The greater fear - life or death?

I had an appointment with the cardiologist today.  He once again told me how important it was to lose weight.  He has this big monitor where he shows me my stats. Nothing like seeing my failure in six month increments.

It's nice that he's so patient with me.  He answers all of my questions.  He went over my risk factors and explained that because of my heart condition blood clots are my biggest concern.  He said that he could see from my history that I know how to lose weight but I just have to mental get there.  It was a little discouraging when he told me that statistically my chances a losing weight and keeping it off aren't good.

One of my biggest fears is having a heart attack and the doctor is telling me I need to change my ways or that is a very real possibility.  The doctor said if I give him six months of sustained effort he'd give me 6 months off as long as I maintained my weight.  He said if I gave him 100 pounds of weight loss he'd give me a year off as long as I didn't gain.

The thought of having to lose all of the weight all over again is overwhelming.  The first time I lost it, I didn't lose it because I believed I could or that I was worth it.  I did it because Patrick believed I could.  I never believed in myself.  I still don't believe in myself.  Part of me wonders if I fear living more than I fear dying.  Part of me wonders if I'm just too lazy to make any real change. 

It scares me that whether I succeed or fail is totally and completely up to me.  I have no problem letting myself down again and again.  How am I possibly going to succeed when I've failed so many times before?! 

The cardiologist hasn't told me anything I didn't already know but I like to ignore what he says because it scares me.  I don't know how to deal with it so I pretend that everything is fine.  What's to stop me from doing that again these next six months.  Right now I'm scared but I'm also very good and shutting down my emotions and ignoring reality.

Right now I'm not mentally in the right frame of mind to make a decision on what comes next but instead of doing nothing my goal for tomorrow is to drink 80oz of water.

My Birthday

My birthday post didn't sit well with me so I decided I needed a new post.  I think it didn't sit well with me because most of the things I talked about don't matter to me anymore.  They are just the superficial reasons that I had come to avoid my birthday.

Here's the thing, it's not that my parents forgot my birthday that still makes me a little sad but that I don't have them in my life.  When I forgave them for their shortcomings it made me remember how much I love them, miss them, and wish that they were around.  Birthdays and holidays are when I miss my family.  I grew up watching other people celebrate these days and always wishing that my family could be like that too.  Outwardly I'd say celebrating those things just didn't matter to me but it was the lie I told myself to get through those days.  Now that I'm able to choose whether I celebrate these things I have mixed feelings about it.

It's true part of me wants to be excited about my birthday but the other part doesn't want to make a big deal about it. It's kind of like two different worlds.  I'm friends with a lot of people who love to celebrate birthday's.  I think it's cool that they get so excited.  On the other hand I have the whole it's just another day mentality.  It feels wrong to get excited about my birthday even though I've always been secretly fond of my birthday because I share a birthday with my favorite uncle.

I'm going to be honest and admit that the reason I want to treat it as just another day is because part of me doesn't feel like MY birthday is worthy to be celebrated.  In my original post I said I'm not the type of person what people show up for and that is the way I still feel.  My birthday usually competes with Memorial Day Weekend and lets be honest Memorial Day weekend plans are important.  I get it. I almost always look forward to holiday weekends.  Most of the time it's not because of the holiday itself but because it's a long three day weekend that I usually try to extend by taking PTO days.   

There is one thing that I will never understand.  It's when people hate their birthday just because they are another year older.  If you've made it to another birthday then that means you are still alive - heck ya that deserves to be celebrated!

I think that's where I am this year. I didn't want to just ignore my birthday as I have in year's past. Last year I had an awesome birthday so why wouldn't I want to have another awesome birthday?! Yeah, I have a little bit of anxiety about giving up control of what I'm doing for my birthday this year but it's nice that someone else cares to celebrate it.

I'm going to leave my original post about my birthday only for context but as I said my original post didn't sit well with me.  I kept things superficial and I know I can do better than that.

Everything below is my original post.

This week's blog post is dedicated to my love/hate feelings about my birthday.  I like to be excited about my birthday but I have to be in control of my own plans for my birthday or else it makes me anxious.

Take this week for instance.  I've been thinking about what I want to do for my birthday and my friend Jenn throws a wrench into my plans.  I was thinking I'd go out of town by myself for a long weekend.  Maybe do something I've always wanted to do.  Then I was like well maybe Jenn would want to go with me so I asked her.  It didn't look like it was going to work out so I continued to make my own plans to spend my birthday away from home by myself.  Jenn called me up last week and informed me that she was talking me out for my birthday on Thursday and she thought that we should do to Disneyland next weekend.  I love how she just said I'm going out to dinner with her on Thursday.  Haha.  If she would have asked I probably would have said no that's okay. I don't want to go.  I don't like when other people make a big deal about my birthday even though I do actually like it.

Yes, we've already established I'm weird but I'm especially weird about my birthday.  I don't like to leave my birthday up to other people. My family has never been big on birthday's.  My parents usually forgot.  Well, maybe my dad forgot but it's hard to believe my mom forgot.  She has to endure the pain of giving birth to me so I'd imagine that would be hard to forget.  I don't remember her calling on my birthday. 

I always told myself that it wasn't a big deal. It was just a birthday but I'll admit there is a reason I hate my birthday - birthday parties.  I've had two.  One was the year I moved in with my grandparents and only one person showed up.  It was a mortifying experience.  I never thought about having another birthday party again until a few years ago when my friend Faith wanted to throw me a party.  I told her about my first experience with a party and I dragged my feet because I honestly felt like I wasn't the type of person people would show up to a party for.  It was awesome of Faith to want to do that for me so I had the party. Faith and her family were the only people who showed up.  Yeah, no more parties for me.

Last year I decided I'd make my own plans for my birthday and it was the best birthday I've ever had.  It was my 35th birthday and I wanted to do something I had never done before so I decided to go white water rafting for my birthday.  I had a blast that's why this year I decided I was going to do my own thing again for my birthday. 

It makes me nervous that I don't know where Jenn is taking me for my birthday.  I know it's just a control thing because  I'm sure I'll like wherever we go.  I just don't like surprises.  It makes me happy that I have friends that care to get excited about my birthday.  I just wish I was in control of the plans.  I can't be disappointed if I'm the one who makes the plans right?  It's not that I don't want to go but it's driving me nuts that she won't tell me where we are going.  I'm trying to get better about my need to control everything though.

 I am excited about Disneyland though.  I've never been there and that is never a place I would have chosen to go.  I was thinking the beach or the mountains, someplace quiet.  Someplace that I could go and have a good time by myself but that wouldn't have been nearly as fun.

Measure of Success

In my life things tend to change in an instant but a lot of times that is the only thing that will make me change. I tend to freak out about it at first.  I doubt myself endlessly.  I'm so scared of failing, or maybe it's success, that I'm reluctant to change.  I think that this is why life gives me an unwanted push at times.

I was forced out of my comfort zone on Friday.  The metabolic program has been my life for almost three years now and Friday I decided that it was time to stop going.  Of course that didn't happen by my choice because remember I'm reluctant to change.  I can't really get into the specifics behind this change but, yeah I freaked out about it.  The program has been my safety net and as I have come to learn in the last few months it's also my crutch.

I am terrified of being on my own.  I had great success at losing weight and also an almost complete regression in weight loss.  It would be easy to say that my three years in the program were an epic failure. I have even thought that myself, but then I started really looking at the last three years.  I looked at how I've been measuring my success.  I was measuring it by the number on the scale but that is the wrong measure.

Almost three years ago I was beyond depressed.  I was without hope and I wished every night that I could just never wake up again.  I had few friends.  I wasn't close to my family. I was almost completely isolated from people. I had zero self esteem.  I'd go to work and go home.  I had nothing or no one to live for.

Have you ever felt like you were meant to meet certain people in your life?  That's how I feel about Patrick.  It was shortly before I meant him that I had a light bulb moment.  That moment wasn't that I have to get healthy to live a long life.  It was that dying didn't have to be some pie in the sky wish.  It was completely within my control as to whether I lived or died.  That thought consumed me.  I then started working with Patrick in the metabolic program.  I didn't want to be there.  I was angry and depressed.  One night I was having a particularly bad day and I had absolutely nothing left to give.  I wanted to die.  I was ready but instead I did something I rarely did - I prayed to Heavenly Father to help me.  It helped that I didn't have any fight left in me because it's one of the few times I was able to sincerely pray without resistance.  I told Heavenly Father that I couldn't go one like this and that if He wanted me to live, I needed His help because I couldn't do it on my own.  I told Him that I had no idea how to find my way back to Him and begged him to help me feel peace.

The very next day I was workout out and I was the only one left, which never happened.  Patrick came over to me and asked if he could talk to me about something.  I said sure.  He was all nervous and kind of trip over his words.  He asked me if I believed in God.  I said yes but I didn't go to church or anything.  He then told me he felt prompted to tell me about what he believes.  As soon as he said that I kind of smiled because I knew exactly what that was and my thought was "huh, that was unexpected."  Patrick is LDS and in all of my searching I did to find a church, LDS was never one of them.  Not that I knew much about them. When I moved to Arizona people warned me to stay away from them.  He asked me if I wanted to go to the visitors center at the temple with him and I said I'd go.  I reluctantly agreed to meet with the missionaries but only on the condition that they didn't have my phone number and didn't show up at my place.  I never invited anyone to my place.  I had to go out into the world everyday and it was a place I wanted no part of.  It scared me. It made my anxious.  Being home was the only place I felt safe and I didn't want anyone invaded the my only safe place.

Patrick volunteered to be the go between, between me and the missionaries and he also when to all of the discussions.  It wasn't easy.  I fought it.  I didn't think it was for me but I wanted it to be for me.  I wanted to feel that Heavenly Father loved me.  I wanted to feel peace.  One day the missionary asked me to pray about whether the church was true.  I did this on several occasion and never felt anything.  The words on in the Book of Mormon were just words on a page, however this particular day I had a feeling like I never had before.  For the first time in my life I felt peace.  I felt like I found a home.  Most people incorrectly assumed that was with the people in the church but it wasn't.  It was through the scriptures and my home was with Heavenly Father.  Still to this day I have trouble feeling like I belong when I'm around the people in my ward but my heart found peace in the scriptures.  That was something I had prayed for.

As I met with the missionaries I finally agree to let them come over to my place.  The first time I let them in I felt violated.  I felt like that by willingly letting them invade my space I gave up my safe place.  I was so angry with myself for doing that.  It was a while before I had them over again. 

Something else interesting happened when I decided to join the church.  I had always felt like my soul was dead and when I joined the church it felt like my soul came to life.  I realize now that many years ago I turned my back on God because that is the only way I knew how to shut down.  It hurt too much to feel so I made myself not feel.

I've come to realize I knew very little about myself.  My opinion of myself was that I was a stupid, lazy, fat pig, that nobody wanted or could ever love.  I 100% believed that I was nothing but a waste of space and didn't deserve to breath air.  I hated everything about myself. 

I still battle some of this. This is there because some of it was what I was told by others and some of it is what I told myself to make it okay for the adults in my life to not love me the way they should have.  If you ask me about any of these people I would say without a doubt that they were good people.  I saw them at there best.  They were kind, loving, people. That is the truth.  It had to be my fault that I could never make them happy or stay out of there way because they were good people.

I've always seen why my parents and grandparents were they way they were but I couldn't make myself believe that the way they treated me was because of their issues and not because I had some sort of personality defect that made me unlovable. 

Through Patrick I met Jenn, who is a life coach.  She helped me process all of the old baggage that I was carrying around.  It helped me feel that they were people with their own pain.  I do believe that if any of them knew how much their words and actions effected me they would be sorry.  It helped me forgive them.

Through the metabolic program I also met a lot of great people who I love spending time with and many of whom are like family to me.  Last year I switched from working with Patrick to working with Chris.  To say that was hard would be an understatement but it actually turned out to be the best thing.  Had I not switched I may have never known that I have an anxiety disorder.  Since I've been on medication it's really helped me with my fear of people.  Chris also taught me how to feel connected to people.  I used to feel like I was defective because I always felt an emotional disconnect from people.  Chris is a hugger and it was through him that I realized that physical contact is what I need to feel connected to people.

Finding the metabolic program didn't give me my life back, it helped me find my life.  Before I joined the program I was just wanting to die. I have finally found a place where my heart feels peace through the scriptures. I've learned how to trust that people and I'm learning how to trust myself.  I have accepted that I do have value in this world.  Yes, occasionally I still struggle with it but I'm doing a million times better than when I started the program 3 years ago.  I found forgiveness for my family members and for myself.  I've learned that I'm not the horrible person I told myself I was.  That I wasn't the way I was because I was heartless but because I loved too much.  I didn't know what to do with the rejection so I had to shut down in order to survive.

In these last 3 years I have lost a hundred pounds and gained back most of it but so what.  I didn't pray to Heavenly Father to help me lose weight.  I prayed to Him to help me save my life and he has done that.  I have a completely different life than I had three years ago so it would be crazy to say my time in the metabolic program was anything less than a success just because I have very little weight loss to show for it.  When I was focused on the weight loss it distracted me from working on my real issues.  The issues that caused the weight gain in the first place.

That is not to say that I'm going to accept where I am with my weight because I'm not.  There is an entire world out there that I want to live in without self made limitations.  I don't want to have to worry if I sit in a chair if it's going to break.  I want to be able to be active.  I want to live the life I was meant to live and  I want to be the person that I was meant to be.  

As I'm now looking at life beyond the metabolic program, I'm hopeful.  I have felt for a very long time now that I can't or won't lose weight until I believe in myself.  I don't think I was supposed to be in the program to lose weight. I think I was supposed to be in the program for all of the people that it brought into my life.  Each one of the people I've met over the last three years have changed by life. I think I needed the program to give me the confidence in myself to know that I'm worth losing weight.  Oh I'm terrified to leave the comfort of the people that have become my family but I really think that this is what I need.   I was too afraid to make the change for myself so the change was made for me.  I can either resist it or embrace it.

It's time for me to believe in myself.