...
at some point you stopped listening to yourself..
because deep down you believed you weren't worth listening to.
So you began to listen to all these voices that tell you...
'have a sparkling home...your children will be healthy."
Never complain
good mothers ___________ (insert socially acceptable quality here)
The one voice of mine that I listened to was the voice my mother gave me..
That my children were their own people...and I was not to live vicariously through them.
And I honored that...
But it didn't stop me from tearing myself apart...
You want to change your life.
LISTEN TO YOURSELF.
Stop eating!
Not to lose weight...
set a calorie cap where you KNOW you won't be hungry...do it for a week..
feel your emotions..and when they come.
LISTEN
what are YOU SAYING!
What do you say to yourself!
And that, my darlings...will tell you everything you need to know about what you think of you.
Unless you know that...
unless you know where your own brain is..
you can't go anywhere.
Love,
Chris

fighting to get even

Hello guys..
two blogs in days..
yup..some kind of record.
I am writing this because a blog buddy and good friend (Deb) made a comment that was dead on when it comes to my last post, and where I am in life right now.


I fought to level.


I fought to even ground.


All my life I have been in a deficit.
When I lost weight...
I wanted to skip the rest of it..
I wanted to believe I had done all I needed to do..even though I knew I hadn't.
It took me 20 some odd years to come to grips with my eating problems..
Finding out I had more shit under there was discouraging.
I just wanted to be better!
When I got down to a weight where men were noticing me..
it scared the shit out of me.
so badly I nearly fainted.
That was when I knew I couldn't ignore it...or act my way better.
I had to fix it.
So I took self defense classes.
Then I knew my marriage wasn't what it should be...
because even though my husband was better towards me because I lost weight.
he was better towards me because I lost weight.
The solving of the problem created a problem.
One I couldn't ignore...and it began to expose other problems....that I couldn't ignore.
Any person who has lost a significant amount of weight...
and was using that weight to solve emotional issues,...
will have one hell of a surprise waiting at the end of their rainbow.
YOu don't get in that kind of predicament without living with a seriously faulty set of beliefs....about yourself, relationships, life and everything in it.
When you begin to correct how you see yourself, long term?
yeah...
When you no longer lose weight from self hatred..
and begin to have faith in yourself..
Your mindset will shift...and will no longer align with the people in your life.
Remember, those people were attracted to a person covering their pain with food....
or a person who had no boundaries.
or a person that wanted love so badly, they would accept even the chimera of it...a shadow.
and either they will change, you will change back...or one of you will have to leave.
IT is rare for both people to change.
It is nigh on a miracle.
Your weight loss is going to expose every crack in the dam.
This is why weightloss fails.
major weightloss.
Because ripping apart your whole life wasn't the deal...fitting in a bikini was the deal.
But your health is bigger than clothing...


all my life I have felt less than...
I had to tear it all down and fight like hell to get to a healthy even.
to even begin to build.
I spent three years fighting the notion that I still had to fight.
I was tired of it.
But I remained steady long enough..
when I got tired..I held steady..
gave it a rest.
YOu don't have to keep pushing all the time.
If it is a long ass battle...
sit down for a month or two and hold your ground.
Or hell, like me...a year here, or a year there.
take note of where you were and where you are headed.
And then move forward.
I tell you...
one day you will reach daylight.
and you will find.
fighting from even ground feels like fighting from high ground when you are so used to being in a hole.
fighting for so long teaches you how to fight.
teaches you patience.
I am ten times stronger for it.
So keep fighting.
It may not be fair that you have to fight so hard...when others came out the shoot even.
but like a bone that fractures and heals..fractures and heals..
you become nearly unbreakable.
Chris out.

can't find words deep enough

to title this post.


I don't know if you have ever felt splintered.
or fractured.
I remember feeling that way since I was little. (around 12)
But I didn't know I felt that way..
Like there was some internal weakness in me..that was unfixable.
Like I was somehow inherently incapable.
It manifested in fear of people...and staying alone.
Never speaking up...never putting anyone out.
Being abused...
being called stupid as a name..daily.
It instilled in me a BELIEF that I was wrong intrinsically.
I fought that with my BELIEF that God had planned me....had written me into the palm of his hand from the foundations of the earth and that I was no mistake.
They say you cannot hold two opposing beliefs.
That is not true.
You can.
You will just be confused.
You will fight within yourself.
You will have no real direction.
Because one half of you will be pulling like hell in one direction.
While the other half is pulling like hell in the other.
On the outside, this looks like stagnation.
inside it is a hurricane.
People will think you just lack motivation.
But what are you really?
you are TIRED!
  And you don't even know why.


It's because somewhere deep inside there are two sides of you...two belief systems
trying to win.
You can go your whole life doing this.
Don't think you can't.
The thing is...
the negative is much easier to believe.
The truth is so much harder to accept.
The truth means that not only do you have to level TO THE FOUNDATION your entire life..
which was built on a premise of lies about who you are..and what you are capable of..
it means you may lose people you love.
and that you hope love you.
Sometimes  it means accepting hurtful truths..
that they fell in love with an image in their own minds...and it was never you they loved to begin with.
and sometimes it is accepting that who you fell in love with, was safety.
or
It may mean you have to let go of the faulty premise of your love..
and rebuild a new relationship built on honesty and exposure..
and being who you really are...
not who you tried to be to please them...
or an image of who you wish you were..
or who someone told you you are...


And that is where I am...
I am in the rebuilding phase of my marriage.
And it is hard.
And it is wonderful.
and honest..and real.
And for the first time in our marriage..I feel like when he looks at me, and I look at him..we are really seeing each other.
And he hugged me yesterday and said "I really do love you, you know."
and I realized I really do love him too.


But I did it withour sacrificing who I am becoming.
And without lying.
and with telling him the truth about what I want.
Because I deserve to be treated with kindness...
and when he treats me with anger or contempt...I call it out right there.
I am learning my worth in God's eyes.
and givng my love accordingly...
I am trusting the process will take me where I need to go without clinging to any specific outcome.
That takes faith and hope.
Two things I have learned to reacquire.
btw.
I haven't had the urge to eat just to eat in three weeks. 
I have actually stopped, midway through a meal because I was no longer hungry..
not because I made myself.
I just stopped.
Like when I was little.
that was a good moment.
chris out.