Strong and sleepy

It's been a while since my last post. School, new job and visiting family have all taken presidence. The good news is I've consistently been working out ever since my cortisine shot. The strange news is, I've gained five pounds and they haven't budged.

The building I work in has a small gym downstairs, so on my lunchbreak, instead of going out to eat or going shopping I've done either cycling, ellipical or both for 25 minutes. Last week I joined the YMCA next to my house and have been swimming most nights after work. In the mornings I stretch and do situps. I feel great...my knee is still stiff, and I am utterly exahusted at the end of each and every day, and a little stymied as to why I'm not losing weight, but that's not stopping me.

I found a teeny little journal, just bigger than a book of matches that my mom gave me a long time ago, so I'm going to start using that as my food, water and activity journal. It's encouraging to see how much physical activity and water I can drink in a day, and when I write down literally everything I eat, it makes me think twice about snacking. IT doesn't always stop me from having chips or a piece of chocolate, but by writing it down I'm more concious and then more likley to push myself a little harder during my workout.

thats all for now. Because guess what? I'm tired.

OUCH!

I had to go and get a cortisone shot in my knee yesterday because...well...I'm not sure why. I mean, I do and I don't know why. As it turns out, I do indeed have arthritis in both knees, only the weird part is, the arthritis in my right knee is worse then the one in my left, yet the left knee is the one giving me so much pain! Anyways, I'm hoping and praying this shot works, because I couldn't walk again yesterday. I can sort of hobble around today. The doctors said it can take a few days to feel the effects of the steroid, so all I can do is wait and see. My mom had a really positive reaction to these shots, so considering that I inherited her knees, I hope I've also inherited her reactions to them.

On a better note, Continuing good work on the weight-loss front! Down 4 lbs from Wed, which puts me at 289.8.

Goals for the upcoming week:

Lose another pound by Wed

Get all homework assignments turned in on time

Do not drink more than one night during the workweek, as drinking alcohol can seriously hinder weight loss, also makes me want to smoke and feel like le poo-poo in the mornings (bad-yuck)

Join a gym with a pool so I can swim (good for the joints)

Remember to take my glucosamine/chondroitin/msm

If knees are feeling up to it, go on elliptical at work three times for 20-25 minutes.

Several small, do-able goals. Trying not tobite off more than I can chew.

Good and Evil

I was talking with a great friend from high school tonight. We'd both had a decent amount to drink, slo our conversation was rather rambling. We talked about the regular bullshit, i.e catching up on old frinds, relationships, etc., but then the conversation segwayed into more esoteric and frivilous topics, like stand-up comedy, music and...good and evil.

One of my all-time favorite bands (if not my current favorite), is Coheed and Cambria. Being that I tend to over-analyze everything I do and like and say (I attribute this to Dean having his degree in psychology), I am going to assume I like them for a few reasons.

1. My natural father's favorite band is Rush, the absolute pinnacle of prog rock, and I essentially cut my rock'n'roll teeth on Rush. and Coheed is prog rock as well- nerdy, well-executed, tightly woven rock music. I love anything well done, and Coheed, on a scale of 1-10, goes to an 11.

2. They mix pop sensebilities (think the Beatles), with some heavy fucking guitar riffs and, according to Dean, a radically unsung bass player. Oh, and the drums are super hard to play on Rock Band.

3. There is a story, in fact, a comic book (or graphic novel for you true nerds) that ties in with their albums. The story is extremly complicated and I don't fully grasp the finer points, but the overlying story arc is that of good and evil, which brings me to my ultimate point.

Good and Evil It's why people love the Bible and religion in general. It's why Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are so wildly sucessful. Everyone loves a self-sacraficing hero.

There are a few things in this world that most people can agree on. Love, be it romantic love or love for one's child. And, truth be told, a second escapes me, so I'll go straight to the third: wanting good to win over evil. Why do we love this so much? Is it because within every person we battle with our own good and evil? Is it because, out of guilt, we recognize evil in ourselves so much more than we recognize the good, yet, due to conditioning and human nature, we want our good to ultimatley win, and we view the good as a hero? Are we our own enemies, and we can't see the hero that lies within all of us?

Speaking for myself, I strive every day to be a good person. I let people in front of me in traffic, I hold the door on the elevator at work, I'm even getting a degree in human services to better humanity. What I wonder though, is do I do this out of good, or out of some sort of perverse self-preservation? Kind of like a karmic calculator: If I have X amount of bad thoughts, but do Y amount of good things, will it all even out in the end? Or are humans just all inherintly evil, and the thought of God and an eternity of hell or even just plain bad karma keep us on our best behavior?

I readily, and easily, self-destruct. I drink too much wine, smoke (only at night though-like this somehow makes it ok), eat too much, don't excersise nearly enough- yet I want to be good. I want to help people, but I also want the self-satisfaction that comes from knowing I helped someone.

Yet I can't seem to help myself. What the fuck?

Here we go again...

Current weight: 293.8
Weight loss goal: 2.8 lbs (approx. 3 lbs) by next Wed

Since I can't really do any activity because of my knee, I'll have to reduce my caloric intake from 2500 to about 1300.

So...let's do this! (Yawn)

Oh, there you are

To quote Fiona Apple, "I've been a bad, bad girl". Oh, don't get your hopes up, no drugs or illicit affairs here. My body has just literally reached it's breaking point- as in I feel crippled. And I've got no one to blame but myself (and bad genes...so maybe not JUST myself, but mostly).

I inherited my mother and grandmother's disasterous knees, which, coupled with my disaserous weight is-you guessed it-a disasterous combonation. So much in fact that, after a night of drunken debauchery last Friday, during which I drank my body weight in vodka grapefruits and bottles of corona in a pair of strappy, sexy but completley without support sandals and, as a result, appear to have destroyed my left knee. So much that all day Saturday I was on the couch, literally in tears because every step felt like my cartilage had been replaced with thumbtacks. 400 tablets of aleve and hours spent with a heating pad eased the pain enough that I could walk around come Monday morning. Completley disgusted with myself, I heroically went for 12 minutes on the elliptical and 8 on the bycycle, which was a huge fucking mistake, because now I'm back to being crippled. I limped around work all day. MY cute dress-and-cardi outfit was ruined by the fact that I could only wear my running shoes. I have a new job that requires me to take stairs. The going-upstairs actually doesn't bother me at all, it's the going downstairs that makes me wish I had a piece of wood to clench between my teeth.

Plus, I'll admit it- I work with a bunch of skinny, corporate bitches and I feel like a dumpy lady-toad. I need to suffer through the pain this week because I'm waiting to get put on Dean's insurance, and then I pray to the Gods that I'll be given either a cortisone shot or a full fucking knee replacement. Even as I sit here on my uber-comfy couch typing these there are shoots of pain raidiating down my calf.

I talk a lot of shit. I talk shit about people that can't get it together with jobs, or relationships, or kids, or school, or drugs and drinking. But who am I to talk shit? I'm only 28, pushing 300 lbs and in so much pain I can hardley walk. Saturday adn Sunday I had horrifying visions of myself being the lady on a rascal or those annoying motorized carts in the grocery store. Or that when Dean and I go real estate hunting next year a two-story house will be out of the question because I'm to fucking fat to walk down the stairs. Or if I get pregnant and wind up on bedrest for 9 months because if I try and walk my body will just collapse in on itself like one of the twin towers.

I won't have it. I won't. I won't be the terrorist against myself. I won't be my own inside job.

i'm plagued by darkness.lol. (no, really though)

Actually, I'm only sort of plauged by darkness, but I thought that was a funny little one liner.

Sometimes, life hurls so much at you, with such powerful force, that there is nothing left to do but go on autopilot till it passes. That's what life has felt like latley. Our family has doubled, our bills have risen, the difficulty level in school has multiplied (little math joke for you there, hardy-har), work is piling up (although the raises never seem to come...interesting...), and all the while, my path to self-discoverly is still the road less traveled. Good thing self-discovery is always just around the corner.

I speak of going on autopilot not to spew cliches, but because I don't know if humans have any other option when the going gets insanley tough. I was told that I need to moderate and gain control over my thinking of obsessive thoughts, re-living situations, etc. Unfortunatley, I'm afraid I've gone in the exact opposite direction that was intended. Instead of doing the work I need to be doing in moderation, every time an unpleasant thought from my past creeps up I immediatly tell myself "not now". I went from experiencing everything back to pushing it into a hard, angry little ball deep in my bowels (where it belongs).

When the asshole stops working though, the whole operation shuts down, and shit will spew out of other places. Like my mouth. The eyes. The heart twill turn black and bitter, and joyful sounds will fall on deaf ears. I've become pretty accustomed to wading through the heavy, gray sludge that is my dulled anger, that I'm not sure how I'd go about lifting this dense weight off of my chest. I'm positivley terrified to talk to my mother. There have been a few times I've seen missed calls on my phone from her and I can feel that intense, physically dizzying surge of adrenaline rish to my temples, make my hands go damp, agitate me.

And there's the topic of children: I must be crazy to want them. It's inevitable I'd destroy them, or if I don't destroy them, they will surley come out damaged and full of nerosis and phobias. How does anyone come out of this alive? I'm shocked at how quickly my temper snaps. I've always been so patient and understanding. Now I can't be bothered. I'm arrogant and unfeeling, without sympathy. I thirst for vengance, for blood. I wish to see the men of this world who hurt, rape, steal and destory women and their children burn, and scream, bleed, starve, feel humiliation and despair. I want them to experience the unbearable emotional distress that they feel is their right to inflict upon others. I have this idea in my head that once those wrongs are righted then I will be righted as well.

This will never, ever happen though. I can't change the way of men, the way of the world. Nor can I keep turning my rage inward, destroying ymself in the process.

Where is peace?

There has not been a day of 2010 that hasn't been harrowing on some level. Some days it gets easier, and other days it's harder. Some days I want to cry when I'm alone, and somedays I want to smack everyone I see just so they will shut up and leave me alone. I suppose one could say there have been some good parts to it...I'm doing well in school (of course, this wouldn't be so without my BFF essentially doing the better part of my algebra homework for me), I'm becoming more bold with my words, and I'm a little more confident in the path I'm on...but sometimes...mostimes...unless I've got something to distract me, it's awful. It's sickening to think that I may have thrown away the love of my family for things that happened when I was a child. I just don't know where that line of forgiveness is. I want so desperately to forgive, but it's difficult to forgive when I know nothing has really changed. Forgiveness feels like excusing the behavior, which is absolutely inexcusable.

I've been presented with a few schools of thought on how to handle this. One came from Dean, who said that when he was at Lodge, the counselors told him and his fellow campers that the adults in their lives that had wronged them may never apologize or see the error of their ways, so the counselors were going to apologize for everything that had ever been done to these kids. I suppose, in a way, it was symbolic of the universe apologizing, because no one can really, truly apologize for something that someone else has done.

Another significant adult in my life told me that as a child, she was forced to witness some horrendous violence against her brother, with her father being the one administrating the beating. She was forced to watch under threat that if she cried, she'd be beaten as well. As an adult, her therapist told her that when those horrible memories return, to take your child-self in your arms and protect them, and then scream bloody murder at whomever is doing the abusing, Cuss at them, call them names, hit, stab, punch, kick...whatever you feel you need to do, do it. And always protect yourself.

This struck a chord in me, the thought of my adult self railing at my stepfather and mom, who, when all of the abuse was happening, were only a few years older than I am now. My mother always says to me, and has ever since I was small, that I don't know what I'm talking about (regarding the abuse), or that I haven't lived long enough to know what I am talking about. If I were truly able to take myself in my arms, my almost-thirty year old arms, and scream at my thirty-year old stepfather that beating his children was wrong...and this is where I get lost, because I so desperately want that to be real. I want to hold myself with true gentleness, I want to go back in time and erase incidents and occurrences. And I can't. And I'm left feeling very empty. And terrified that if and when Dean and I have children, the cycle will perpetrate itself.