Making Positive Changes

Last night, I decided to start making positive changes in my life.  I had dinner and went shopping with a friend, who is helping me to unleash my girly side and learn how to use makeup better.  I applied to rent a gorgeous apartment and now I'm just waiting on a phone call to let me know if I got it or not.  And most of all, I decided to really start to focus on exercise since I've, for the most part, gotten my eating under control.

I was all set to go out and walk/run for 5 seconds before I got winded and felt like death, but huge thunderstorms rolled in.  Normally, I would have taken this as a sign that I wasn't meant to exercise that night because obviously exercise is the devil.  Instead, I chose to focus on toning instead of cardio.  I grabbed my hand weights and did different arm and chest exercises and then I did a bunch of lunges and squats.  I hurt so badly today, but after looking at a picture of myself that was taken this afternoon to show my friends a dress that I really like, it's very worth it.  I have lost 40 lbs in the past year, which is amazing, but haven't done much to tone or build muscle-a big mistake.  I could look better than I do right now, so I'm going to do it.

My friends and I are going to start Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred tonight.  I've already done some arm, chest, and butt moves in addition to this and really hope to lose inches by my birthday.  I don't know how many, and I don't know how many pounds I can lose during this, but I'm confident that between working out and watching what I eat through doing Weight Watchers I can look even better by then.  My biggest spots that I dislike are my legs, which I've always disliked, my arms-casually referred to as "bingo wings," and my waist.  I have the dreaded "love handles."  I've always had a slight indentation between my abdomen and my thighs, but it's very pronounced when I gain weight.  I thought when I was a teenager that it meant that I was fat when it was really just the flare of my pelvis.  I accept this now, but with the addition of layers of fat over it, it looks strange and I don't like it.  I want to get rid of this fat.

I want my athletic, toned body that I had as a teenager back.  Yeah, I didn't have visible abs, yes I had some excess fat, but I was strong.  I didn't appreciate all that my body could do back then and I didn't take care of it.  I can't go back and fix it, but I can change it for the future.  I can get that muscle back and tone it even better, I can get back to a point where I can run a couple of miles.  I might not be the fastest but that's not what it's about-it's about my health.  Activity is associated with better mental health in general and can reduce the risk of relapse in bipolar disorder.  Activity helps you feel better about yourself, and that's what I need.  I'll screw up, I'll skip days, I know this.  But I need to do it.  I need to build my body confidence up and to think of all of the amazing things it can do.

Today starts a new day of becoming athletic.  It's going to be hard, it's going to hurt (already does), but amazing things come out of the pain.  It's just a matter of getting there.

Body Shaming and its Effects on the Rest of Your Life

In this image, I was almost 17 years old, 5'6" tall, and around 155 lbs.  I wore a size 4/5 consistently and sometimes even a 3.  And I was told I was fat.  By an adult.  See how my shorts are awkwardly bunched in the front?  Those shorts are a 2XL because my coach, who will remain nameless, bullied me into thinking I was too fat for the size that actually would fit-a medium.  He tried to bully me out of the large size shirt I am wearing in the picture but I stood my ground on that one because my soccer number was 17 and I wasn't giving that up to wear what he deemed more acceptable.  This 40-something man decided to bully a 17 year old girl, and I let him.

Now, it needs to be said that this man would either bully you, ignore you, or sexually harass you.  Several other girls on the team were called "big girls" by him, one even developing an eating disorder, while others were flirted with and even pulled onto his lap and tickled.  Eventually, he was reported, but the effects of his abuse are long lasting.  I have major body image issues-I look in the mirror and see someone disgusting, someone with huge fat rolls that nobody could ever find attractive.  If I see a picture of my face, I'm looking to see if I have a double chin.  If it's full body?  Do I look like I have cankles?  Is my shirt too tight?  It's hard to get past things like this, hard enough when it's your peers who are making fun of you, that's to be expected.  But when it's an adult, someone who should advocate against bullying and help teens grow up with healthy self image and confidence?   It makes it so much worse.

I actually know why this man bullied me.  His own lack of self worth based on sports in high school created a situation where he had to feel superior.  Why was I a target?  I wasn't even that good, I just played because I loved it.  The simple answer is: my dad.  They went to school together and while my dad was on varsity teams as a freshman and sophomore, my coach went through like the typical athlete: JV in 9th and 10th grade and Varsity in 11th and 12th.  Dad played two of the same sports as this man and, instead of accepting that people can be better than you in sports (heck, no matter how good you are there's always going to be someone better somewhere), he chose to harbor a resentment.  Instead of acting like a man and getting over what he deemed to be slights?  He took them out on me.  He would tell me that I was fat, not good enough, couldn't kick the ball accurately, and other forms of verbal abuse.

But I chose to stick it out.  That was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done-sticking to something I loved despite the fact that I was being abused.  There was even a point where I chose to fake an injury (and subsequently actually injure myself, causing permanent damage to my left knee) just to avoid the embarrassment in not playing during senior night in my senior year.  Over the course of my soccer "career" I think I played a total of 30 minutes per year for the outdoor team.  But that's okay, I know I'm not the best player in the world, I just love the sport.  I played indoor soccer with the guys under an amazing coach (as well as my dad after the first year or so) and it was so much more fun.  There was no "you're fat" drama, just a fun time playing the sport I love.  I went on to be the assistant coach under my dad for the boys team that my brother played on and had a blast.  I learned to be a better player, a smarter player, and how to just have fun without being self conscious that my shorts were too short or tight.

Despite my positive experiences outside of the JV and Varsity teams, I still have that pang of not being good enough.  The desire for a totally flat stomach and stick thin legs that "look good" in shorts.  I still see pictures of how I looked back then and find flaws.  I was afraid to wear shorts, tube tops, tank tops, swimsuits, and any type of skirt because my "huge legs" would be made fun of.  Even now I don't wear shorts or skirts and my biggest self consciousness comes from my lower body.  I let him win for so long, let his taunts and comments get to me.  This adult, who in his 40s chose to pick on a 14-17 year old girl because he was jealous of her father, destroyed my self confidence.  Yes, I got crap from my peers, but that somewhat subsided when I had a growth spurt after 8th grade.  The biggest influence on my body image issues was a coach, a teacher, someone who should have been watching out for me.  I think that's what made it so hard to get over.

Telling People

How do you tell people that you're getting divorced?  That yes, you get along with your soon to be ex-spouse, but things just aren't going to work out for various reasons.  That he'll always be one of your best friends and you'll always love him, just not romantically.

It's a hard thing to do.  Most of the time when people hear the "D" word, they are hearing it accompanied by negatives about the spouse they aren't talking to.  Are there negatives?  Of course.  About both of us.  We've both shocked people with the news, many of them not knowing what to say.  At a restaurant last week we were teasing each other about who would pay and the cashier asked if we were married.  My immediate response was "no, divorcing."  She looked at me like I was crazy and her response was that we get along so well so I was obviously joking.  It's funny to me that divorce has such a negative connotation and that you can't possibly have tried to work things out because you're still smiling and laughing with each other.

Our fights have decreased significantly since deciding to separate/divorce.  We don't have the stress of trying to make each other happy anymore and we're free to do whatever we want to do.  I can go out to the bar on a Friday night with my friends and not worry about whether he'll be mad at me and he can do whatever he wants to without worrying that I had already made plans for us.  He can sit and watch football/talk about football/read about football all day and it has no effect on me or what I want to do.  We still hang out, sit and watch tv together, and go to dinner sometimes, but there's no pressure to please each other.  All of this is such a relief after the past four years since the issues started.  I'm glad we ended things when we did instead of continuing on the miserable path we were on.  That we can continue to be friends instead of just civil to each other at best.  Instead of fighting over who gets what movies, we figured out which ones obviously belonged to each of us (ex. Disney=me, sci-fi=him) and then with any that were contested, we put them out in the middle of the floor and took turns picking which ones we wanted.  There weren't any arguments even though I know I got ones he wanted and he got ones I wanted because it was done fairly.

So now I'm moving out.  Starting my new adventure as a single woman.  Getting my own apartment close to school and working hard to get through nursing school with no drama (or as little as possible).  I won't have to worry about the 45 minute drive at 7:00am, hoping that I make it to my 8:00 class/clinical on time.  I won't have to worry about saving gas on a Friday evening instead of going to meet with a study group.  I'll be able to have a life, to see my friends, and to just enjoy the last two years before starting my career in a way that I couldn't while I was married and living 45 minutes away.  I need to go out, to be young, to have fun.  I can get involved with things on campus because I don't have to worry about the cost of gas or making it home by 9:00pm so I can get to bed to be up on time to leave in the morning.  I'll have more time to study while still having time to go out and have fun.

I'm not going to lie-I'm terrified of this new adventure.  This is the first time in almost 9 years I've been single-it's scary.  As I've been saying for over a week, it's time to learn to love myself.  I think that getting my own place and spending more time on things that I love is the key to this.  I'll make mistakes, who doesn't, but I'm working hard to realize that this can go one of two ways: 1) I can pity myself and spend the next two years sad and lonely, or 2) I can do everything I can to enjoy the time that I'll have by myself, the experiences I'll have in nursing school, and the friends that I already have and will make.  I can enjoy being single for the first time in my life, enjoy not having to answer to anyone but myself.

I choose to enjoy.  To finish out my 20s strong, healthy, and happy.  To start taking walks at night and eventually turn those walks into runs.  I'm putting myself first for the first time in my life and it feels good. 

Self Acceptance and Being Thin

For the longest time I've gauged my self worth based on my weight.  If I was just thinner that guy wouldn't have turned me down for a date, if I was thinner I'd have more friends, if I was thinner maybe I could start running or playing soccer again.  There's a lot of privilege in our society for being thin.  The thinner girls have an easier time finding clothes that fit at an affordable price- a pair of size 6 jeans at Old Navy will cost about $35-40 on average while the same exact jeans in a size 20 will cost $40-50 and are "exclusively" online.  Only recently have stores like Torrid appeared that offer trendy clothing for plus sized women, allowing plus sized teens and 20-somethings to wear the same clothes as their peers.

Each year magazines like Star and People publish the "good vs. bad beach body issues."  These publications glorify fat shaming, putting celebrities with extremely thin bodies on the good side while heavier people get put on the bad side.  There are so many examples of beautiful women being shamed, most notably Tyra Banks and Jennifer Love Hewitt.  What message does this send to our girls?  If you don't have this perfect modelesque body that is not even close to being representative of the normal population in America, you are worthless and shouldn't ever wear a swimsuit.  And that's the message I've taken.  I'm terrified to go to a pool or water park for being judged for my body.  Terrified to wear shorts because there might be comments on how fat my thighs are.  I can't even go to a restaurant and feel comfortable ordering food that I like because I know that the comments exist of "look at her ordering that meal with a DIET Coke."  As if my preference for the taste of diet is outweighed by the food that I eat.  Not only do I prefer the taste, but I prefer to not drink my calories.  Yes, it's somewhat counterproductive, but each 150-200 calorie can of regular soda I don't drink is 150-200 calories I'm saving for the day.  I drink a lot of soda and can only imagine the number of calories I'd take in if I drank regular just because it's "ludicrous" to drink diet with fast food.

I don't eat terribly when I go out-I'll get chicken nuggets and fries or just a burger at McDonalds, I generally keep my meals under about 700 calories when I go out and while I order the 10 piece meal to save money, I tend to only eat 5 of them and save the rest for later.  Yet I am judged more than the "normal weight" person who orders the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal large sized with a full calorie drink because I'm overweight and therefore unhealthy.  If I decide to have a treat like a cookie, I'm looked at like "well she sure doesn't need that" even if I'm within my Weight Watchers points for the day or at a very low number of calories.  And heaven forbid I eat a salad because obviously I'm only doing it to lose weight and not because I genuinely desired salad that day.  Because of consistent weight shaming from my peers since I was a child, I absolutely hate eating in front of people.  I will cover my mouth while I chew and tend to pick at my food (though I really don't eat a lot in one sitting-I tend to graze more than anything) because I don't want to be judged as a pig for eating the way I want to.  Even friends and family do this, trying to look out for me.  If I want a second slice of pizza, I'm sometimes too ashamed to get one and I never go for seconds on anything until someone else has because I don't want to be "that fat girl trying to eat all of the food."  What people might not know is that I didn't eat lunch that day in anticipation of enjoying that second slice of pizza or that piece of pie.  I know that people think that they're doing what is best but it shames me into feeling that I'm not allowed to eat like everyone else because I'm fat.  While my normal weight friends and family can eat 3 slices or more, I get the looks-maybe subconscious, maybe not-like "she doesn't need that" when I have 2.

Our society tends to think that overweight=unhealthy and normal weight=healthy, which is patently false.  I know people who are at a normal weight who have hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and other diseases that tend to be associated with weight while I have only one thing that could potentially be weight related but occurs in many thin people as well, PCOS.  But if a thin person walked into the doctor's office with their normal BP being 140/90, the doctors/nurses would question it.  If I walk in with the same thing and comment that it's high, I've gotten comments that "no, that's perfectly normal in someone your size."  My normal BP is 110/70 or slightly lower.  My cholesterol ratio is perfect.

I've had physicians deny that I have asthma because obviously my trouble breathing when I run is weight related, despite having the issues since I was at a normal weight and the issue subsiding when I use an inhaler.  I've had doctors and physical therapists tell me that my knee issues would subside or dramatically lesson if I lost weight even though my knees are DEFORMED and it's a consistent bone on bone issue.  Even at a normal weight at the high end of the ridiculous BMI scale, I was told that losing weight and strengthening my muscles would "fix" the problem.  This was at a point in time when I could press over 300 lbs consistently with my legs and was athletic.  Obviously losing weight will miraculously cure a congenital defect.

And this doesn't even begin to touch the surface of the issue.  I absolutely dread getting on an airplane or other form of public transportation.  I've gotten the dirty looks from normal weight people because I'm fat.  The look of disgust that they have to share a row with me and I'll take up their space.  I do everything I can to not even take up my entire seat just so that these assholes are comfortable.  The dirty looks you're given in public if you even try to go for a walk or run because you have parts that jiggle.  I've gotten comments walking down the street about how fat I am and even pulled away from doing something I love, playing soccer, because people would mumble under their breath about the fatty at best and yell it at me at the worst.  Yes, I play this off, joke around about how fat I am and how they should tell me something I don't know about myself, but it hurts.  Terribly.  I hate feeling like my entire worth in society is based on my weight.  I hate that I can't just roll out of bed in the morning and go to class in sweats like my thinner counterparts because while they are looked at as cute and comfortable, I'm looked at as fat and slovenly.  While tank tops and jeans are looked at as cute on thinner girls, bigger girls hear comments about how slutty they are because yes, it's hard not to have your breasts show in anything other than a turtleneck if you are large chested.  But how is this fair?  I hate wearing anything that isn't long sleeved because of my "bingo arms."  I wear sweatshirts that are 3-4 sizes too big because I fear being mocked if something is too tight and I'm afraid to wear anything trendy because I know that comments are made about bigger girls wearing them-I've even been guilty of this.  I'm so self conscious about my own body that I've made comments about other girls.  It has to stop.

I have to admit that part of my drive to lose the weight is this societal push for all women to be thin and therefore beautiful.  While a man can walk around with a few extra pounds, women are mocked for them and the media doesn't help.  I want to get healthy-to be able to run a mile or two without issue, to play soccer again and get my muscle tone back.  There are plenty of "big girls" with healthy strong bodies and plenty of "small girls" with high fat content.  The BMI scale is a crock of shit and is insanely two dimensional, it doesn't take into account muscle mass or fat content, yet it is what the medical field bases everything on.  If you have a "normal" BMI, you are healthy and if you don't, you are unhealthy.  Period.  It doesn't matter that the normal weight girl might eat a diet high in fried fatty foods and the higher weight girl eats a lot of vegetables and lean protein, the only number that matters is what shows up on the scale.  So yes, I'm trying to lose weight.  But now I realize that the right reason to do it isn't so that guys will think I'm attractive or so that I can eat without judgement, but instead to be healthy and to like how I look.  If someone doesn't like me because I'm fat?  Their loss.  I have so much more to offer the world than outer beauty.  Maybe someday the rest of the world will catch up to this thinking and it will be realized that all people are beautiful in some way.  An idealistic way of thinking which will never happen as long as we only look at numbers on a scale or a chart.

Looking at the Positives

After a great weekend with some awesome friends, I've decided to start looking at the positives and to try to let go of all of the anger, self loathing, and frustration presented in the previous posts.  I've started to remind myself that none of that matters anymore-that it's in the past and there's nothing I can do to change it, even changing right now won't change the mistakes, problems, and regrets of the past.  That being said, I will forever have regrets and sadness over those mistakes that I have made and I don't think that the thoughts of not being good enough will ever fully go away.  I'll always have that thought of "but what if..."  I just can't focus on them anymore.  I can't focus on the what ifs and need to instead focus on what will be.  I can't change the fact that I gained an entire person in weight in the past 12 years, but I can change for the future. I can continue on the trend I'm on now and lose the final 80 lbs to become the person I want to be, the person I deserve to be.  I can get my healthy self back and start to work on my self esteem.

Instead of looking at my failures, I need to instead focus on my successes.  Yes, I destroyed the first years of my college experience by not going to classes and am therefore not where I intended to be in my life right now.  But instead of focusing on that, maybe I need to focus on the fact that in just the past 5 years of attending classes both part and full time, I have raised my GPA from a dismal 1.8 overall to a 2.73 overall.  Is it perfect?  Of course not.  Is it indicative of what I can actually do?  Absolutely not.  My EKU overall is a 3.45, which shows my abilities better.  I can't go back and force myself to continue to try to find a doctor who would listen to me about having mental illness instead of just pushing it off as depression or just in my head, yet I hold onto that anger, that frustration, and wish it was different.  I can't go back and convince myself to listen to my friends and family when it came to the type of guys I dated, when it came to their flaws and issues that I chose to ignore, but I can be grateful that by going for them I learned what I don't want in a relationship.

I don't want to sacrifice myself and my likes just to have a boyfriend ever again.  I don't want to turn my back on my own friends because I feel that every waking minute should be devoted to my relationship and how to make him happy.  Even just sitting and writing this I can't believe that it's something I have to say.  Thinking of my 14 year old self, the one who had her life mapped out without a man, I can't help but see her disappointment in me and who I've become.  This helpless shell of a woman who has no identity outside of her relationships, who is clamoring to get back the pieces of herself she gave up.  In my desperation to be like other people who had devoted significant others, I lost myself.  I lost the love of playing soccer, the love of going out with my friends, and most of all, the love of being me.  That ends now.  I can't continue on the way I have been, it's how I ended up here in the first place-sad, alone, and feeling like a loser because of failed relationship after failed relationship.  My relationships were doomed from the beginning-I was doing everything I could to make my significant other happy instead of what would make me happy.  I'm not saying that I shouldn't compromise and try to make them happy too, but I wasn't trying this-I was doing whatever he wanted, no matter how unhappy it made me, and pretending that I really didn't want to do the things I wanted to do.

Now, the positives.  It isn't too late to try to get back the pieces of myself I gave up.  I can work on my athletic abilities again-maybe I can't fully gain it all back, but I can do it just for the enjoyment.  I can get back to my healthier self again, it's within my reach and I know that I'll enjoy it more now than I did then.  I thought I was so fat and let the ignorant comments of other insecure people destroy how I felt about myself to the point where I started to become the person they had always said I was, but it's not too late to push those thoughts back and get healthy.  It's not too late to go out and have a good time with my friends, to make new friends, and to start my career.  Am I starting where I wanted to?  No.  But I'll get there.  It might take me until I'm 50 to finally get to where I want to be, but it will happen.


I never thought that 28, almost 29 would be the most important time in my own self discovery, I thought I would know who I was at 18, know what I wanted to be, who I wanted to be with, and who I was.  To be honest, I had no clue.  We spend so much of our adolescence trying to decide what to be instead of who we are.  Instead of enjoying the things that we love to do, we focus hard on what our adult self might like to do. We are told at such a young age to decide what we want our future careers are, at a time when our brains aren't even fully developed and matured.  We're not only encouraged to attend college and figure out a career path, it's almost demanded of us by society.  I fell into that game in high school.  I saw the sneers on people's faces when someone said that they were going to start working right after school, the gasps of horror if you said you were going to...community college.  Those words were almost spat out of the mouths of the judgmental elite as if going to community college was only for idiots and that if you went there you were obviously beneath them.  All of this pressure from not only peers, but also the guidance counselors, led to a state of mind among juniors and seniors that you had to get accepted to an amazing school and program.  If you didn't, you were looked down on.  This perceived hierarchy was part of what convinced me that I had to get into PA school, had to go to the elite private schools, and had to enter college when I really wasn't ready.  No more will I let the opinions of others determine what I do.

I still have my fears, my anxieties, and regrets, but I need to learn to accept them and just enjoy things for what they are-enjoy my life.  The loss of my father 2 years ago should have served to show me that I need to embrace every day for what it is and do whatever I can to enjoy my life.  Instead, I chose to drown myself in self pity.  I need to now start to do the things that I love, to surround myself with people who make me feel loved and accepted, and to finally love and respect myself.  I need to realize that I can't live in regret, that if I had left my marriage 4 years ago when I originally wanted to, I wouldn't be where I am educationally today. If I hadn't tried things out a month ago, I might never have come to these realizations and finally left.  I need to be grateful for the experiences of my past because they have taught me lessons, important ones that will help to shape the rest of my life.  The more I learn to embrace them, the more I will learn to love me.

I'm a loving, compassionate, sometimes overly passionate, good person.  I just need to look at those positives instead of the insecurity, regret, and hatred of the Becca of the past.  I need to accept my faults and embrace my positives.  I think I'm finally starting to "get it."  I can change my future and become the person that I thought I'd be at 14.  Self sufficient, confident, and most of all, happy just being me.  I don't need to be who someone else wants me to be, I need to be who I want me to be and I need to find someone who can accept that about me, not want to change me to be their ideal.  I deserve someone who will love me for me, but first I need to do the same.  Tomorrow is a brand new day and I'm going to do everything I can to spend it learning who I am and being happy in my own company.

I'm not too old to start over, not too old to have fun.  Bars and restaurants won't stop letting me in once I turn 30 and my life won't end.  I need to look at 29 and 30 as just the beginning of my life as the new Becca.  The one I was meant to be and who I am still learning so much about.

A Sudden Realization

As I was sitting up thinking last night, like I always do, I realized something.  I was not only trying to replace Geoff because I was afraid to be alone romantically, but I was trying to "replace" my brother.  For anybody who doesn't know, my brother is my best friend.  I can tell him anything, rely on him for anything, and I know that if I call, he'll pick up.  For the past two years, we've had a lot of time to hang out since we went to the same school, and I started to rely on him more and more, whether it be to make friends or to just have someone to have dinner with.  It was nice to have someone at school who I could call any time I wanted to and I'd never have to go to Powell and eat alone or just sit by myself between classes.  He introduced me to his friends and things were easy-I didn't have to try to make friends on campus because I had him and his friends.

So when graduation was coming closer and my brother was getting ready to move back to NY, I panicked. I don't like being that girl who sits alone for dinner, or who has nobody to hang out with on a weeknight.  Suddenly I was finding myself afraid that that is what my life would become.  I'm very shy, which has a lot to do with my self-confidence, so I have a hard time making friends.  If I'm around my brother, I tend to be more outgoing because he won't let me just sit in the corner by myself.  He makes sure I'm included in conversation and I'm able to be myself because I now that at least one person in a group isn't judging me.  My brother and I have been through a lot and, as I've already said, he's my best friend.

I was terrified.  Terrified that the friends I'd made through him would suddenly not think I was good enough anymore.  Terrified that I'd spend the entire summer sitting by myself and feeling sorry for myself.  Terrified that not only was I losing my marriage and Geoff, but now losing my best friend.  I scrambled to replace both of them, to make a friend that my brother hadn't introduced me to, and to replace Geoff emotionally.  I thought that maybe if I found someone new to spend time with, it wouldn't suck so much that my brother wasn't around.  It was hard when mom moved home, but when my brother did, I was suddenly bereft of my family in Kentucky.  Alone for the first time since 2009, when they moved here, and trying to figure out what to do.  I was using my brother as a crutch.  I didn't have to make friends because I had my built in best friend right here.  If I wanted to go out for dinner, I just had to call.  If I needed someone to hang out with, he was there.  I tried to find someone new to fill that hole before my brother left, so that maybe I wouldn't miss him as much.

It wasn't worth it.  It didn't change how much I miss my brother and instead added a new level of sadness to my being alone during the week.  My friends work, they can't just hang out at the drop of a hat and they have other friends to hang out with.  I know things will get easier when I get back to school because I won't be alone all the time.  I'll have my new nursing classmates to bond with-I'll have class with the same people every semester for the next 2 years, give or take a few who drop/fail/join.  I'll have Autumn to go for walks around the Stratton Pond with and to go out to dinner with.  I even know I'll have that when I move to Richmond, but until then, it's just me.  I had all of these plans for the summer and felt the need to see the new guy constantly so I wasn't sitting at home alone feeling sorry for myself.  I really wasn't fair to him at all because, while I do truly care about him, there was no way he could fill the holes left in my life.  My brother is still there for me, and I know he always will be, but he's not here for me to call and say "hey, let's go to the fair."

I'm lonely.  It sucks.  I need to find a new hobby, read some books that I've been meaning to read, do some things I like to do.  I need to not rely on other people for my entertainment but instead figure out what it is that I want to do.  I'll work on my weight and my own self worth-I've already begun to self actualize and look in the mirror every morning to tell myself I'm worth it and other nice things.  I'm in "fake it til you make it" mode.  The more I try to convince myself I'm happy, the happier I'll be.  I'll go to North Carolina this weekend and spend time with some of my amazing "e-friends."  I'll go to NY in July and spend time with my family, and I'll move to Richmond and create a new life there.  The college life I always wanted but never really had.  I'll go out with friends, study hard, and do the things that I want to do when I want to do them.  If I want to go to the bar?  I'll go.  If I want to stay home and watch sappy movies?  I will.  I'll learn to survive on my own, to truly let people in, and to be happy being me.  After school ends, when I get my nursing degree?  I'll move home.  Back to NY where I have a huge support system and some amazing friends.  But for now, I'll learn to rely on myself and the friends I do have.  I'll have to look back at the times I've been hurt and realize, as my friend Holli said, that those times have helped mold me into the person I am today.  A person who cares fully and would do anything to make someone else happy.

Some day, I'll meet someone new.  For now?  I'm going to try to make the best of my last two years before I'm a full-fledged adult with a career.  I'm going to go out, have fun, and enjoy being single.  This is the promise I keep making to myself.  No more crutches, I'm going to learn to walk on my own two feet.  How to make friends and keep the ones I have, because I have some amazing friends.  I can do whatever I want-I need to embrace the freedom instead of focusing on the loneliness.  Because I'll be lonely, there will be times where it's unbearable, I'm sure.  I just have to learn how to deal with it and start calling my friends to see if they want to hang out instead of waiting for them to call me.  It's going to take time, but I'm starting to see that there's a light at the end of the tunnel.  It's not 100% within my grasp right now, but every day it moves closer, inch by inch.  The more I talk about it, whether through writing or through venting to a friend, the better I feel.  It's a long road, and there's going to be bumps along the way, but I know that after I get through all of this I'll be stronger and more ready for the real world.  Or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

Letting Go

It's hard to think about letting things go.  Letting go of something that once made you happy but ended or letting go of the hurt inside after you lose someone.  It's a lesson I very desperately need to learn.  Instead of thinking about the fact that things have ended, my mind chooses to focus on the things that happened before they did.  The sweet comments, the texts, every little thing as long as it's positive.  So the right response is to delete it all, which I did.  Facebook messages, texts, phone numbers, they're all gone.  But I can't erase what is stored in my memory.  Not only are they recent memories, but I am able to remember things that are said and done for a long time.  So my brain chooses to focus on those and showing me the things that I'm missing instead of letting them go.  How do I even begin to let go?

Well, as I said, I deleted Facebook messages, texts, and phone numbers.  That was an easy start, can't obsess over everything I said, every message to find out where I went wrong if they don't exist.  But the real life conversations, the phone conversations, the memories stored in my mind are there.  Even as those little things that bothered me would pop up from time to time, these memories choose to pop up, usually at night when I'm going to bed.  I sit alone at night, unable to deal with the facts of what happened.  That the feelings I thought I was having were ill timed and poorly developed.  Instead of taking time, I let the infatuation settle in and allowed myself to bask in it. It was like quitting cold turkey.  I went from feelings of elation to suddenly not having it and having no way to get it back.  I was living in a fantasy world, a world that my brain concocted to hide from the hard truth: I was rebounding, hard, and that in doing so I was doing everything I could to create this world where I could be happy.  A world that I'm having a hard time letting go of.

Truth is, I was superficially happy.  The texts, messages, phone calls, and time together would make me smile.  But it became something I needed constantly, an unrealistic addiction to avoiding the fact that I was hurting under all of it.  From day one, I wanted to spend time with him constantly-which, looking back, is INSANELY unhealthy.  I didn't have to focus on what made me sad if something that made me happy was just around the corner.  For two weeks, I spent a lot of time at school just sitting with him.  I didn't want to go home because I'd have to face the fact that underneath my happy exterior, I was miserable.  I focused so hard on avoiding the negative at home that the positive at school got blown up into an unrealistic high.  When all is said and done, we spent a month "together."  We talked, we texted, we spent some time literally together, but it wasn't that long.  And all throughout it, that voice in the back of my head was telling me that it'd never work-he was too young and there were too many hurdles-but my brain chose to ignore it in order to feel that euphoria, the dopamine rush that comes with the thrill of meeting someone new, of spending time with someone you care about (and I need to emphasize this: I DO care.  I don't just turn on and off caring about someone on a whim).  Then, when things came crashing down and suddenly I was removed from the thing causing that rush, all of the emotions I had been avoiding came pouring in.  Like an addict, I begged him to not take that away from me.  I was completely unfair to him and myself.  I didn't want to go without that rush, I didn't want to face the sadness that came creeping up from under the surface.  I still don't want to face that sadness.  I'd kill to have that dopamine rush again, to not have to face any of it, but it's not real happiness, it's temporary and doesn't deal with the root cause of the issue.  Instead, it compounded things.  Now instead of just trying to let go of my marriage, I'm trying to let go of the failed potential of a relationship/friendship. So I have to figure out how to let go of that need for the rush, let go of the pain, and let go of all of the things from my past that have hurt me.

I have to learn to let go of Geoff.  To let go of the last 8, almost 9 years of my life with him.  The happy times along with the sad.  To let go of the anger I had toward him and still have.  The hurt that I feel because it seemed like I wasn't important enough to fight for, to try for.  The shame and embarrassment I feel that I spent so many years talking about how I don't believe in divorce, that being married to your best friend is the most important part, any other kind of compatibility be damned.  The feeling with both that maybe, just maybe, if I had tried harder, been better, talked less about me, or just been overall different in some way, things would have worked.  Instead of focusing on the issues that are had on both sides, my brain glorifies their good points and demonizes my bad.  I'm messy, I'm needy, I talk about my personal issues too much but they're a good provider, or a good listener, or just fun to be around so they've done nothing wrong.  I'm embarrassed that I've somehow failed not only myself, but them.  That maybe if I could go back and change just this one little thing it'd be better.  Maybe if I'd let Geoff cry on my shoulder when he was afraid he'd get fired instead of trying to convince him it wouldn't happen, he'd never have cheated.  Maybe if I'd slowed down and not complained about being unhappy so much, getting hurt last week would never have happened.  The glorification of who they are just serves to assist in the beating down of myself that I do.  If they're so perfect, it's obviously my fault.  How do I even begin to let go?   It's hard to live with these regrets, to live with the fact that not only could I not fix myself, I couldn't fix them.  I couldn't fix the things that hurt them, fix any insecurities they had, fix the things in the past that had hurt them.

It takes two to start a relationship but only one to end it.  In one case, I was the one who chose to end it but it was a more mutual feeling that neither of us had wanted to tell the other about and we will always be there for each other.  In the other, I wanted that euphoria to continue-I didn't want it to end.  But it's not my choice.  I can't force someone to stay with me just because I want them to.  I can't force him to be my friend if he's not ready to-and maybe he will be eventually, maybe not.  That's the part that hurts more than ending what relationship there was.  The end of the friendship.  I can understand it though-making a fully clean break to avoid a recurrence.  No contact, no reminders, a chance to move on.  I have to now figure out how to get the memories to stop.  To put them in the back of my mind as something that was good when I needed it but something that wasn't meant to be.  To stop living in regret that it's over and instead be optimistic about the future.

I need to realize that there's nothing I can do, probably even could have done, to change the outcome.  Neither  of us were ready and both of us rushed things.  It was doomed to fail from the start because we jumped into the water and it was colder than we thought it would be.  We didn't take the time to get to know each other-to just be friends, and that was the start of the downfall.  It was over before it began and I have to deal with that.  Some things can be fixed after the fact.  Relationships, whether friendship or otherwise, can't always be fixed.  As much as I wish I could go back, I can't.  That's just something I'm going to have to face.  With my marriage, I know I did everything I could to fix things, that it was just too far gone.  That makes it easier to accept somehow.  It hurts like hell, I'll miss him like crazy and I will miss having someone to come home to every night, to talk to, to hang out with.  Not knowing if there was something I could have done differently, or still having the friend to talk to who just sat and listened to me and comforted me when I cried, hurts.  There's nothing I can do to get that back and the only thing that I can hope will help is time.

In all of this, I learned a valuable lesson: stop giving all of yourself the minute you feel a connection.  If things are meant to be, you should start out by getting to know the other person for who they are and things will progress from there.  But first, you should be friends.  Don't just dive in and hope that it won't end.  And most importantly-don't give up yourself in the process.  Don't make your entire happiness revolve around that text, that phone call, or seeing them.  I need to start doing things that I want to do just because I want to do them.  Not because losing weight will make me more attractive, or because the person I'm into really likes doing that one thing, but because I enjoy it.

But first, I need to learn to let go.  I need to stop holding on to what could have been and look at what is right now.  Look at the friends that I have that I'm going to work on spending more time with.  Look at the opportunity that is open to me in nursing school and embrace it.  Go out and just kick around the soccer ball because I miss it or sit at home and get lost in a book I enjoy.  Work on getting back the parts of me that I gave up for men, whether recent or in the past.  I need to learn to let go of the regret, to stop dwelling on things that I can't change.  Some things just aren't meant to be, and that's okay.  And while I recognize this all on paper, I still have to mentally let it go.  I need to find new coping mechanisms besides trying to find something to fill the void.  Instead, I need to fill it myself.  I'll get there.  Maybe not today, maybe not even this year, but I will.  I have to believe that.

Learning Who I am Day 2

Last night, I finally admitted to myself what I have been hearing all along.  That I need to love myself first.  Now the big issue is figuring out where to start.  My brain likes to get carried away with thinking of things that were and could have been.  I have been thinking about the mistakes I have made just within the past two months non-stop for the last week and as much as I try to make it stop, it just won't.  I'm having a hard time falling asleep at night because I just keep thinking back to what I did wrong and my fear that I will be alone forever.

I'd be lying to myself, and to anyone reading this, if I said that I was okay with everything I said and that I wasn't hurting right now.  Because I am.  All of the emotions I've been bottling up over the past 3 years, perhaps more, have come to the surface.  I cry for my dad, my grandmother, the failed relationships, the infertility, and my own heart being broken because of my selfish stupidity.  I cry because I've never allowed myself to truly feel, to experience the true sadness that lurks within my soul because of all of these mistakes I just can't take back.  But most of all, I cry because of the fear that it's too late to find out who I am, to love myself, and to let other people in like I've never let them in before.  True, I shared the entirety of my infertility struggle, but I shared information, not my feelings. I wrote down the facts and tried to convince myself and others that while it hurt, I was strong and able to deal with it.  This is how I've been my whole life.  I've never truly allowed myself to mourn my losses, whether it be the loss of a pet, a loved one, or a relationship/potential of one.

When things get hard, I run away.  I hide from them and pretend like they don't exist.  I tell people what I think they want to hear so that they'll back off, let me deal with things on my own, but the truth is, I never actually deal with them.  I've gone to counseling and gotten really good at eventually not crying so that they'll tell me I'm better as if that validation truly makes my heart not hurt.  I've loved and lost so many important people in my life and instead of allowing myself to feel, I throw myself into something else.  The biggest thing I throw myself into is food.  A majority of my life, if something upset me I would turn to food.  Nothing would make me feel temporarily better quite like a Little Debbie or a candy bar.  But then the happiness would subside and I'd be more upset, so I'd have to have another one.  Nothing available?  I'd make due with what I had.  At one point in my life, I'd take hot cocoa mix and add chocolate syrup to it just to get the "high" that food and sugar could give me.

Like some people turn to drugs and alcohol, I turned to food.  When I ate I could pretend that it was truly helping me feel better, that I could make all of the bad feelings go away.  I didn't recognize it as a crutch, didn't recognize that when I inevitably crashed, I'd need more food to fill that hole.  Eventually, just one candy bar didn't do the trick anymore.  I needed more and more to get the same high I had achieved before.  I became addicted to that feeling, the satisfied happiness that came from food.  When I crashed, I crashed hard.  Dealing with life became almost unbearable and if I wasn't sleeping, I was eating.  I hated the person I was becoming, hated the weight that was piling onto my body, but I just couldn't bring myself to admit that there was a problem and to learn how to deal with not only my emotions, but also learning how to live without that high.  When I could bear to get out of bed, I'd search for something else to fill that void, whether it be a friendship or a relationship.  I needed something to make me happy because I had no idea how to do it for myself.  I got more and more depressed as nothing seemed to be enough.

No amount of going out and trying to have fun, making friends, or diving head first into the, now all failed, relationships would do it.  My already shy and self conscious self sank even further into these feelings because I was gaining weight like crazy and, despite my attempts to convince myself that I was still worthwhile, my self esteem was plummeting.  So it only makes sense that if a guy paid attention to me, I'd jump on it as quickly as I could to make sure I hooked him before he realized how awful I looked.  This lead to the previously mentioned issues with attachment to men.  I would either get overly attached or not attached at all, both of which cause problems.  I'd do one of two things: deny them my heart completely or give it completely without thinking about the potential repercussions.  I never stopped to reflect on how I was behaving, I just went with whatever mood hit me.  As I've said before, I would ignore signs that this was not the right thing for me to be doing and push them to the back of my head to pursue the one thing I thought would make me happy.

I figured that if I couldn't love myself, I'd find someone else who would.  Who would accept my faults.  Unfortunately, I couldn't accept my own faults.  I'd begin to do things similar to what a bully would do, focus on the faults of others so that mine wouldn't be as apparent to me.  If I was fat, this other girl was fatter.  If I was ugly, she was uglier.  I'd never say any of this to them, but I'd snark about it behind their back.  I hated the person I was becoming, but that only added fuel to the fire.  I always had to find something to make me feel superior to someone and figured they were looking at my faults so I might as well look at theirs.  My jealousy knew no bounds.  I'd see girls walking around so confidently and be jealous of them.  How could they be so confident in their bodies when I couldn't be confident in mine?  I'd see people in happy, healthy relationships and wonder where I had gone wrong.  I'd find reasons to blame the other person in a relationship/friendship for why things failed.  Obviously the guy was just a jerk or my friend wasn't a true friend.  While this was true in some instances (I mean, you don't cheat on your wife and lie to the person you are cheating with if you aren't a douche), in many it was a combination of issues with them that I ignored and major issues within myself that I pretended didn't exist.  When any issues with me would be pointed out, I'd take it as a personal slight and it would reduce my self esteem that much more.  Instead of looking at what would be said as a way to help me, I'd look at it as an attack, a way to make me feel inferior to them.  Sometimes, this would upset me so much that I'd write them off.  Obviously, if they felt that I was that terrible they weren't worth my time.  I've lost so many people because of my own personal inability to take criticism.  I've focused so hard on the opinions of other people that I even started to put how I felt onto them.

My weight ballooned after high school, when I didn't have the added high of being active to complement the high of food.  Between the fall of my senior year and graduation, I put on over 25 lbs.  Then the freshman 15..plus 30.  At the end of freshman year, I had a friend who encouraged me to go to the gym and work out with her, so between that and a lack of time to eat more than one meal per day I dropped about 30-40 lbs.  Sophomore year, it all came back on minus 10 lbs.  I "didn't have time" to be active and my friends and I liked to make Wegman's trips to get snacks.  They would get fruit and veggies, things to cook, I'd get ice cream.  That year we were able to pick our roommates.  My friends all chose each other and I was the odd man out.  I got put with girls I didn't know and who didn't care to know me, so I hid in my room a lot and ate.  Things got worse with them after my car accident.  I had a class with one of them that had an exam the same night I crashed, and because of this, she wasn't able to get her test back when she wanted to.  This made her HATE me.  So I went from roommates who pretended I didn't exist to roommates who flat out hated me.  I'd spend time with my friends, but they had their own lives, classes, and friendships to maintain and eventually I began to feel like I wasn't even wanted there.  So I retreated into my shell, didn't trust anyone, and would sit by myself all day and night.  If I skipped a class, which I did a lot, I'd be afraid to go back because people would make fun of me.  I saw my dream slipping out of my grasp and instead of trying to get it back, I got more and more depressed and let it go and let the friendships go with it, figuring that they couldn't possibly still like me after I had failed so badly.  The emotional eating came back full force, I'd go out and eat fast food, I was working at a fast food restaurant so it was very easy to eat crappy for cheap or even free.

I knew I had to get out of there, that being around fast food all the time was a bad idea,so I found a job at a pet store.  I've always loved animals so I thought this job would be a great fit, and it was.  For a while.  I made some amazing friends, one of whom I saw last month in Florida and miss terribly, but I also had a girl who hated me just because she could.  Eventually, I got fired for something out of my control-a huge slap in the face and another dig at my self esteem.  So I went back to Burger King.  It's a sad state of affairs when the one nice thing you can say about yourself is that you are loved at a fast food restaurant, but it was something I could say.  Everyone always told me how much they loved working with me, what a hard worker I was, and what a great person I was.  I relied on that confidence boost to get me through the day.  I didn't believe them, but it made me feel good anyway.

I started noticing that the manager from a different location would come in all the time and flirt with me.  I've mentioned him before, he's the guy who didn't tell me he was married.  My self esteem was outwardly through the roof, but inside I was worrying that he'd leave me.  I didn't pay attention to the warning signs and got hurt.  Soon after, I met Geoff, and my confidence relied entirely on him.  If he didn't call me, I was heartbroken and it was obvious that he was just going to leave me.  If he even talked to another girl, I looked for whatever flaw there was within me that there wasn't with her.  Everything I was, who I became, was tailored to what I thought he wanted and needed.  My obsession with food continued, but as I had joined Weight Watchers with my dad, I transformed from an obsession with eating in general to an obsession with eating things that were under 5 points so I could still binge eat without gaining weight.  Yes, I lost about 40 lbs during that time, but I didn't follow the program the right way and when I stopped going, the weight came back on because I never learned how to control the emotional eating.  Between April of 2007 and my wedding in June, I packed back on about 20 lbs, my dress almost didn't fit and I was depressed because of it.  I spent my wedding day sad and defeated, concentrating only on how I looked and how other people were behaving.

Within a month we had moved to Kentucky, 9 hours away from everything and everyone I had ever known. I thought that this would be a chance to reinvent myself, to become someone new.  Instead of taking that time to focus on myself, I focused on being who I thought Geoff's new (and old-some went to RIT) friends would want me to be.  If they wanted to go to an arena football game, I was all for it.  If they wanted to go out to the bar or club, I was there.  For what seems like the millionth time in my life, I put what I wanted and needed on hold to make others happy.  I got a job at a vet clinic, which I loved, but always felt out of place-that I didn't belong.  When my boss learned that I had a mental illness, shit hit the fan and it was made abundantly clear that I wasn't wanted.  She sent me to NY to get my meds taken care of and, while I was gone, hired my replacement in hopes that I wouldn't come back or at least wouldn't know that I had rights under the ADA.  Even though I knew I wasn't wanted, I stayed.  I loved working with the animals and getting to know the clients so I put up with a lot of crap, including her telling clients about my mental illness, in order to stay.  I made friends, some real, some not, and I am still close with one of them-ironically the one they hired to replace me.  I gained almost 90 lbs between April of 2007 and July of 2008 because I was so lonely, unhappy, and depressed, but I convinced myself it wasn't that bad.

After I quit the vet clinic, when I had finally had enough, I dropped about 40 lbs quickly.  The reduced stress from not being around people who clearly didn't like me helped and I settled into a new routine and started going to school again to finish my degree.  By March, I was physically healthier but emotionally still in the same place I had been for years-lonely and depressed.  Shit started to hit the fan at the company Geoff worked for, but they were still hiring some people so it felt like he wouldn't be let go.  My inability to deal with my own depression and feelings combined with Geoff's own personal depression and fear of being fired led to constant fighting.  We were both unhappy but wanted to fix things.  He had made friends with a new coworker who had been hired in January and I embraced her with open arms.  She had what she described as an abusive marriage and I invited her into my home any time she needed, made dinner for her, called her a friend, and was comfortable with Geoff carpooling with her to work because it saved us money.  Soon after, I started to become suspicious of their "friendship" but was assured by friends and family that Geoff would never cheat on me and that I was reading into things, he was just being there for her during a rough time.  When I found out he had actually cheated it devastated me.  I found the emails back and forth between them, where he gave her a pet name and they would talk about how horrible I was, not only as a wife, but as a person.  Needless to say, my self esteem plummeted.  Here, this man who had pledged to love me forever, was not only lying to me-but attacking me at the same time.  I wanted to leave right then and there but felt that I couldn't-that I should try to make things work.

So I did.  But while I was trying to make them work, I wasn't dealing with my own depression, only with the issues in our marriage.  I gained back the 40 lbs I had lost plus some and was at a new all time high weight.  I felt guilty after Geoff tried to kill himself, felt that it was all my fault because of how I reacted to him cheating, and was informed by my mother in law that I should just sit back and let him do whatever he wanted and not be an "ass" by trying to keep him from other women.  She told him to go ahead and cheat anytime he felt like it.  I was still so scared to be alone that I let this go, let my anger toward him fester in the back of my mind instead of letting it out because he might hurt himself again and I couldn't live with myself if he was dead because of me.  I put his happiness before my own and, while I was able to lose some of the weight, it never stayed off.  The following year, I felt that things seemed better and, as I said previously, we should try having kids.  I have always wanted kids and felt that I was getting too old (at 25) to have them.  It was "too late" to start over, and I wouldn't have known where to start to find someone new anyway, plus he'll be a great father, so what could possibly go wrong?  We tried for about 7 months before I realized that I was having a lot of pelvic pain that turned out to be a huge cyst and we found that I had two root causes of infertility-endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome.  I had surgery to remove the cyst and endo and was assured by my physician that many of her patients get pregnant after this surgery.  Obviously, that didn't happen and I became depressed.

The month after my surgery, my dad wound up in the hospital with what seemed to be severe anemia-or at least I assumed.  Turned out that he had Stage IV Colorectal cancer.  I went into complete denial-it was impossible for my father, literally the strongest man I know, to have this awful disease that will likely kill him.  The doctors are wrong, it's not stage IV, it can't be worse than stage II-this is what I told myself.  My eating yet again went out of control because not only did he have cancer, he had a rare blood disorder that was killing him faster and transfusions weren't working.  Starting chemotherapy would either save him for now or kill him.  I was eating chicken fingers and french fries literally every day I spent at the hospital and fast food when I wasn't.  I was working at K-Mart at the time and would grab a candy bar or two, or one of those cheap fudge pies that has the same number of calories as an entire pizza.  Anything to not have to show my true sadness, to mask it so that I could be strong for my family.  When dad died, it devastated me.  I lost the one person who understood me better than anyone else can.  We both suffered from bipolar disorder and that bond helped me to deal with it-knowing that he understood its ups and downs.  My dad and I had always been close and losing him left a huge hole in me.  But I didn't feel like I could morn.  Geoff had just lost his father, my mom lost her husband, my brother lost his father, the list goes on and on.  Not a single one of these people told me that I couldn't morn, I just felt that I couldn't.  Someone had to be strong and I decided that it needed to be me.  I went to counseling, but even though I talked it through, my only goal with counseling was to get referred to a psychiatrist to get medication that would help me feel better.  I had been off my bipolar meds for over a year and couldn't handle life without them anymore.

So I threw myself into school.  I didn't try to make any friends, I didn't feel I needed them.  I had Danielle, the girl I met at the vet clinic, and Geoff's friends, I didn't need my own identity outside of that.  I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life now that I felt my dream was so far outside of my grasp.  I didn't have the grades to get into PA school again and worried that I couldn't get into nursing school with what I had, so I settled on General Studies.  I worked hard in my classes and created a place where my identity was based on how smart I was, and am.  I've always known that I'm smart, I just never knew how to apply it until I came to EKU.  Everything I did revolved around class or making Geoff happy.  I took an EMT class in summer of 2012 and, in my opinion, rocked it out.  I took it with my brother so I was able to come out of my shell a bit and make a few friends.  That fall, I started to become closer to one of my brother's friends, Autumn, and consider her to be one of the people I am closest to.  I got to know his friends.  I got to know people in one of my classes and really enjoyed seeing them every other day.  I learned that I have a love for writing both fiction and non-fiction and embraced it.  I started working on photography, something I have enjoyed for a long time, but I still didn't get to know who I was-just a few things I enjoy that I'd do when I had a homework assignment or somewhere to go that pictures would be fun.

This spring, I decided to volunteer to help with the EMT lab since Autumn would be in the class.  It took me a while, but I eventually started coming out of my shell there too.  I met some awesome people who I was so proud to see pass the course.  I'd sit and chat with some of them as if I knew them my whole life, it seemed so easy when I let my guard down.  But I don't think that I even was finding who I am at that point.  I decided to become that funny, smart girl who would help them but tried hard not to get annoying or become too much of a know-it-all.  Toward the end of the semester was when I started to notice the guy that I mentioned in my last post.  It started out as just a dream, I had had dreams about other people previously but it seemed different this time.  There was just something about this guy that drew me in.  To be honest, I had no idea what his name was until after the dream, and it was funny that I had actually been trying to put a face to the name the week before when he had left his packet of check off sheets behind in class.  But I thought he was attractive and felt the desire to see what happened.  So I did.  I still had no idea who I was but I enjoyed being around him, feeling attractive and being told how great I was.  Yet again, instead of dealing with the pain I was going through, I found a new outlet that made me superficially happy.  I ignored warnings that I wasn't doing the right thing and even ignored him when he said that we should just start out by getting to know each other.  There was a mutual attraction so I went for it.  Turns out?  It didn't make me as happy as I thought it would, I was still bitter about Geoff and talked about it constantly.  But I wasn't overeating, I hadn't binged, and I thought I was happy.  When I'd go out with him I could pretend like none of the pain existed, when I got a text back it would make me smile.  My life started revolving around being able to talk to him, to see him.  All of the mistakes I had continuously made in the past were happening again and I didn't care, I needed that rush and my weight was finally continuing on a downward path so I didn't need to continue with my addiction to food-I had almost an addiction to him.  Not him as a person, but him as this creation in my mind, finally the guy who wanted me for me.

Now, I'm trying to pick up the pieces of my broken heart.  I'm not heartbroken because I loved him, or because I was going to stay with him for the rest of my life.  I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that things couldn't possibly have worked out there-he was 10 years my junior and nowhere near the point in life where I am.  I'm heartbroken because not only did I throw myself into it when I was clearly not ready to handle emotions more complex than the heartache from ending my marriage, but I drew him into it too.  I put him in a position that he wasn't ready for either and ruined everything.  In retrospect, I wanted to know that someone felt something for me, because it didn't seem that Geoff even remotely cared that I had left.  So I threw myself at a guy who ended up being great, but not great for me.  I realize now that I'm not ready for another relationship, that I have to love me, but I didn't realize it soon enough.  Before hurting myself and people I care about.  My tears and pain don't come from the loss of a relationship but from the loss of what could have been, the friendship that we seemed to share.  Everybody says that hindsight is 20/20, and it really is.  I just wish that foresight was.  That I could see the consequences of my actions, and inaction as far as my emotions go. I need to learn that it's okay to cry, okay to feel, and okay to be happy with me.  That it's even necessary for me to love myself if I'm going to find the kind of relationship I've always wanted.

First comes working on me, focusing on school, and maintaining my friendships, perhaps even making more.  I think that moving out on my own will be beneficial to me because there's no memories of what was or could have been in whatever new place I get.  Only the memories I choose to make for my future, the memories of my last two years of school before real life.  I've always been afraid to grow up, I think part of it coming from the fact that I'm not comfortable with myself and when I'm in school I can hide behind my grades and I'm so busy that I don't have time to dwell on what makes me sad, I have to focus.  This time, I'm going to make time for myself, to go out with my amazing friends, to open myself up to new possibilities, and to focus on the things that I love.  To go out to take pictures just because or to write a story just because the mood strikes me.  To read the books I haven't taken time to read, watch the movies that I want to watch, and spend time with who I want to spend time with.  For the first time in my life, I'm going to learn about me.  No focus on being in a relationship just so that I'm not alone, I need to learn to rely on myself both emotionally and financially.  When I graduate, I'll find a job and take care of myself.  I don't need a man to provide for me, and I need to get back to that 14 year old who wanted to be self-sufficient.

Writing this blog is the first step for me, it creates somewhere where I can not only delve into the parts of my life that have gone wrong, but what has gone right.  Where I can put everything out there so it no longer can be pushed to the back of my mind but is brought into the light.  I know that I can do this, that I can learn to be me and to love that.  It'll take time, hard work, a lot of tears, and a lot of reflection, but I can do it.  I'll always have regrets, I have to live with that.  I have to live with the fact that I've burned many bridges and move on.  I have friends and family who love me and for now, that's enough.  My goal is to write at least 2-3x per week and to deal with all of the emotional baggage that I've been hiding from myself and others by writing about it.  I'm so thankful that I'm able to have this outlet, that while I'm known personally by many of the people reading it, I can get it all out there with no interruptions and no feeling that I'm being annoying by bringing up all of my issues in a conversation when other people have theirs too.  It's just me, my computer, and an audience who chooses to listen.  An audience I am so grateful for.

Diving in Head First

I have always wanted to be in a relationship.  Ever since I was 15-16 years old and sat alone at family functions while my cousins and brother sat with their boyfriends/girlfriends I longed to be a part of their world.  The world where someone loved you as much as you loved them.  A world I thought I'd never enter.  I went from the girl who at age 14 wanted to be a Physician Assistant and never have to rely on a man to a girl who wanted nothing more than to have a man love and take care of her.  And that's where I went wrong.

I started dating when I was about 17 years old.  I went for the first guy who paid attention to me, who told me I was beautiful.  It ended horribly.  Not only was he using me, I had fallen head over heels within a matter of weeks.  Just a few dates and I was convinced that I loved him.  When he ended it by telling a mutual friend he was engaged and to let me know, I was absolutely devastated.  I thought my life would end right at that moment, that I would never be loved by anyone and it reinforced my desire, almost need, to find a boyfriend.  Someone to care about me.

I had a dating dry spell during my freshman year in college.  I also had the first manifestations of bipolar disorder and at a point when I should have been putting myself first and learning to love who I am, I became even more obsessed with finding "the one."  I made quite a few friends, but found myself trying to be the kind of girl I thought the guys wanted instead of who I am, which tended to be a turnoff to not only my friends but also the good guys.  I've always considered myself to be somewhat of a flirt, but I took it to the extreme.  Despite being a virgin, I became overtly sexual in order to be what I considered more attractive to a man.  Somehow, I never realized that this was why I was attracting the wrong kind, the kind who thought I'd sleep with them and that would be that.  The kind who dropped me like a bad habit when they didn't get what they wanted.

Sophomore year, I started online dating.  I met some nice guys, and some not-so-nice.  I got tired of my virginity and felt that it was the one thing holding me back, that maybe if I wasn't a virgin anymore I'd be able to find that perfect guy who would love me for who I was.  Instead, I slept with the first guy who dated me for more than a month and have regretted it every day since.  I became the guys who I had attracted the prior year, the user.  After that, I took a *short* break from dating again, but was still convinced that it was fate for me to meet "him" sometime soon.  That spring, I continued to be that user.  I moved on to a guy I barely knew, who I felt I owed something to after he didn't take advantage of me when I was drunk.  We hung out, but I would only do it when nobody else was around.  I used him for sex and I feel awful about it.  I thought that maybe if I gave him a chance, I could convince myself that he was that guy.  When the semester ended, I walked away.  I dropped out of the college I was in and moved home.  I couldn't handle the stress of being so far away from home for school anymore after my grandfather passed away, and my grades were terrible because I was so depressed that I didn't go to class.  I completely ignored the fact that this guy had thought we were in a relationship, that my heart was involved, and moved on.

I dated a few more guys over the next few months, some good, some bad.  Then I met J.  I thought he was amazing. Yet again, here was a guy I thought was cute who was paying attention to me.  There were so many warning signs but I chose to ignore them because he obviously loved and wanted to be with me, he'd asked me out!  I didn't pay attention to the fact that he didn't call when he said he would, disappeared for weeks at a time, only to come back into my life with vague apologies and explanations.  I ignored the fact that he never wanted to go out somewhere, but always wanted to go to "his apartment."  Turned out that he was married and I was the other woman.  I was heartbroken.  Here I had given my heart to yet another douche and it got torn out.  Yet I kept trying to find that perfect guy, I never started working on loving myself but thought that I needed someone else to love me to be whole.  I saw my family members in their happy relationships and thought that that was what I needed too.

So I met Geoff.  I had second thoughts at first but pushed them back as I am wont to do.  He was cute, paid attention to me, and wanted me to go out to parties and meet his friends.  I then got terrified because I didn't know what to do with a guy who obviously cared so much and I broke things off before he could hurt me.  I immediately regretted that decision, called him, dove head first into the relationship, and within the first month I was sleeping with him and staying at his house, moving to Connecticut with him after 6 months.  I had finally found it.  The guy who loved me and wanted to be with me forever.  It didn't matter to me that his mother was an issue.  It didn't matter to me that things were moving too fast, that I was ignoring things that bothered me.  I was happy.  I had found someone to love me when I didn't love myself.  It seemed a natural progression that after 1.5 years together we get engaged and married the following year.  It seemed even more urgent when he was trying to join the navy and would be leaving directly after he graduated from college, so I ignored the second thoughts I was having and planned the wedding.  Now, I'm not saying that I don't love Geoff, because I do.  Very much.  We just aren't as compatible as I had convinced myself we were, I ignored the things that made us incompatible and tried to make it work.  We fought.  A lot.  From day one.  I became infatuated with him so quickly that I was jealous of any girl who looked his way.  I was so insecure that I thought he'd leave me for one of them.

And then one day he did.  Nearly two years into our tumultuous marriage, he cheated.  I was devastated and my already low self esteem took another blow.  I wanted to leave him, but a mix of my self loathing, not wanting to leave the dogs, and his attempted suicide made me feel like it was wrong to leave and that the right thing was to stay.  If I didn't try to make it work, who would love me?  Just over a year after he cheated and we went to counseling, I was convinced that things were getting better and that we should have kids.  Natural progression right?  He can't leave me if we have a baby to take care of, the baby will help fix things or at least give me someone who loves me unconditionally.  When infertility set in, my already pained heart became almost unbearable to deal with.  I was crying all the time and so angry.  I had gained almost 100 lbs since marrying Geoff, 45 of it since his affair, and over 120 since the first time I had been dumped at 17.

Three years after we started trying to have a baby we were still fighting all the time.  He was passive aggressive, I was overly aggressive.  Every little thing became an issue.  I wanted to go out to dinner, he'd agree but then not get anything.  I always felt that he was playing the martyr, he always felt that he was being frugal and I was being unreasonable.  What had seemed like compatibility in the early days was suddenly showing itself to be an extraordinarily large rift, one that didn't feel like it could be fixed.  I sat, for years, unhappy in my marriage but feeling like this was normal, that because he is my best friend things were the way they were supposed to be.  I mean, everybody fights right?  It doesn't matter that these fights are every single day, I love him so it'll all be okay.  It wasn't until I started finding myself uncontrollably attracted to other guys that things started setting in.  I'd ask my friends and my mom and they'd all tell me that it was normal to be attracted to other guys, but this felt like more than a momentary attraction.

I finally realized that I wasn't being fair to either Geoff or myself.  That what I had thought to be harmless flirting was feeling like more than that.  Suddenly, a guy came seemingly from out of nowhere that I just could not stop thinking about.  I hardly knew him, I'd talked to him a few times but nothing in depth, mostly about school.  But I couldn't get him out of my mind.  Finally, I had the guts to tell Geoff how I was feeling, how I had been feeling for a long time.  I asked him for an open marriage/trial separation so that I could go after this guy guilt free.  I figured that it'd be a momentary fling, that I'd probably be rejected anyway, but I couldn't stop thinking about it, thinking about the potential of this other guy finding me attractive.

So I approached him.  I thought he was older than he was, more mature than he was.  When I found out his actual age and that he hadn't had sex before, I was afraid to back out.  I thought that maybe, just maybe, if I gave him a chance things would be different with him than any other guy before.  I dove in head first.  I finally told Geoff what I had wanted to say for so long, that I didn't think our marriage was working and that I thought we should divorce.  Now, I need to make this clear: I had wanted to leave for months, if not years.  I was so unhappy and felt that there was no way out and it was clear that Geoff was unhappy as well.  Then I met this new guy and suddenly there was someone paying attention to me, telling me I was beautiful, and seeming to want to plan a future.  I ignored the fact that he was so young and that while I'm quickly approaching 30, he couldn't even legally drink yet.  I ignored the fact that he was rushing into things too fast and I joined him in that rush.  It was so thrilling to have someone care, to have someone want to be with me just because they could.  I ignored the fact that texts would go unanswered for hours, that I was always the one to initiate the conversation and ask to make plans.  I was so excited that I pretended that getting into a relationship with someone so quickly after leaving my marriage was okay.  That I had been unhappy for so long I couldn't possibly be on the rebound.  I got attached to who I wanted this guy to be.

Instead of starting a friendship and moving slowly to see where things would take us, I let the infatuation take over.  I over shared my fears, desires, and hopes.  I started getting upset if he didn't call when he said he would or return a text.  I over-analyzed everything he said and did, and over emphasized how much I actually cared.  I'm not going to lie, I cared about him and still do.  Just not in the manner I thought I did.  I threw all of my anger from Geoff's seeming lack of care that I had ended our marriage into my new "relationship" in the guise of adoration, trust, and caring.  I convinced myself that, despite all of my reservations, I was making a good decision.  I was so excited when I flew home from New York and the new guy was picking me up at the airport.  I wanted to be in a new relationship so badly that I followed what I thought was his lead.  He told me he saw us in a relationship and I was elated.  Finally, someone who cared about me for me.

Then, the next night when we were talking on the phone, I was distraught.  I put all of my feelings of self loathing, and my lack of self worth onto him and was crying on the phone.  I again asked him to tell me where we stood.  I was so obsessed with being wanted and cared about that I got in too deep too fast.  I'm sure a combination of that and other things is what led him to end it that night.  In retrospect, it was for the best.  While we had a lot in common, we had both pushed aside feelings of doubt in order to pursue a relationship for the wrong reasons.  I did to feel worth something, and from what little he told me, I gather that he did to save me from my bad marriage and to feel that someone wanted him too.  I admit, I begged.  He looked at me with such cold eyes and offered no explanation other than "I just can't, I'm done" and "I wasn't ready."  Instead of realizing that I also wasn't ready, I begged him to give me a chance.  I was so afraid of being alone, of being single again for the first time in over 8 years, that I couldn't give up the romance I had created in my head.

After talking to my brother, I was able to finally realize what I had done.  That I had pushed so hard for a relationship with someone I hardly knew because I didn't want to be alone.  It was better to be with someone that I had doubts about than to truly deal with my own personal self loathing.  Because of my lack of foresight and ability to admit to myself that I wasn't ready, I lost someone who could have been an amazing friend.  I will regret that for a long time.  Instead of being content to be around someone who made me laugh, I needed that confirmation that I was important, wanted, and needed.  And that was my downfall.

Now I sit here, a week later, questioning my own self worth.  I thought that I was getting to a point where I was starting to love myself but honestly, I don't know where to start.  I'm still terrified of being alone.  Not of not being in a relationship but of truly getting to know who I really am.  For the past 12 years, I have felt I had no identity unless it was based on a man and to suddenly try to figure out who I am is scary.  I gave up so much of myself to try to please guys in order to not be alone, not be single, that I truly don't know where to start picking up the pieces of my heart and give it wholly to the person who most deserves it.  Me.  I've said for the past year that I'm trying to lose weight for myself, to be healthy and happy with how I look, but that's not 100% true.  I thought that Geoff would love me more, that our fights would stop if I lost weight.  I continued to put all of my self worth on what someone else thought instead of what I thought.  Even now, when I've realized that the key to my problem with not having successful relationships is me and my self loathing, not my weight, I have pangs of wanting to be thin to show the guys who've turned me down in the past because of my weight or who have left me for any of a number of reasons what they're missing out on.

Writing all of this down was incredibly difficult for me.  It's one thing to give lip service to your friends and family who constantly tell you that you need to love yourself before you can ever be truly happy, it's a completely different story to admit it to yourself.  I think I finally have.  Will I still be sad that I missed out on what could have been an amazing friendship because I had such a need to be loved?  Of course.  And I still have hope that in the future things can be different.  I just realize now that things will never be different until I love and respect myself.  Until I know who I truly am and what I want.  So for now my focus will be on school and my friends.  When I get involved with a man I generally throw myself completely into it.  My entire identity revolves around them, what they want and need. I thought this was how it was supposed to be, I didn't want to be thought of as selfish. I have friends but I don't give them the time I should because, in my mind, I should be doing everything to make my guy happy.  I give up my own personal happiness to make others happy and it's lead to my downfall and eventual, see current, depression.

Even as I write this I'm sitting and crying.  But you know what?  It's okay and eventually I will be too.  It's going to take time, but I'm going to go out and do things that I want to do.  I'm going to go out to the bar with my friends, have a few drinks, and flirt like crazy.  I'm going to move out and get my own place so I can focus on learning to spend time with me and getting to like me.  I'm going to throw myself into my studies and become the best nurse I can be, but most importantly of all, I'm going to figure out who Becca is.  What makes her happy, what makes her tick.  I'll finally learn that the number 30 is just that, a number.  Turning 30 won't make me suddenly an old hag, won't add wrinkles to my face or grey to my hair just as turning 21 didn't suddenly make me responsible and turning 18 didn't suddenly make me an adult.  They're just numbers, arbitrary ways of measuring the amount of time since your birth.  They don't define me.  Now it's time to figure out what does.