This past few months, I've been working hard in the gym, I've been working my arse off, literally. I have a really addictive personality and so it has been an amazing shift to move away from defining myself as a fatty who loves chocolate and who isn't active, to a person who loves to eat healthily and do the exercise at every opportunity.
With any shift in self-definition, there is grief. I have experienced grief at all the major turning points in my life. I felt grief when I swapped my single girl life for that of a married woman. I felt grief when I became a separated woman. I felt grief when I became a mother, and again when I became a mother of two.
Every time I am assigned a new role, I feel a sense of fear. Even if it's me who assigns it. When I decided that I was sick and tired of feeling fat and old and ugly and invisible, and I wanted more energy and I wanted to change my life, and gosh darn it, I wanted to attract a hotter type of emotionally unavailable man......I felt awfully afraid. You see, sometimes there's a kind of safety in staying in a role you've been in for a long time.
I have always struggled with my weight and also with my coordination and athleticism. Physical fitness is not something that comes easily to me, and so it seemed easier to mindlessly scroll through Facebook, help myself to some more food, and sneer at the people who were active. I have trouble telling my left from my right and the first time I got on a bike, I felt sure that a small crowd would gather and announce that the circus was in town.
That's a pretty screwed up way to think about yourself, isn't it? To define myself as fat and lazy and invisible was sad, but in a lot of ways, it was easier than trying to be fit and well and visible. We might think that our society has come a long way in terms of equality for body shapes, but it hasn't. It's actually pretty safe being a fat lady, especially when you get older. People treat you like you're invisible. You are seen as weak and lazy. And maybe you are, or maybe you just feel safer with your extra rolls.
I have had an extremely active day today, I went for a 24 km bike ride and had a massive session at the gym with my trainer. I have been getting a lot of shoulder pain from exercise and life in general and I went and got a massage from the little shopfront at Riverside Plaza. I am a great believer in physical pain being linked to emotional pain, and when the poor little Asian man started to massage my sore spots, I started to well up. I am a cryer, and I experience a lot of my emotions through tears. While I lay on the massage bed, softly sobbing into the disposable face protector, I checked in with my thought patterns and why I was feeling so sad.
There was a belief in there, I can't do this. It is not good to try. Being stuck is easier. Being a mess is easier. What if I succeed and people keep expecting success from me? What if I'm truly seen for who I am and people laugh at me? Putting myself out there into a gym where there are a lot of fit and attractive people is very confronting for me at times. In school, I was always the weird one. The 6-foot tall girl with red curly hair who got the nickname "Ronald McDonald". I wasn't asked to sit with the cool kids, in fact, in a humiliating incident in Year 10, another girl and I were asked to stop sitting with the semi-popular group that we'd started sitting with.
The real me is messy and loud and noisy and laughs at inappropriate things. I have big opinions and big feelings and a lot of my adolescence was spent trying to find ways to hide that, because the last thing you want to be in high school, is overly visible.
It's easier for me to apologise for who I am, to apologise for taking up space, for making a noise as I lift a heavy weight, to beat myself up for an inappropriate joke gone wrong or to crucify myself for daring to expose my slightly flabby limbs.
There is also sadness in harnessing my inner warrior, because I remember the last time that I had to fight for something. I had a flashback to me, suffering from a nervous breakdown after the birth of my beautiful son. I made a big fuss then, I made a big mess. I was loud and messy and ill and in pain and I couldn't pretend that I was ok. I had to go into psychiatric hospital. I blamed myself for many many years for ruining the precious time when my ex and I had brought another life into this world, and made it all about me. I was so sorry for even existing. I wanted to tell all the people who cared about me to forget me and leave me alone so I wouldn't let them down by not being who I wanted to be.
There's that side of it, and then there's also the side of me who is proud of my fight. I know that it's ok for other people to have a nervous breakdown and to suffer and to be depressed. But I judged myself harshly and I blamed myself for ruining everything. But what I faced today, when the slightly terrified man massaged my sobbing body, is that living through that time in my life is what has made me able to face everything in my life since.
Do you know how much strength it takes to live through a year of your life when all you want to do is die? When your brain seems devoid of anything but measuring how very very black and evil everything is and how you and everyone around you would be so much better off if you just killed yourself. I lived with severe depression and suicidal thoughts for over a year. I had to wake up and make the decision to keep living, every day, even though I wanted to die and leave the way my brain made me feel. Every day, I made the decision to keep going, to keep fighting for myself. Through psychiatric hospital, through multiple minutes, hours and days where I didn't want to exist. Through lining up for shock therapy as a way to treat the terrible depression, in a hospital gown, far away from my beautiful baby Alex, hoping that as the doctor put me under a general anaesthetic, that I would wake up cured or not at all.
I hated myself, but I learned to fight for myself. And so, in getting fit, I am learning to fight for myself again. To want to wake up every day and be better than I was the day before. To live a life where I do no harm, where I encourage others, where I make a difference. A life where I admit when I am wrong, and apologise. A life where I recognise the beauty and the pain in others and give them the gift of witnessing their pain. I will keep fighting for a strong body as well as a strong mind, even though my inner teenager tells me that I am embarrassing, that I am too much and that I should not want to be seen. I am working hard on being the best me I can be, and in being visible and happy.
Who knew that getting fit was so emotional?
With any shift in self-definition, there is grief. I have experienced grief at all the major turning points in my life. I felt grief when I swapped my single girl life for that of a married woman. I felt grief when I became a separated woman. I felt grief when I became a mother, and again when I became a mother of two.
Every time I am assigned a new role, I feel a sense of fear. Even if it's me who assigns it. When I decided that I was sick and tired of feeling fat and old and ugly and invisible, and I wanted more energy and I wanted to change my life, and gosh darn it, I wanted to attract a hotter type of emotionally unavailable man......I felt awfully afraid. You see, sometimes there's a kind of safety in staying in a role you've been in for a long time.
I have always struggled with my weight and also with my coordination and athleticism. Physical fitness is not something that comes easily to me, and so it seemed easier to mindlessly scroll through Facebook, help myself to some more food, and sneer at the people who were active. I have trouble telling my left from my right and the first time I got on a bike, I felt sure that a small crowd would gather and announce that the circus was in town.
That's a pretty screwed up way to think about yourself, isn't it? To define myself as fat and lazy and invisible was sad, but in a lot of ways, it was easier than trying to be fit and well and visible. We might think that our society has come a long way in terms of equality for body shapes, but it hasn't. It's actually pretty safe being a fat lady, especially when you get older. People treat you like you're invisible. You are seen as weak and lazy. And maybe you are, or maybe you just feel safer with your extra rolls.
I have had an extremely active day today, I went for a 24 km bike ride and had a massive session at the gym with my trainer. I have been getting a lot of shoulder pain from exercise and life in general and I went and got a massage from the little shopfront at Riverside Plaza. I am a great believer in physical pain being linked to emotional pain, and when the poor little Asian man started to massage my sore spots, I started to well up. I am a cryer, and I experience a lot of my emotions through tears. While I lay on the massage bed, softly sobbing into the disposable face protector, I checked in with my thought patterns and why I was feeling so sad.
There was a belief in there, I can't do this. It is not good to try. Being stuck is easier. Being a mess is easier. What if I succeed and people keep expecting success from me? What if I'm truly seen for who I am and people laugh at me? Putting myself out there into a gym where there are a lot of fit and attractive people is very confronting for me at times. In school, I was always the weird one. The 6-foot tall girl with red curly hair who got the nickname "Ronald McDonald". I wasn't asked to sit with the cool kids, in fact, in a humiliating incident in Year 10, another girl and I were asked to stop sitting with the semi-popular group that we'd started sitting with.
The real me is messy and loud and noisy and laughs at inappropriate things. I have big opinions and big feelings and a lot of my adolescence was spent trying to find ways to hide that, because the last thing you want to be in high school, is overly visible.
It's easier for me to apologise for who I am, to apologise for taking up space, for making a noise as I lift a heavy weight, to beat myself up for an inappropriate joke gone wrong or to crucify myself for daring to expose my slightly flabby limbs.
There is also sadness in harnessing my inner warrior, because I remember the last time that I had to fight for something. I had a flashback to me, suffering from a nervous breakdown after the birth of my beautiful son. I made a big fuss then, I made a big mess. I was loud and messy and ill and in pain and I couldn't pretend that I was ok. I had to go into psychiatric hospital. I blamed myself for many many years for ruining the precious time when my ex and I had brought another life into this world, and made it all about me. I was so sorry for even existing. I wanted to tell all the people who cared about me to forget me and leave me alone so I wouldn't let them down by not being who I wanted to be.
There's that side of it, and then there's also the side of me who is proud of my fight. I know that it's ok for other people to have a nervous breakdown and to suffer and to be depressed. But I judged myself harshly and I blamed myself for ruining everything. But what I faced today, when the slightly terrified man massaged my sobbing body, is that living through that time in my life is what has made me able to face everything in my life since.
Do you know how much strength it takes to live through a year of your life when all you want to do is die? When your brain seems devoid of anything but measuring how very very black and evil everything is and how you and everyone around you would be so much better off if you just killed yourself. I lived with severe depression and suicidal thoughts for over a year. I had to wake up and make the decision to keep living, every day, even though I wanted to die and leave the way my brain made me feel. Every day, I made the decision to keep going, to keep fighting for myself. Through psychiatric hospital, through multiple minutes, hours and days where I didn't want to exist. Through lining up for shock therapy as a way to treat the terrible depression, in a hospital gown, far away from my beautiful baby Alex, hoping that as the doctor put me under a general anaesthetic, that I would wake up cured or not at all.
I hated myself, but I learned to fight for myself. And so, in getting fit, I am learning to fight for myself again. To want to wake up every day and be better than I was the day before. To live a life where I do no harm, where I encourage others, where I make a difference. A life where I admit when I am wrong, and apologise. A life where I recognise the beauty and the pain in others and give them the gift of witnessing their pain. I will keep fighting for a strong body as well as a strong mind, even though my inner teenager tells me that I am embarrassing, that I am too much and that I should not want to be seen. I am working hard on being the best me I can be, and in being visible and happy.
Who knew that getting fit was so emotional?
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