No one said life is easy. And maybe life is not supposed to be easy?
Maybe the harder lessons are the more important ones. Therefore, how else would we learn? How else would we understand the value of something if there were no struggles to achieve or claim it?
I have sat and spoken with people who took the easier and softer ways.
I have listened to people who took quick fixes and paid large sums of money to improve their personal cosmetics.
I have listened to the rise and falls of people who chose to lose their weight by undergoing a surgical procedure, which is far from simple. Yet, at the same time, there were no lessons in how to change their habits. There was no understanding of how their habitual eating can or will return. There was no understanding that habits remain unbroken if not replaced or changed with a new way of living.
I have spent time with people who lost weight with different medications and, to be fair, their drop was considerable and quick. However, the quicker fixes did not come with the same valuable lessons.
Then what?
I remember my weight loss. I remember having to change my habits. I had to find different meal replacements. I had to learn where and when to add exercise into my daily routine. More than anything, I had to work for this. And I had to work hard too. In fact, I still work at this, and I still work hard. Currently, I am sore and my body hurts from a tough exercise routine.
Also, and admittedly, I have bad days or cheat days. I have days when I say “to hell with it!” but at the same time, my overall health and my weight, my eating habits, and progress has been on a steady incline.
To be clear, this was a hard gain. Therefore, by understanding the value of the work I put in and by understanding that the way I treat myself reflects upon how I “feel” about myself, I started to understand more about my challenges and the items in my life that cause me to stall or revert back to unhelpful settings.
I started to learn the value of my efforts. While I admit to taking advantage of quick fixes and simple cheats, my energy and effort have also brought me to a physical transformation that is valuable. Therefore, if I were to lose my motivation or slide backwards, then I would lose all of what I’ve gained.
If I went back to my old habits and my old routines of self-satisfying through unhelpful patterns, and essentially, if I went back medicinally eating myself or looking for my short-term comfort, then I would slide back into a feeling of worthlessness.
This means I forgot the lessons. This means I forgot my worth and the value of what I learned. But also, this means that I forgot what it took to get myself back into shape.
I remember seeing a picture of myself.
I remember feeling disgusted with me.
I could not stand my reflection in the mirror.
I knew there was a change ahead of me.
I knew that I would have to switch my habits and learn to live differently.
I knew that I couldn’t live the way I was living, at least not comfortably or happily, and no, I was not healthy. My blood sugar was exceptionally high. My blood pressure was high and, of course, so was my cholesterol. I was unhealthy and unhappy and unmotivated and mostly, I couldn’t shake the feelings or get rid of the shame. I couldn’t lose the disgust when I saw my reflection in the mirror.
I knew that I allowed myself to be this unhealthy.
And this was the biggest bitch of all.
No, none of this was easy.
But I learned. I learned about my body and how my body responds to food; and as I mentioned before, yes, I have cheat days.
I have days when I allow myself to have some sweets. But in fairness, I need to be careful. I need to realize that this can be a slippery slope. I need to recognize that old habits lead me back to old results. Therefore, old comforts can lead me back to the life I just escaped and thus, this will shut me down, or more importantly, I have to realize that the challenges I face can grow and become more challenging, if I allow them to.
I have made choices and changed behaviors.
To be honest, I miss the old comforts. I really do.
But I don’t miss feeling empty. I don’t miss the thoughts which come to me or the thought patterns that lead me to depend upon an outside resource to improve an internal dilemma.
I have bouts. I have wrongs and sins and mistakes. I have a past and my own historic inventory, which has misled me or led me towards an unhealthy or unhelpful path.
I have acted and responded selfishly and yes, I can say that I have the internal narcist, to which I understand where I gave into my own selfish, self-centeredness.
I’m no saint or better than anyone else.
I have needs and wants and fears and worries that I will never make it beyond the middle of the road, or that I will never surpass my own limitations and instead, I am afraid that I will always remain in this unstable holding pattern. This is the last thing that I want, which is why I had to break away.
No.
I had to learn how to relive my life. Otherwise, I would only remain the same, at best, and that’s the last thing I want for myself.
I can’t stay in the past nor can I live with such a poor regard for myself.
Life is not easy, and neither are the losses we face. Neither are the challenges that we undergo.
But this is life. Sometimes it’s easy sailing and we coast. Other times we find ourselves head-on in an uphill battle.
All I know is the same thing will always happen if I keep responding the same way. I can’t do that anymore. So, I am not responding the way I used to.
Instead, I am repositioning myself. I am learning. I am opening myself up to a better and new possibility.
I say this because no one should look at their reflection in the mirror and be unhappy with what they see—nor should we become disgusted or ashamed of our reflection.
No one should go through the battles of self-torture.
And yet, many of us still do.
(Me included)
I want to see myself in a better way. I want to be comfortable with the discomforts of change and understand how to navigate towards a new beginning. I want to do this to avoid the old endings that make up my previous history.
There are a few lines in a song called Vindicated by Dashboard Confessional that goes, “And I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well. I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself.”
I love this line.
I am facing the newness of a brand-new day with a brand-new horizon and yes, I am flawed. I am frightened and worried and unsure and yes, I make moves.
I’m trying new things and there are times when I ask myself, “okay, so . . . what now?”
I am looking for answers.
But I can’t look backwards (anymore) because if to find a solution, it is safe to say that my old solutions were less than helpful. Therefore, I need to start over.
I need to start fresh.
I need to carve a new path for myself.
Otherwise, I’ll find myself back in the saddle again, and living the same life that was unsuitable for me to begin with, and unhappy at best.
Quick fixes can be long-term. But often, they lack the intrinsic value or the visceral feeling of what it takes to redeem oneself—and be better.
Me, I just want to be better.
I want both the internal and the interpersonal feuds to go away. I want to sleep through the night. I want to wake up, refreshed, and ready and more, I want to improve on a constant basis so that if I backslide, I will never backslide to be where I was before.
I can say that I have banged my head against the same wall for years. I can also say that I have made the same mistakes . . . and then I’d wonder why I always found myself back in the same places or feeling the same things that I swore I needed to get rid of.
Everyone has a story.
I have mine.
However, at this point, and since I am closer to the end than I am the beginning, I’d like to work towards a happy ending,
That means change.
This means it won’t be easy.
This means it will be hard sometimes,
but hard doesn’t mean impossible.
Then again, I was once told “Everything is impossible. Until it’s done!”
The Written Addiction 