Friday Happy Hour: Therapy, Biking and Baseball

I'm not really at Happy Hour. I haven't even had a drink for 2 weeks. No, I am not suffering from some other addiction I haven't admitted to, yet. I just can't risk bringing on migraines right now with alcohol.




I started therapy this week. It is amazing how hearing something your friends and mother have been telling you (and maybe just maybe something I knew inside) for a year from a stranger who doesn't love you can really make you see reality and understand that sometimes it is ok that you tried. I finally realized this morning while driving to work I am done beating myself up for trying so hard. I had to try. I didn't try in the past and I beat myself up. I tried too hard and I beat myself up. Now, I am done beating myself up. I am glad I tried. It's ok that I tried. It's ok because there is nothing wrong with trying if you are the only one trying and it doesn't work. It's ok for a lot of reasons. Mostly it's ok because for the first time in so long I realized there really is nothing wrong with me.




I am going to blog another time about the steps I am taking to help with the bulimia. I only want to say this....I have purged one time since June 9th. That is the best I have done in a year. That is a huge baby step. I have also only binged one day in that time. (Yes the purge and binge happened the same day.) I am working really hard on making sure I eat (so everyone who is checking up on me....I am ok and I love you.) I also am working really hard on staying away from food that leads me to binges so if that means I don't eat pizza, ice cream, or chips...you are just going to have to trust me that that doesn't mean I am now not eating. I have been living with this for over 20 years and I may not have beaten it yet but I do know how to avoid some trigger foods it's the trigger feelings I have problems with.




Some of the saddest truth I had to admit to my therapist the other day was that I haven't been riding the last couple of months because I am ashamed of what I look like right now. Nobody wants to see my bratwurst legs in bike shorts. Well, I don't know what I am wearing but tomorrow I will be in Arlington on the trail with about 200 women riders and I just don't care. I miss my bike and I have to get past this mental block because biking is my favorite thing on earth and I will not wait until I like what I see in the mirror to get me some!




I just loved this and this is how I feel sometimes!




(Sharing my nephew and my mom from the game the other night!)
The Rangers are finally back on track...I hope. They are playing the hated Cardinals of St. Louis this weekend so we shall see.

TGIF everyone! Have a great weekend! Go get ya some!

Simply,
Laura
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Facing My Demon

I'm really not sure I am ready to publish this but I will. I only admitted the truth to myself a week ago. I only shared the truth with my friends within the last week.



I told you all last week I was struggling but I didn't say with what the truth is I have been struggling for months with my bulimia. Even as I was writing blogs telling you I was fine I wasn't. Even as I was sharing my past struggles I wasn't being honest with you or me. Oh, I knew very well what I was doing. How could I not!


It is impossible to explain the complete lack of control a person feels when they are binging. It is like I become completely obsessed by the simple act of eating. It happens alone. It is well planned and let's just say all good bulimics have certain tricks to make it easier. (I am not doing a how to blog here. This is not a life style choice I support.)



If the binge represents spiraling out of control the act of purging is the glorious moment of taking back control. I know that seems counter intuitive to all of you normal people. I am not one of you.


The truth is, I have been struggling with this for months but last Sunday I knew I had reached that moment of insanity. I have had brief periods of falling off the wagon before but this has basically been ongoing since October and Sunday I reached the point where I had purged so many times in one day I was actually afraid. I texted my friend Khrystal and asked her to pray. She texted back asking if I needed to talk. I couldn't. I was in a ball on my bed crying at that moment. The next day I spilled my guts to my friend Chance.
After that was Khrystal, Rachel, my mom, Trish and Micah. Oddly when I told my mother I was throwing up she thought I was pregnant. No, just still a bulimic mess I am afraid.
I told her I was a terrible bulimic because I am not even a thin one...I am still fat. She said that I get that from her. Everyone with her thyroid condition loses weight like crazy. Not her. She is one of the 3% that struggles to keep it off. It's so nice when my mom and I can bond over being genetic screw ups. LOL.


I wish I could explain why I have these feelings again like I did when I was young. My mother and I talked a long time about it. When I was reading up on it...I realized that since last summer my feelings toward myself were turning backward. Where I had been making progress I was now starting to hear the old tapes. The ones that said nobody would ever love me and I was stupid to believe they could. The ones that said I was ugly and fat and my nose was too this and my boobs were too that.


So I am going to be 100% honest now. I loved or thought I loved someone who either didn't or couldn't love me back and it hurt. I am over it but it was really hard because for a long time, I did think this could be it. I do not know how I feel about T. I don't trust men a whole lot right now but I am trying to give him a chance. He is on my list at this particular moment but communication is a big issue for me and with him working out of state a lot and his kids here he isn't doing a bang up job. I do know that he thinks I am beautiful and sexy the way I am and I also know that as nice as that is....if I don't feel it about myself, it doesn't matter. I have spent so much of my life listening to that voice inside my head that tells me I am not pretty enough, too fat, just plain ugly, and I am really tired. So I am going to get some help again.



I haven't had much luck with counseling but what the heck. My friends don't need me crying on their shoulder every 6 months and to be honest with you, I am really tired of falling in love with the same man over and over. The one who seems perfect for me but is running away from me. I don't think I want to be in love with a man, actually. I would really love to be in love with me and in like with someone else.
I really do know in my head that I am a good person and I deserve someone special. Everyone has told me so. Every one of my friends, the guy who I loved, my mom, jeez even my brother has said I deserve to be happy. I think, well, I think they must be right.

I said at the beginning I am not sure I am ready to post this. It is honest. It is brutal. It is truthfully how I feel and what I am dealing with. I don't want anyone's pity. I am not fine but I am strong and I will be. I just share because I don't know who may see and who may understand. If I can help one person. I am 42 and I have been dealing with this on and off since I was 19 but it will not beat me. I will win even if it takes me another 23 years. (Please, Dear God don't let it take another 23 years!)



Simply,
Laura
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I am not "beautiful" and that's ok.

It's Thursday and it is time to link up with Amber and Neely for one of the last It's Ok Thursdays.  (Tears!)


This isn't going to be a normal "It's Ok" and I apologize to Neely and Amber for that.  I will try to keep the positivity in the post, I promise!  

When this story about  Abercrombie and Fitch  started showing up on my Facebook yesterday I was sad but busy at work so my immediate reaction was: What a Jerk. Later in the afternoon my friend Rachel wrote a blog about her BATTLE and how this story effected her.  She and I texted last night for a while about this and the more I talked to her, the more sad I became with the message these things send and the more I started to experience my own insecurites.  Thin and Beautiful are not the same thing and it is not ok that some people just don't get how hurtful and destructive these messages are or they don't care.  I have three neices who are just amazing and beautiful but I have cried at the thought that any one of them would ever hate herself as much as I have hated myself in the past for not living up to some random definition of beautiful.  I have been truly sad thinking that they may look in the mirror and tear themselves apart the way I have to stop myself from doing on a daily basis. DAILY!




The reality is that there are messages like this every single day to every person who doesn't look perfect which, by the way, is absolutely everyone. I have been honest about my struggles with not only weight loss and compulsive eating but bulimia. Well, I have been mostly honest. I promise you that nobody has been harder on me than me and the last thing I want or need to hear is some kind of smarmy CEO attack me or any woman for not meeting his definition of beautiful.

My weight over the years has fluctuated between a size 6 at my smallest (12 years ago) and a 26 at my largest 6 years ago (Here is my first blog on this battle and some before pictures.).  Learning to be happy and love myself has been the hardest battle and it is one that I have just recently won. Today I am a 14 but I am trying to get back to a healthy for me, size 10.

This is about being healthy without becoming completely obsessed with diet and excercise and falling in to a serious case of Bulimerexia, for me.  Plus, I just don't need the stress. When I am stressed I binge-eat. When I binge, I purge. It's not glamorous or sexy to hate or abuse your body. The amount of pain I have suffered over the years from forcing my body to expel food in a number of ways from laxative abuse to your typical definition of purging has and will effect me forever.  My esophogus is torn.  My teeth and gums suffer from acid erosion and I have a bad knee and back from carrying around excess weight. Mentally, it is worse. It's not ok to feel like the world would be a better place without you because you are repulsive.It isn't okay to look at every body part as a problem instead of seeing the beauty you have within and without.  It's a very difficult subject but a message has to be sent to men and women everywhere that you are perfect just as you are and you can change what can be improved, within reason, but chasing an unrealistic image is not healthy.

This is me

It has been a struggle to accept myself.  There are times when I look pretty.  There are times when I look nasty and there are times when I look normal.  I tried to pull photos out that I thought reflected all of those times....plus silly because silly is by far, the real me.  I am not perfect and according the CEO of Abercrombin and Fitch, I am not beautiful.  I lose sleep about a lot of things but I am never going to lose sleep about what some 68 year old CEO thinks about my body.  I will lose sleep because of what I think about it.  I may lose sleep worrying about what the guy I am seeing thinks about it.  Ok, I will lose sleep about what he thinks. Whenever the men I have dated have told me I was beautiful or sexy, I thought they were either just being nice, blind, or trying to score.   There are very few photos of me until the last two years or so because I hated myself and I hated the way I look.  My sweet friend Rachel ,who I mention a lot, has made me take photos and I have finally learned to accept myself and the blog has made me actually start to love myself.  That, my friends, means I am ok!