I went out for a run this evening, and considered stopping into a salsa class ... just in case I happened to pass one on my home...there actually wasn't one, but if there was...

so at first i was like 

"but i look so ratty in this old t-shirt", but I was like 

"no.  it's OK.  my sports bra matches my pants", but then 

"i can't do a dance class with my stomach showing now.  my stomach is too flabby today."

then I thought about it for a second, and realized it was ok, because I wouldn't know anyone in a random salsa class.  they wouldn't know that I have to be a super hero...because everybody else knows that I do have to be a super hero?  It hit me how funny that idea was, and how skewed my perception is of everybody else's perception of me is.  I feel like everyone in my line of work knows that I have the potential to be a super hero, and if I let them see my flaws, they will be disgusted with me.  This is such a hard thing for me to get past.  There are a million and one things that I want to do, and usually any time I try something new, I demonstrate amazing potential at it...physical skills that is.  It becomes obvious that whatever I'm trying, if I really put some work into it, I can become exceptional at it.  I want to live up to that potential in everything, and so I have this picture of me in my head- what I think I'm supposed to be.  This image of me assumes that I've trained like an elite athlete in virtually every sport and physical skill known to man.  In reality, I could probably achieve greatness in any one of these things.  Maybe even 2, but I beat myself up for not being ALL of them right now.  I make progress in one, and slip back in another.  What's hard for me to accept is that maybe that's OK.  The problem is a lack of humility.  I expect to be a super hero, so I'm surprised and devastated when I demonstrate repeatedly that I am in fact human.  No one expects more than that...

crap.

that was comforting for about 5 seconds.

no one expects more than that except me and one other person.  My role model, coach, and mentor who is no longer around.  He believed in me.  He tried to teach me how to think for myself- how to train multiple things at once- how to be efficient with my training.  Don't learn specific tricks.  Learn air awareness.  Don't memorize combinations.  Learn to see and understand movement, and to be able to think on your toes.  Stay turned on.  But I didn't want to listen.  I wanted to be a robot, and follow orders without thinking, and now i'm left on my own with nobody's orders to follow but my own.  I know it's good for me, and I just have to go through this awkward phase, and force myself to think for myself.  I can't just wait around for someone else to do it for me.  I just thought I'd get it by now.  I need some training partners.  a group.  I feel alone and abandoned...again.  it's not like I'm unique in this.  I know it's up to me to do the work and get out there.  It's my own fault for isolating myself, but ugh!  it's so hard...but i know what he would have told me about that...about anything.  "the hard is what makes it great."  He's right.  I really want to get in with this one group that's already in existence.  They're definitely already ahead of me, and I'm afraid of 2 things: one, that they won't want me, and two, if they do let me in, I'll give up on thinking for myself and follow whatever they do.  I have been noticing this obnoxious problem lately...

so I'm a compulsive overeater, but I'm  also a restricter and extreme dieter.  I have to be careful of certain alcoholic foods, but I also have to practice accepdance of foods that I consider imperfect.  Now rather than take contrary action in both of those areas to improve my recovery, I use each one as an excuse to act out in both ways.  for example, I know that frozen yogurt and sweet breads are problems for me, but lately, I've been saying that they're OK, and even good because I'm practicing not restricting.  then I suffer the consequences.  pain in the butt.

I feel like for the past couple of weeks I've been looking over the edge of a cliff-sensing that death drop getting closer and closer, and I've been crying out for help, and then regaining composure, and then crying out again.  Today I feel like I've stepped over the edge, and I'm standing on the loose dirt that's all slipping away under my feet.  It feels like the landslide is in motion, and I'm on it with no power to stop it.  Nothing disasterous has happened, nor is it certain that it will.  It just feels like all the old warning signs have popped up-all the old thoughts and behaviors have been set in motion, and i'm taking almost none of the tools I've learned to help myself.  I'm just waiting to see if anyone answers my call for help.  that sounds so pitiful, but it does go right along with what i've been so upset about lately.  how I feel like no one is there for me unless I drag them in.  I want so badly to know that if I'm in trouble, someone who loves me is going to swoop in and save me.  Is this a desperate attempt to find out if anyone cares?  Is that part of what my eating disorder was about to begin with?  Did I get myself into trouble just to see if anyone was paying attention?  Maybe today is just an emotional reaction to the chance meeting I had yesterday...the 2 sentence conversation I had with the one person who ever gave me that sense of security.  I think the reminder  of what it was like to feel so safe and protected, and to see that I really don't have that right now was just really triggering.  I think I'm just acting out because I want someone to swoop in and save me like before.  That would be so much easier.  I have to remember that I don't want to be that kind of needy person.  As much as I want to know that someone is there for me, I want to know that I can stand on my own two feet, and take care of myself so that I can be present and useful to others.  This is hard.  I have such a strange feeling right now.  I want to run away to some exotic beautiful location in nature, but i'm not willing to go anywhere.  I want to do something exciting, but I'm not willing to get up.  I want to get really skinny, but I want to eat more and more, and my meals have been messy today.  my knee hurts, but i don't feel like icing it.  my stomach is full, and it feels like frozen yogurt would fix it.  luckily, it doesn't seem like it's worth the effort it would take to go get it.  I want to drill certain skills over and over so I can be as good as the guys I worked with yesterday, but i'm just not willing to do it right now.  I want someone else to make me do it.  i don't know what's best for me right now.  I think this day i like...I was inspired by what I saw people doing yesterday.  I was inspired to buckle down and start working harder...really hard, and be good like them.  They don't have to practice gentleness and rest time the way I do, and they're really good and in great shape.  I was inspired to train the way they do, which is what I used to try to do, and I think a part of me trembled at the idea.  My all or nothing thinking said that I was about to kick into over-training self-harm mode, and I rebelled against it by ... self sabotauging.  I ate a little too much at breakfast.  Then I felt bad for getting off to a bad start, and wanted to compensate by working even harder than I'd been sub-consciously planning, and the fear of having to do that caused me to fight back even harder in my default instinctive way: I ate a bigger lunch.  and all the stress of how to workout and get better, and thinner/leaner/stronger/faster, and the feelings of inadequacy and lonliness...they're all still there.  I've just been skipping around them...avoiding them by trying to plan activities that i'm just not willing to do right now...and yet am desperate to do them.  I'm so confused, but I seem to have somehow made sense of it.  So maybe my instinct this morning that I was overflowing with emotions to process was right.  maybe I should have kept calling people to talk to instead of choosing one person, and waiting on her, and then missing her phone call when she called back.  Now I've put it off long enough that I'm missing the activities I really wanted to go to today.  I just feel like a car with the hood popped open.  It had some problems and was making some funny noises, but it was running.  I had to pop the hood, and take everything out to find the problems, and fix them.  Now that some stuff is out in the light, I think things are getting better, but you can't tell, because you can't very well drive a car around town with the hood popped and the engine in pieces.  it's hard to be in that place.  I feel really tired and vulnerable right now.  I don't want to go anywhere, but i don't have a mechanic in my house.  I can't expect to get better just by waiting around.  especially if I'm gonna eat meals like I've been having today.

I don't have much time to write, but i just had a kinda breakthrough thought, which I'll have to process later, but I had to write it down before I forgot about it.  As weird as it sounds, I was just noticing how I seem so dramatically more sensitive since starting "recovery", and how my self esteem and confidence actually feel lower.  Weird, right?  Well I want to learn how to love and accept myself for exactly who and what I am right now.  I never had any real confidence in that.  I had a ton of self confidence in what I had the potential to be in the future, but nothing I did in the moment felt like it was worth anything.  Since I realized that several months ago, I have taken the emphasis off of physical quantifiable achievements and anything in the future, and have been trying to love and accept where i am right now.  It's hard for that to live up to the person I've always demanded I become (a super-human specimen of perfection).  I look at myself in the moment, and can't qualify by saying "well I'm here now, which means if I work my ass off, in 2 years, I'll be here, and that means I'm good."  you know?  I'm getting better at accepting where I am now, but relying on a promising future for self validation was a big crutch for me.  It's hard to feel like I'm enough when I can't lean on that anymore.  I haven't really been feeling like enough lately.  It's not a fun feeling.  I have to work hard to convince myself that I am.  And then I walk right into a situation where others confirm that I'm not enough.  not for them, or the job they need me to do.  it's hard.  It's ok.  and i know i'm where I'm supposed to be, and it's all for the best.  but it is hard.  and I still feel alone.  I am glad I said this out loud today, because I realized how silly i was being.  I said "I feel like everything I've gotten in recovery, I've had to do myself."  I was crying about it, because I wanted to know that people and friends and sponsors were helping and guiding me.  I wanted to surrender and take direction, but I feel like I have to do it myself.  ...  but really ... isn't that probably how it should be?  i'm so silly.  and i'm tired.  good night.

ugh.  i don't feel like writing, but my head was swirling earlier today, and I know there's just tons to get out.  I don't even know where to start.

OK.  how about a list.  That always helps me when I'm feeling overwhelmed.

-anger

-new theory on intuitive eating: the role of sugar/getting in touch with my body

-not feeling taken care of

-injuries: what is god trying to tell me?

-moodiness/eggshells

Body Image and New Directions

I just had a crazy thought...or maybe it's not.  Maybe it's my first taste of real sanity coming out of the cloudiness.  I don't know.  But here is the general idea:

My body image has improved dramatically since last year when I started working the 12 steps, turning my body over to a higher power, and trying to accept myself as I am.  So much in my life has stabilized since that time, and my eating and exercise habits have cleaned up and balanced out quite a bit.  I don't weigh myself, so I can never really be sure if I've actually lost weight and leaned out, or if it's just my perception that has changed.  I'm often tempted to check the scale, to see ... to get confirmation that my body really is in better shape than last year, and I'm not just imagining it.  I used to feel disgusted and embarassed by my thighs and lack of definition in my abs and arms and ugh-i hated the hips and thighs!  Most of the time, I feel pretty good about my body.  Frequently, I can see all eight of my abs, and that crease that goes straight up the outside of the leg between the quads and hamstrings- it goes almost all of the way up to my hips without interruption.  Most of the time, I think I look really good!  I'm almost sure I'm in better shape than I was last year...but what if I'm not?  What if I haven't gotten any better, and I look exactly like I did back when I was bingeing on icecream all day?  what if?  what if I've brainwashed myself...conditioned my thoughts to live in a delusion that distorts my self image, so that I think i'm in good shape, and I imagine abs to make myself feel good, when really I'm chubby, and everyone else can see it?  (and here's the good part)  and what if the real delusion was how I saw myself before, and everyone else sees me as I see myself now (or even better), and I really had nothing to be embarased about before.  What if I was healthy, fit, and lean all along, and I was ashamed for nothing.  I was the only one who could see flab.  I've been afraid to get on the scale and find that I weight the same as what I weighed back then.  But that's because I programmed myself to believe that my weight back then was disgustingly obese.  What if that was actually a beautiful healthy weight, and I just couldn't accept it?  What if I really AM ok exactly how I am right now, regardless of how much I weigh or know, or what skills I can do?  ...or if I'm injured... i guess that's a shift in topics.  and yes- this is something I have to talk about tonight.  It's getting late, and I'm much rather ignore it, and go back to watching my movie on netflix, but I was crying hysterically on the way home from the doctor today.  I don't know what's wrong with my leg right now, and i am not handling it well.  i am really scared.  i hate doctors.  i swear they don't know anything.  i'm so frustrated.  He kept talking about sprains and strains, arthritis, and tendonitis, based on my history, but I know what those kinds of pain feel like, and it's not that!  Yes.  it's in my history, so of course I've felt it before, and I know how it feels, and that's not what's bothering me right now.  My ankle gets jammed-stuck-it feels like it's out of place.  I've learned how to shift it back in, but when it's out, then certain movements send shooting pains from my ankle straight up to my knee.  It's pulling on my adductor and my calf in a weird way that's making them constantly sore and tight.  It's creeping me out.  It's just...ok...this is the part that scares me...I believe everything happens for a reason, and when it seems like things have gone horribly wrong, it's God's way of telling us to move in a different direction.  I've been injured with multiple various problems for 1 year and 4 months.  I had minor aches and accidents for about 4 months before that.  And with the exception of the 2 years immediately prior to that, I have spent an average of 2 weeks on crutches every year since I was 16.  That's a lot.  it's quite a record.  I keep having people tell me that I have to rest for 4 weeks or 8 weeks, or whatever.  They insist that if I do, I'll get better and be truly healthy again.  Then I do it, and think i'm better, and then something else comes up, and they insist that I have to really take time off, and then I'll be healthy.  But it keeps going on and on, and the injury evolves.  I get hope that it's going to fade, and then it comes back in an unexpected, more confusing way.  What if this is God's way of telling me that I've gotten what I was supposed to get from pursuing my current dream, and now it's time to move on to something else?  I'm so scared.  I love new things, and all, but I love my job and my dream.  I don't want to let go of it.  And I feel like I've let go of so many things (all of them kicking and screaming), but I don't want to be a quitter.  and I don't want to quit!  I want to do this for many many years!  and I want to be amazing at it!  And I don't feel qualified for anything else.  oh.  I think that's the little kink that's been chipping away at my self esteem for the past week or two, building itself up, and gnawing away at my self esteem.  My self worth has always been tied up in the future.  I have the potential to be great at anything, but I've devoted so much time and energy towards one thing, and then given up before I reached the top, and then put it all into some other thing with an equally short lifespan, and then shifted again, and again, and if this doesn't work out, I feel like I'd have to start all over again with something new, but it would be useless, because right before I got to the point where I could use it for anything useful, I would quit AGAIN!!!  (oh my gosh!  I almost just said "I hate myself".  I thought it!)  Wow.  this is serious.  So, what is the solution?  I guess I just have to let go and let god.  If his plan is for me to do something different, it's going to be for my best good anyway.  No matter what I plan for myself, his plan is better.  Maybe, he's not changing my job.  I don't have to know or decide.  I just have to pray, and to be willing to listen for the answers.  It doesn't mean I have to quit my career, and go job hunting.  It means I have to listen to my body extra hard, research and seek out various doctors and specialists, and keep my eyes wide open for any new opportunities.  Maybe I'm going to travel, or go off into the wilderness, or learn to meditate, or...who knows?  I am definitely stuck in a little bit of a rut right now.  I'm scared to try anything new, because I can't handle the idea of missing an hour of my schedule of usual training.  Even day trips stress me out.  I work freelance, but I won't go anywhere or do anything out of the ordinary, because I'm afraid of missing a single potential day of work.  That's not healthy.  I think something's going to change in a good way.  I don't know what, and I don't know how.  But I feel a little bit more serenity around this.  I'm still a little scared, but kinda excited too.

Ha!  I just decided to take care of myself by not going to a workout in the park.  Then I immediately felt uncomfortable about the decision, and started wondering when or what I could eat next.  Psycho!  I'm so funny.  cool that i can recognize it though, right?  I don't know what I'm going to do.  I think i might go to the park and hang out.  I'll skip the leg stuff, but maybe do some of the upper body stuff.  I have a lot to get done today, but... 

OK. list.  I will list the top priorities for today.  that way, I can stop stressing about getting those nebulous things done, and actually do them.

-pay phone and credit card bills

-add up and fill up tax forms

-call Sava

-print and staple

-stretch

-settle saturday plans

ok.  now that it's all out in the open, I can let go of it.  I'm gonna get some good outdoor time with friends, and connect with people.  Then I'm gonna come back here, and take care of that list!

time to eat my words : )

I've been talking a lot lately about how I learned to use my intense food cravings as windows of opportunity to discover the underlying feeling at the root of it.  Whenever I felt the urge to binge, I would write until I could uncover what I'd burried.  Well, I just finished a meal, and I have a million reasons why it's OK for me to eat more, but the other side of the argument is being silenced.  That's my compulsive behavior coming up.  It's been rearing its head lately, and I've been making allowances for it.  Today...right now, I'm writing instead.  My actions are not based purely in fear and urgency like they used to be.  I don't feel like the world will come crashing down if I have one extra bite outside of my food plan.  I'm doing OK...really well, and I'm voluntarily enlarging my spiritual program...actually this is kinda cool.  My initial surrender and submission to God's will was painful.  It felt fake...like..."I'm not doing this because I like you or trust you, or have come to believe in your cause.  I'm surrendering because I've been beaten into submission, and I know that eventually you're going to get your way anyway.  If I go along with it now, I may experience slightly less pain and demoralization."  But today, it's different.  I do believe in God's cause.  I do want to do it his way.  I recognize that what he has planned for me is better than whatever I can plan for myself, and I'm totally willing to surrender my will whenever I recognize that I'm forcing it.  It's hard, but different.  and much nicer.  In fact, this time, it only took me about 10 minutes to get past that craving for more lunch.  That's pretty cool.  That's really cool.

I worked on my 4th step today, and I've already gone to a meeting and had some good phone conversations with people in program.  I even connected with some strangers!  and HAPPY 9 MONTHS TO ME!!!