the big issue.

this past month has been a bit rough. i travelled a lot, i worked a lot, i slept little. and then r. got stuck on the canary islands for an additional week because of the volcano whose name i am too lazy to google and copy and paste, and in the middle of it i realised that i was just a tad bit lonely. which i hadn't been in months. and it felt like my life before. before happiness, before weight loss, before r.

and damn, did that ever suck.

i suddenly realised that this lovely life that i have is pretty damn fragile. that while everything is so much better these days, deep deep down? nothing much has changed, really. and that realisation motivates me to work hard at enjoying and working on this beautiful, fragile life that i have. and to change.

shauny posted a quote by jen of  awesome sauce today, that really resonated with me:

"i don’t think i gained weight in order to hide from the world—i think that weight and size are much more complex issues than that. but i think it was comfortable and easy to let fat be my whole problem. and when i was left with no fat, but plenty of problems—i was the only one left to blame. it’s like i’ve cleaned out the flooded basement, which is great and all, but now i have to actually address the cause of the flooding, and it’s harder than you think.

[btw: my real basement is actually still full of stuff i should throw away unseen, because i haven't needed anything that's down there in, oh, two years. i am kinda scared of the stuff in my basement, though. as in: overwhelmed. that's why it's all still there. don't want to dig through it, because digging through it will remind me of those years i wasted in my twenties, which will make me sad.]

i wouldn't say that i've got plenty of problems. my life is pretty damn fine. and yet. my issues are still the same as they've always been. i am still me, even at 60lb (give or take) less. my ass is smaller (and it's so much more fun to move and dress it), but the rest of me is still, well, me: always laughing, always talking too loud, often over-excited and overly critical. and with depressive tendencies, fear of doing taxes and general anxiety about thefuture.

of course i am still me.

and yet i'm all shocked by that fact. that i am not a completely revamped, perfect person, but still me, just with more muscles, less fat. who would have thought that my actual self had little to do with that weight?

i just finished reading "when food is love" by geneen roth, which it's all about the fact that fat and food and how we deal with both is actually not about food and fat, but about love and pain and death. and yes, that is just as grim as it sounds.  the book had me nodding heavily in place and then recoiling in horror at others because it's just such a downer when someone suggests that you're the person you are because of some crap that happened when you were a kid...and yet all of it felt true.

when i eat too much lentils for dinner when i'm by myself these days, i am replaying what i did those afternoons alone at home when i was in junior high and would eat 2 cups of freshly cooked vanilla custard. i'm trying to fill a hole inside myself with warm, slurpy goodness. and yet that hole cannot be filled with food, ever. and of course i know, these days, that eating doesn't make that pain go away. it can only be dulled, never eradicated, by feeling stuffed.

in so many ways i'm still struggling with a lot of the crap i struggled with in my twenties (and my teens). and nothing will change if i don't change. because no one is responsible for my life but me.