Walking Away

There's this song currently playing on the radio. The first time I heard it, I thought it was beautiful. I was driving in the car and as soon as I heard the piano introduction, I was hooked. I got home that evening and wanted to share it with my kids, so I looked up the YouTube video. Like many others, the song became even more poignant for me after seeing the video. Take a look:

Now here's what makes me different from most others: Most people, when they watch the video, become emotional at the scene where the elderly couple is introduced. Watching the emotion of the man as he is saying goodbye to his wife stirs great emotion. For me, though, I'm teary from the first scene. The scene of the little girl huddling on her bed, with a blanket wrapped around her, which she eventually pulls over her head.

I've mentioned bits and pieces of my childhood before, that things weren't good. So when I reacted with strong emotion to the little girl, I assumed I was simply identifying with her fear, her isolation, hiding under the bed to escape frightening scenarios. From there, I went on, always listening to this song with a touch of emotion, remembering each time the little girl who felt so alone. For that reason, I typically avoid hearing the song, I don't need to spend every day remembering my childhood: I find that best left for the occasional thought.

Then, a friend of mine posted to Facebook a cover of this song. The band covering the song is called Pentatonix and I absolutely love their music, I sang in an a cappella choir for eleven years. When I saw the video, I absolutely had to watch it, knowing the music would be even more beautiful than the original song. I commented before I clicked the link, "OMG, I know I'm going to cry!"

Sure enough, I did. I bawled my eyes out watching this video, crying so hard tears were dripping off my chin.

Afterward, because I take a walk down memory lane every time I hear this song, it finally dawned on me why it is this song touches me so much. It can't possibly be just the image of the little girl, she's not in the Pentatonix video.

No, what touches me is realizing I did exactly what this song suggests one might do: I walked away.

I've mentioned previously walking away is a big deal for me. One of the reasons I end up (and stay) in abusive/disrespectful relationships is I can't stand walking away from people. I felt like my parents walked away from me when I was a teenager, because they kept passing me back and forth, "My spouse has a problem with her, I need you to take her for awhile." "I can't handle the stress, I need you to take her back, I'll pay for her plane ticket." And so it went until I moved out on my own.

Wait. I moved out on my own.

In light of my previous recollections/thoughts from, "A Promise to Myself," I remember from a very young age I couldn't wait until I was old enough to get away. I promised myself over and over and over again as soon as it was legal for me to be on my own, I would move out. That is exactly what I did.

When I was thirteen, I needed out of my mother's house so bad, I wrote every adult relative I had asking if I could move in with them. When that failed (one of my aunts turned me in, read the letter to my mother), I turned to looking for my father. I hadn't seen hide nor hair of him in seven years, my last memory of him was him being arrested outside my house while I screamed and cried and was dragged away from the window by my older brother. The military police jailed him and held him long enough for my mother to pack up my brother and I and move us out of state.

When I went looking for my father, my mother reminded me he was a junkie and an alcoholic and abusive. "Not to me," was my reply, "he never abused me." With that, the search went on until I eventually located my father, who was five years sober at that point. How that ended can be found in, "Attention, Love, and Affection," after telling my father for over a year that I would leave and never look back if he didn't stop abusing me and start parenting me, I finally left.

This is the point of this story: My parents didn't leave me, I left them.

While I was homeless, shortly after moving out of my father's house, my mother begged me to come back and live with her. I told her, "I can't. I have to stand on my own now, I have to prove to myself that I can stand on my own and be okay."

So I did.

The little girl who sat huddled in a ball, rocking, crying, stroking her own hair, she got up and she walked away. She proudly and boldly looked her abusers in the eye and said, "No more. I will not take it anymore."

Just like the song says, they were the ones that I loved and I said goodbye. Now that's empowering.

Accomplishments

So, I sat and announced to the world at large that I was setting myself a goal. And in this announcement, I indicated I might fail. I indicated I would struggle, work hard, falter, steady myself and walk on.

In the end, I think this is exactly what I have done.

Yes, I understand the goal was to write a blog post a day. And yes, I understand that I did not write a blog post a day.

Here's what I did do:

I thought about writing every single day. I sat down to my computer to write at least half of the days. I discussed my writing with everyone close to me. Every time a thought occurred to me that seemed shareable, I started formulating in my head and eventually put at least a couple of sentences down somewhere. I made notes in my phone while laying half naked on an examination table in the doctor's office, waiting to see a specialist.

What, ultimately, did I accomplish?

I accomplished allowing my writing free. I opened up my heart and my mind to let the ideas flow through me. I walked away from conversations so I could write. I wrote several posts that I simply haven't yet gotten up the gumption to share.

And I posted more blogs in one month than I had posted in the previous six.

So, while yes, you're correct, I didn't exactly meet the goal of writing something and publishing it every single day for thirty days, I did accomplish what I wanted to accomplish.

To get in the habit of writing. To open myself up and let myself flow free. To publish some things that I thought were utter crap and to publish some of the most intimate knowledges of myself I ever shared with any single person, I shared with the entire world.

My writing itself may not have improved over the last thirty days, but I did.

I became a better person with more self-understanding and I wouldn't trade that for all the blog posts in the world.

Reconnecting with Myself

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear."
--Joan Didion

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you are aware that I have spent this year in a state of self-discovery and self-improvement. This has been quite the life-altering process as I have done more growth in the last year than I had done in the previous ten.

With everything that has happened this year: the car accident, repeated hospital trips, break-ups, moving house...the list simply goes on...it's a wonder I've had time to introspect and at the same time, not surprising at all. Great stress brings with it great change--whether for better or worse.

Some of this year's changes have seemed for worse. Lately, it has been brought to my attention that I am overly critical of myself. We all know the phrase we are our own worst critics. This year, my internal critic has been a right bitch. Completely and totally unforgiving of even the slightest mistakes. And to boot, I've been fighting her through the haze of all the stressors of this year. The language I've used on myself recently has been the very thing I would take another to task for were they to use it on someone I love.

Why, then, would I use it on myself?

It's become quite obvious: I do not love myself.

I do not think I am a bad person, I do not think I am an ugly person, but at the deepest root of my being, not only do I not love myself, I also do not find myself a lovable or worthy being.

Once I concluded this last weekend, a friend pressed me on this topic: "Andrea, why? Why don't you love you? Why are you unlovable and unworthy?"

Initially, I could not answer this question. I've always known I don't hate me and while I've been harsh of myself lately, I know there's no way I've been this harsh my whole life or I would think much less of myself than I do.

But in digging through my psyche, I realized I have never believed myself lovable or worthy. I have been told, "When I tell you there's nothing wrong with you and you are beautiful, you dismiss my words. You don't believe me." And this has nothing to do with the speaker, this has entirely to do with me and my self-view.

Now, I could go on and tell you what happened in my childhood that led me to this place. I could tell you of the drugs and the abuse, the absent and/or unavailable adults, the way I jumped between an adult and another child in the hopes that my tiny body could shield someone I loved from pain. And the feeling of utter defeat when I realized I had no power to save the people I loved.

In the end, though, it makes no difference. The fact is, I was a child. And from my child's perspective, I could not understand the grown-up things that were going on simply took more precedence than me and whatever I was doing. Later in childhood, I tried to make up for it by becoming a delinquent and miscreant, since it seemed to garner attention. Then, in late adolescence, I came to the conclusion this was not a sustainable life model and I began my journey to who I am now, carrying with me the most unworkable conclusion I had come to.

That conclusion was that no matter what I did, I could never be worthy or lovable. But that I should always try. My entire self is predicated on this notion. I have struggled for the last thirty plus years to make myself lovable and worthy, the one thing I had already concluded I could never be.

Damn. No wonder I could never feel secure in a relationship. How can a person prove they love me if, at my root, I believe myself to be unlovable?

So, then, the question now stands: What do I do with this information?

Who am I?

Knowing that I came to such an erroneous conclusion frees me to know that I am lovable and worthy. But without this notion of unlovable and unworthy, again the foundation which I have built my self upon, how do I know who I am?

The answer to this is really quite simple. I am still me. All of my values, goals, loves, hard work, remain the same. What is removed is simply the notion that no matter how hard I try I can never be loved. What is also removed is the need to be loved, the feeling of desperation, the feeling that I am not worthy. Don't get me wrong, it's not wholly gone, but it's on its way out the door, I can feel it.

And in the meantime, I'm spending time reconnecting with myself. Doing things I haven't done since I was a child, things that when I was a child I berated myself and called myself unworthy for. As silly as it may sound, I have started coloring. Actually went out, bought two coloring books and a box of crayons and sat down and colored some pages:

The simple act of sitting down to color has created not only a sense of zen, but a quiet appreciation of myself. Something that I did not do, even in childhood, because I told myself I was incapable of doing so. And here I am, finding peace in the smallest of activities.

But more importantly than peace, I'm finding love. Love for myself, my capabilities and lack thereof. My daughter sat next to me at the table and while I know I can't draw or color as well as she can, at the same time I know that I'm capable of anything I set my mind to and that anything I choose as worthy is worthy because I'm worthy. And that's the long and short of it.

Let's Try Something New!

Today, I decided to participate in NaBloPoMo. I just heard of this earlier today and decided it was a concept I could get behind. I've heard of and had an inkling to participate in NaNoWriMo previously, but as I recently decided, I'm really not a novel writer. My type of writing is far more suited to essays than any other medium available.

So what is NaBloPoMo, you ask? Well, you could click on the hyperlink above and let WiseGeek tell you all about it. My short version of the story is to tell you of the requirements. The concept is to work on writing daily (much like NaNoWriMo) only instead of writing 1,600 words toward a novel each day, I'll be writing a blog post every day. The idea is to get into the habit of writing daily, which sounds to me like a worthy and admirable goal.

I was hesitant for NaNoWriMo this year because I have a lot going on this month. There's all my standard daily life stuff and then there's a camping trip mid-month and visiting with someone I haven't seen in several months. With all that I'm up to, I'm tempted to say, "No, I don't think I'll set myself any goals which need to be achieved during what will clearly be a very busy month." But really, I'm a challenge kind of a person. I set myself goals earlier this year which got derailed by a car accident and I'm still completely unable to work toward them. So, setting myself this, simple, yet quite probably, challenging goal will be satisfying.

You will probably see me violate my rules from "Process" quite a bit this month. With the goal to churn out a blog post a day, I can easily see myself writing and publishing on the same day. Which means I will probably be pressing the "Publish" button much to my great lament on some days as I will be absolutely disgusted with the state of what I've written. If what I discovered in college term papers holds true for my blog, those which I hate the most will be most loved by the intended audience.

So join me, dear reader, as I challenge myself to turn out quality goods in a not-so-realistic fashion. Let's see what I'm capable of accomplishing.

I'm Fat and Don't You Dare Tell Me Otherwise

So here's something that has me worked up enough that I'm actually going to finish and publish a post.

Being fat has come up for me quite a bit lately or at least this year. It started with a partner who told me that sometimes he simply didn't find my body attractive. He started telling me this when he met me and I was more than a hundred pounds overweight. I perfectly well understood what he meant. At the time, I never found my body attractive so the idea that he ever could was something of a surprise for me.

So over a year went by and we come to early this year. I hit my lowest weight ever (in my adult life anyway) and I was pretty well exuding sexy. No matter whose numbers you looked at, I wasn't more than a hundred pounds overweight. I have no idea what's a healthy weight for me, but at my best guess, I was at the point where I was only 65 pounds overweight. At the same time, I was getting attention from the male half of the species pretty much everywhere I went.

And then I got stressed, for a number of reasons which are not important here. And I was dating, a lot, so I was eating...a lot. And I gained five or so pounds. And then one partner didn't find me much attractive anymore. For that and other reasons, he stopped wanting to have sex. And the first partner broke up with me. Ouch. Two blows to my ego. But I had one remaining. The one that bristles anytime I call myself fat. So I wasn't in too bad of a way in self-image. Great!

But wait...not great.

I have a problem with this. I have a problem with fat acceptance that is so damn accepting that it denies who a person is.

And honestly, I bristle at most fat acceptance articles and memes I see. And I bristle at people telling me I'm not fat.

Are you kidding me?! I am five foot two and weigh over 200 pounds. THAT. IS. FAT.

And the point here is not "being self-accepting": I love me. In fact, I really love me. I am a great person. I am goal oriented and achieving of goals I set for myself. I take pretty good care of myself, there's nothing wrong with me at a fundamental level.

But none of those facts change the fact that I am not at a good physical weight. Yes, my "numbers" are all phenomenal. Blood pressure, cholesterol, et al are great, perfect even. But carrying what I calculate to be 74 extra pounds as of this morning is not healthy and you can't convince me otherwise.

But that doesn't stop you. No, not you. Not a specific person, I'm talking about the general population. More than half the time, the first time I say something about being fat or feeling body conscious, somebody has to argue with me.  Somebody has to argue that I'm not fat or I look good or something of that nature.

And hey, that's fine. I understand that some days I still have the sexy going on, I know I do. But my clothes have all gotten tight and that's simply not acceptable. And what I'd like to bring to your attention, yes you, dear reader who may well be guilty of this: When I say I'm fat, if I sound like I'm depressed, sure, remind me I'm pretty or I have a great personality, but please don't tell me I'm not fat.

And here's why: By telling me I'm not fat, by telling me it's okay to be 74 pounds (or whatever) overweight, you are by commission telling me it's okay to be not healthy. And you are telling me that my desire to change myself for the better is not okay. You are saying that all of the health problems I am already starting to experience at 33 years of age are okay.

But they're not. I want to live a long life. And I want to be able to enjoy that long life. And realistically, it's not going to happen if I stay this way. My recovery from my recent car accident is hindered by my extra weight. I told the doctor I've been working to lose weight and he replied, "Yeah, it'd help a lot if you dropped about 50 pounds." And yes, he was being insensitive or whatever, but he was not wrong.

And I understand that part of this fat acceptance campaign is all about being nicer to our fellow human being and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I have never once told a partner that I didn't find them attractive this day or that because they carried some extra weight, because I believe that what makes me want to spend time with someone or not depends in large part on their personality, not their body. And I don't want to lose weight because I want to look like Kate Moss or some other such public figure because I don't care how thin or not anyone else on the planet is.

So please, I beg you, stop undermining my weight loss efforts. Stop telling me it's okay for me to be overweight when I tell you I don't feel good in my body. Stop telling me it's okay for me to eat whatever I want when I know it damn well isn't. And for the love of all that is good in this world, stop treating me like I have self-esteem issues just because I want to change something about myself. I can love me and be happy with me and still want to improve.

--Signed, A disgruntled fat chick

P.S. The partner mentioned above only bristles when he smells potential esteem issues. He is completely supportive of my desire to be healthy and lose weight. More on how everyone can do that in a future post.