Tag: growth

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Can’t you see the sunshine?

tec

It’s fascinating to me what a difference time makes.

Here we are, always chugging along. Some days feel like molasses while others feel like that bowling lane oil. Yet we all just keep going.

Then sometimes, along with the going, we slowly change. We grow and evolve and become. With action, we are always becoming.

Nine years ago I was in therapy saying “I love myself, I do, but if only I was thinner, I would feel like the work I’ve been doing actually did something. I feel so fat. I just want to not be 160 pounds.”

My therapist, in all of her incredulous glory, looked at me dumbstruck and said, “You’re not fat. 160 pounds is average.”

I tried to argue that because of my lacking height, 160 pounds was much more on my body. That my body was not made to be 160 pounds. That I knew I was so much smaller than my body had currently allowed.

She wouldn’t budge.

She asked what it would mean to me if my body was just meant to be 160 pounds.

I stomped about it. Metaphorically. As I often did about things. I didn’t want my body to be meant for that.

And then life moved along.

Fast forward all those years. The last year, I have indeed come to think of my body as average. I look in the mirror and I feel neither fat nor thin. Just regular. I don’t feel my body makes me an outlier on any spectrum. I’m average. I’m comfortable.

My goals center toward health and strength. And while I still have a picture in mind of a number on a scale and having less hips in the mirror (not no hips, mind you! I love my curves), those things are fuzzy background images. The foreground picture is health and centeredness and a love of my body no matter what.

I’ve done intermittent fasting since last November. It was a boundary point as I learned to navigate food and feelings and life and safety. I remained 157 pounds no matter what I did. Sometimes it would fluctuate a pound or two, but then back up it went. In the past, I would have said I was stuck there. But I never feel stuck anymore. I’m too busy navigating more important to me things.

But my point. My point is that I’ve looked in the mirror for the last couple months and I feel good about my body. All the while staying 157 pounds. And it was okay. It didn’t trip me up.

The last couple weeks I’ve been really proud with my relationship with food. Consistency has loaned me momentum and that switch in my brain has allowed consistency to not feel so grueling.

Earlier this week I weighed myself and I am 150 pounds.

It’s not about the number. It’s about the fact that I’m paying attention to the right things this time and life followed suit. That is very cool.

Most days growth is like molasses, and time is just chugging along. Other days–those rare beautiful days–the molasses thins and I can suddenly see all the progress my growth has afforded me. Today is one of those days.

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Trace the moment.

tec

Chris and I have a perfect place. He found it first. He shared it with me. It’s this little tucked away place that doesn’t even feel like it’s part of our town. Or our state. It’s our sacred place. It’s hitsuzen. We have to have a certain kind of weather for it tho and winter is often not it.

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A couple weeks ago it was perfect outside tho. Still snow on the ground, but the bike path was almost entirely clear of snow and ice. The air was crisp, but the sun was so warm that it didn’t matter.

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Despite the fact that the car had been making this weird noise, we risked the 20 minute drive to go for the walk. It was worth it to get that kind of time in that kind of place. A place that brings us back to ourselves. For me, it doesn’t bring me back to an older, idealized version of me or an older, iidealized version of Chris. It just always brings us to a more grounded place of our present selves. I think that’s what I always love most about it. The everything else falls away and we’re stripped down to our purest, naked selves and we can just be.

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We walked for maybe an hour and munched clementines and kiwi. We showed L all the cool things we love and he ooh’d and ahh’d the 50 foot wall cliff and the train tracks and the river and the trees.

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We stopped and marveled the sewer/tunnel pipe and L made up stories about it coming out into the river. And then he sang songs as we walked on.

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The day before this walk, we walked too. The weather begged our presence. Our relationship begged connection. We showed up. It’s the greatest thing we can do.

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We always walk back to us. This season has been filled with ebb and flow and pain and growth. Distance and connection. Falling away and coming back. As the earth warms again, I feel a tingling of change. There’s a buzz my skin feels. A fire sparking. Despite the ebbs–and there will always be ebbs–I can feel the flow’s energy building up momentum.

Yesterday Chris and I had a…discordance. It wasn’t an argument. It was just….an overwhelm of feelings and thoughts and fears. It was vulnerability and anxiety and honesty. In years’ past, it would have broken us. It would have been a full on argument. It would have been irreconcilable for hours, the day, the weekend. It would have been the thing that, Chris especially, wouldn’t have been able to navigate through. (I say Chris especially because for the most part, I lean toward compartmentalizing as an involuntary coping mechanism. I’m not bragging here…)

But yesterday, because we’ve both had so much growth–because he is diligently searching to reclaim his self–it was only discordance and an exchange. The moment of ebb made the subsequent flow that much more energized. It was like reaching hitsuzen without the walk.

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I’m bare-boned and crazy for you.

tec

Here it is Sunday night. Almost time for sleep. Truth be told, I should have gone to sleep an hour ago. I just want to take some time to reflect on my weekend first.

I don’t know that I had a picture Friday night of what I wanted for my weekend. And maybe that’s better. Expectations tend to sabotage future moments.

Friday night I ended up going to sleep and Chris and I hadn’t watched any episodes of Heroes. I know he had kinda passed out at one point and was pretty bummed about being human and tired and needing sleep. As I was getting ready for sleep, I came to find a very old blog I had written at for many years. Life is weird. It provided a momentary distraction and now I’m kinda over it. (It’s a good “over it” tho. The kind where there is nothing from the past holding onto me today.)

Saturday morning was sheets of ice for roads, and my alanon meeting, and later long connecty conversations with Chris and a snowstorm that didn’t storm as much as predicted. It was me buying a domain name for this here blog and allowing it to have an official home that I can call my own. It was lit candles and opening the year 4 anniversary tobacco blend. It was Chris marking me as his and kisses and entanglements and too cold kitchen and perfect warm bedrooms. It was spooning and contented slumbers. It was multiple Heroes episodes and bliss.

Today, yesterday’s sparse-ish snow afforded us a shopping trip and a restock of healthier food to make way for healthier plans. It was moments of overstimulation (on my part) that provided opportunity to share my voice and my thoughts and my ruffled feathers. And it gave Chris the opportunity to show me how “defensive” isn’t his go to anymore and how we can have reasonable conversations and I learned that I was able to perceive his reactions accurately.

I know we’re always practicing our individual, personal growth as well as growth in our relationship. It was really cool today tho to see so clearly how it has evolved. So many aspects of ourselves are the same as (almost) seven years ago, and soooooo many are different. We are better people. And really, that’s just always what I want for myself. I want to try and fuck up and try again and practice and mess up and, at the end of the day, no matter the little moments, I want my big picture to reveal that I was always growing into better. And that we were always striving for that together.