Well, it's time to write some more.
Feeling very very happy and content today. Now. In life. Something new has happened, something has changed.
I think am now starting to live my new life.
WHat a strange and new place I find myself these days - after years of living in sadness, I now find my address is happiness. ANd I can feel it - right down inside. Its not just words. I feel it. My heart is filling up. After feeling so empty for so long.
My husband's home tonight after 10 days- he's now tucked away in bed having a couple of hours kip before we have dinner. He is exhausted. Happy
, but exhausted. He got home after midday....and I was like a teenager waiting for him. All morning I was actually giddy, and nervous. I was taken by surprise by this! I jut couldn;t wait for him to get home.
I then realised, I am falling in love all over with him all over again after our holiday. Or maybe really for the first time.....I'mnot entirely sure. In the past, I was so unhappy - most of life was just going through the motions. I was so numb. Had numbed myself well and proper. I smiled if a situation called for a smile. I cried if it called for tears. I was life's puppet - always being careful to show the world just what I thought it expected to see. And not really feeling a thing.
Over the years - so many vital parts of my person, my soul, whatever you wish to call it, dissappeared one by one under each layer of fat. Eventually even the tears stopped. I gave up the fight. I didn't cry. I didn;t cry with laughter either. I lost all interest in intamacy and sex- fully understanding the difference between the two. Couldn;t be bothered. I felt like I did not know how to love anyone anyway if I am perfectly honest with myself. My ex-husband gets much of the credit for all of that. He gets a lot of credit for the screwed up life I had been living for so many years. He doesn;t get the blame for what I became - I do. But he does get the credit.
Well, after a row on our third night of holiday, over a very misunderstood, first time every, unpleasant and hurtful and scary sleepwalking incident, something just happened - all the planets must have aligned, because we communicated better then we ever have. It was a huge breakthrough - maybe just a great big peice of my wall finally fell all the way down and I surrendered and actually let him in? SOmething I have not done much of, sad to say.
What caused it to fall was something I told him about my eating that I apparently had never told him.
All these years he thought my weight was due to comfort eating only- as a result of my other marraige. He never knew or understood at a certain point it became self-destructive. He didn't know, that comfort is only what started the climb to morbid obesity. What he did not know, is how bitterly unhappy and scared I was after I left my ex and was knee-deep in another relationship with someone who suffered sever manic deprission. Bi-polar with what I saw as suicidal tendencies. A relationship that I was sure would end in dire circumstances, the worst imaginable, unless I made a very calculated plan to get out of it. It was indeed, the very worst time of my life. That is the time those pics I posted recently were, which I had blacked out from my mind - and not allowed myself to see just how big I had become.
I remembered on day, at a free concert in a local park, I felt my world crumbling around me. I ate, drank and breathed despair. I was sat, on a stone wall. The sun was setting. And so was I. I was sinking, and I realised - that food had become for me a slow form of suicide. In just 2 years, I lost my dad, my uterus, my business, my husband, my dog and my financial freedom. It was those events that clouded my mind and let me wander into the relationship from hell. And I knew no way out, so I now believe I was eating myself to death - or certainly to a stage where maybe someone might notice and save me.
It was this peice of the story my dear husband never knew. ANd it broke him, and all anger dissapted and we both cried. ANd I felt for the first time - he understood me. Realllllly understood me. Knew me.
Got me. SOmething I have banged my head against the wall many times over. There is a certain lack of understanding between our two cultures. While we speak the same language - there are enough differences between our countries life behaviours, that it was often grounds for not understanding each other no matter how hard we tried to make the other understand.
But this night - it worked. We got through - and I can't describe how it feels now. How it has changed me. Us. I feel awake.
This diet has given me the courage to speak openly and honestly. And it has re-inforced my patient nature. ANd it has warmed my heart, and nurtured my soul, and I have grown as a result.
And that, there are no words how wonderful a gift that is. I am a different person now, today, then I was three weeks ago.
And I am so excited about what once seemed a very bleak and hopeless future. It is now full of excitement and wonder - and I just know there are ore great chapters ahead - like this year has been the Lighterlife Chapter. I can't wait to see whats next.
There are times I doubt my own words when I sahre them with others. ANd I feel fear that so many who see me as inspirational may one day see me as a fraud, if I am only speaking empty words. BUt I know now - they are not empty words. ALl this stuff is really real.
I HAVE changed. I AM different. Which means my life has changed and will be different and that is a very exciting prospect.
There was no struggle, or hard day, or white kuckle moment on this diet, that was not worth it to reach this realisation. It is worth every single moment of pain. Even all the pain of the last 25 years of being morbidly obese. To feel this way today - its all been worth it. ANd it all is what has made me who I am today.
I know this is maybe coming across like a load of babble....but it makes sense to me, and it capture how I am feeling at this stage......where its gotten a bit scary eating and all.....its also showing me, I am STILL in control.
Its wonderful.
To those who consider quitting.....that would be a horrible mistake. HUGE mistake. Stick with it - grab your golden ring.
There's been nothing nicer.
xxx