Ringing in 35

This is stressful.  It is emotional, it is unnerving, and it is stressful.  It looks like I guess it should: headaches, which may or may not have something to do with not having EHT.  Not sleeping very well, then sleeping a lot and still needing more.  Brain fog.  Easily reacting to situations and feeling overwhelmed.  Crying, laughing, feeling enormous, feeling fine, feeling everything all at once, literally: excited and scared, happy and sad, trusting and mortified.

As I’m reading, I’m feeling.  I’m living what I’m reading.  I’m also judging what I’m reading.  I’m judging grammar, misspelled words and editing errors that weren’t supposed to be printed.  They’re on their way to being fixed as there seems to be a mix-up in what was sent to the publisher and what we last worked on but seeing them in a public eye makes me feel stupid.  I paid someone to help me not feel that way, and I feel that way anyway.  I fear judgement and scorn and credibility.

As I read, I also see how much has changed since I last wrote.  At first, I felt like a fraud. I am counting macros again.  I am weighing myself every day.  I have a nutritional coach I converse with daily, and I am eating foods regularly that I avoided for a long time.  I sought them out to help me dial it in with both the hopes of looking differently and feeling differently.  As I often say and am living myself, whatever the initial motivation is doesn’t matter – just show up.  So I showed up wanting to change my body (again), and I am staying to feel differently.  I have never been this full, energized, satiated or content in my working body – ever. 

Recovery is not linear.  So although feeling like a fraud is valid, it is not true.  I wrote from my heart as I would in my journal – truly.  I wrote what was working for me at that time, and what I had come to find as truth in that moment.  I now know from my own experience with food and body recovery, that what worked for me a year ago may not work anymore today.  What worked for me yesterday may not work for me tomorrow. 

I count macros because it’s easy to do that.  It’s also the most precise way to measure nutrition.  I took a long and welcomed and needed break from that practice, but I have found that re-introducing myself to it has been helpful.  I now use technology and apps to help me count instead of a piece of paper.  I now plan my meals a week ahead to avoid thinking about any one meal for too long.  I now also am eating for performance, and not how I want to look.  As a result, I am slowly learning, impatiently experiencing, and uncomfortably navigating my way through that process.

Today’s scenario is still calculated numerically but is more flexible than it has ever been.  I eat things with sugar and processed ingredients, I just only eat a certain amount of it.  I eat things that used to terrify me and condemn me from enjoying the next meal and find that today it doesn’t bother me at all.  I eat pizza on Saturday nights, and I look forward to it for most of the week.  It produced incredible angst at first, and I ate way more than was comfortable, but I’ve found a rhythm with it after trying consequent Saturday’s in a row and even have leftovers during the week sometimes.

I don’t change my food on Sunday because of pizza on Saturday.  I don’t eat more because I’m bored or sick or stressed.  In fact, I never eat more, not even that little bit at night that plagued me for years in recovery, because I am eating enough the rest of the time.  I eat some jam with my peanut butter, and I don’t need to go back for a swipe off the lid.  I can eat fries and put the rest in the fridge.  I can go out to eat but also prefer to know what I’m eating.  I can pack my food, and often do, because I have found comfort and safety in doing that for myself most times.

I still very much want to look differently, but my actions continue to build a broader foundation of eating to nourish instead of eating for the mirror.  I don’t always like it.  I don’t like that my natural body is bigger than I want it to be.  I don’t like that my fed and nourished body that can crush miles, also has cellulite.  I don’t like that my fed body that doesn’t have cravings (ever) also carries weight in her middle.  I don’t like that my recovering from a broken leg and surgery body has to eat food in order to thrive.  And by food, I mean a lot of it.  And by a lot of it, I mean mostly carbs.

The more I grow, the more I wonder and come to terms with my own suffering.  As I read, I see the suffering was in my actions which were conducted out of fear and reactivity.  Now, I know my suffering is a result of the attachment to my thoughts that things should be different than they are.  My editor should have caught these errors before going to print, and therefore I wouldn’t be humiliated.  My body should lean out as I increase mileage and activity and get to do more, regardless of eating enough to support that movement.  My legs shouldn’t have cellulite because I will it away every day.  My stomach shouldn’t hold water because I run over 35 miles a week and adhere to my food prescription.

The raw truth is that I published my story in print, and no amount of perfect editing could spare me feeling exposed and naked and therefore, humiliated.  I wrote a book and it was written from my heart and my truth at the time.  I cried as I read the first half remembering the torment and the anguish that was my every day.  I cried for the girl that didn’t think she’d ever be free.  I cried for the girl that didn’t know how good it was going to get if she just hung on a little longer.  I cried for the girl that wouldn’t slow down because she just didn’t know how.  I cried for the girl that didn’t know what she didn’t know, and how I wouldn’t change a thing now knowing everything that I do know because I know it’s going to help somebody else.

I also laughed.  I curse a bit too much but that’s no surprise to anybody.  My next book won’t have fuck as often because I’ve learned how to soften and explain myself more accurately without it.  However, it still fits – often, and I find good use for it.  I imagine my grandmother cringing and my mother pleading but hey, I came from somewhere and so did the F word.

For my readers: I hope you ride the ride with me as I am as I read.  My intention is to shed light on what people don’t know about the people around them, because it is so hard to be that transparent and clean.  It is mortifying to let it all hang out there, especially to people you don’t think will ever understand.  I know I did a very big thing here and I did it gladly, and I’ll do it again.  I know I risked a lot by putting out my own story, largely unedited (literally, unfortunately) and I couldn’t imagine a better way to ring in my 35^th year of life on Earth.

Imagine what more is coming for me?  And if that much is coming for me, imagine what more is also coming for you?  I am so grateful I gave myself a chance.  I am so grateful that other people took it with me.  I am so grateful I have a sense of connection that is allowing me to experience this today – I do not want to miss it.  I do not want to miss this opportunity to be more, to be bigger, to be seen.  Because that’s what this book is about: trying to not be seen my entire life.

And now, it seems time.