I Can't Breathe and Lots of Random Reflection Upon My Birthday

I have been having quite a week....

It hasn't been a good one.

My birthday is coming up this weekend and I am exhausted.

All of the goals I wanted to accomplish this year, many of them simply didn't happen for me.

I am okay with this.

I am okay with the current trend of failure that is occurring in my life....I see it all as a sign that I MUST leave.  I knew this 6 years ago.  I felt it then.  And I stayed.

My walls have crumbled.  I feel the most vulnerable I have ever felt in my entire life.  I am the heaviest I have ever been.  College fat is now a goal of mine.  I want to be college fat because it will be thinner than I am now.

I like to really tangle things up good before I accept the things I have always known...including that I will never be able to achieve my greatest successes in a place that I do not feel comfortable living.  Among the gossip, slander, and hatred that I will never understand.  And yet, I know that this badness exists everywhere.  I know this.  But, I have the chance to start-over.  To redefine myself.  To press the reset button.  It is like the summer before college ALL over again.  EXCITING.

I have halfway fallen in love with myself this year and it is confusing.  To love me, I cannot love all of the other people that I have allowed myself to be tricked by....because I am so different.  My values, my morals, my want for something better.  So, some days I wake up hating myself.  I hate myself for still letting myself be emotionally affected by people I will never respect.  Wash and repeat.  Every single day.

It isn't just high school BS holding me back.  It is the fact that I feel like I am hiding out.  From Awful.  From former clients.  From former school mates that have houses, cars, and husbands while I am living at home.

There is one particular person I really don't want to see.  She lives mere blocks away from my parents.  I HATE HER.  I have always considered her a frenemy....Now, when I think I see her in her car driving....I switch lanes, pull over, make u-turns....FOR WHAT?  She is the idiotic fool and yet I am the one hiding myself.  WHERE IS MY SENSE?

My anxiety and stress are ballooning.  I feel a tight constriction of life strangling me with every sunrise.  Months ago, I couldn't sleep at all and now sleep is my only salvation.  I can't get enough sleep.  When I wake up at 6:00 am, I negotiate why I need to stay in bed until 9:00 am......I haven't slept like this EVER.  In my dreams, I find the life I crave.  I truly believe that happiness is around the corner.

I DESERVE IT.

I HAVE THIS "FUCK YOU" FANTASY WHERE I SEE EVERYONE I HATE AND I WIN.

AND WHY....WHY...DO I EVEN CARE?!

Because truly inside I cannot figure out if I even care or not and this is most confusing of all.

There is a saying that no matter how old you are, when you come home, you will always be a child and I FEEL that.  My parents are the BEST, but still......I am nagged to pick up my room, encourage to eat what my Mom and Dad are having for supper and them shamed for not going to the gym each and every day regardless of my schedule.  There are trigger foods in my home that lead me to binges, yet I cannot keep my parents from bringing these foods into their own home....BECAUSE IT IS THEIR HOME and my father has changed so much since he retired, that he wouldn't understand the emotional issues I am having with food, even if I screamed them into his ears with a megaphone.

He used to be there for me, always.  Now, he is tired of me.  His mother is taking away his patience.  I wouldn't want to be him for a day...having to deal with her.  I get this.  I feel for him.  I am not a child.  I have to get my own shit together, too.

If I stayed here, in the Midwest, I believe I would eventually become unable to leave my home.  I would crumble.  Fall apart.  Reach 300 pounds before I knew it.  I now see life differently.  I see how people cannot get out of something they are stuck in and yet, I have been gifted with the 1 way ticket out of this pit.  I am lucky.

Just getting up and getting out is a constant struggle.  I do it, I do not let people down, but it is becoming a tug of war with my soul.  It is becoming something that I can no longer take for granted....just like how my clothes in my closet used to fit and now they don't.....my life feels like it belongs to someone else these days.  My coping mechanism is saying the amount of days I have left here until I leave. I repeat the number like a ritual.  It gets me through my days.

The visit with Crush was fine.  Not that eventful.  Good.  I cannot relax here in this city, so our visits are always better down south when I am not protecting myself so closely.  He frustrates me terribly, but who doesn't these days?  I know it is me, NOT him.  I am the one having severe issues as of late and accepting my crazy instead of passing it onto to him is major progress in itself.  

I have reached my breaking point.  Yet, I have WONDERFUL people to help this summer and then I will be on my way out of here and towards a better life.  My goal for this summer is to simply survive, to be the BEST worker I can be.  To not worry about my weight as I don't see myself being able to commit to it in this uneasy emotional environment for me.  I have accepted this.  I will cope.  One foot in front of the other until the numbers of days left to chant is 0.

Yet, I want revenge.  There....I said it.  I want blood sucking revenge on a few people and I intend to get it.  Like a lady, but I will get it.  And the fact that I am even sharing this makes me seem like an unhinged freak....but, hell....perhaps I am.  I am a steel magnolia.  I may look like I lay down and play dead and get walked all over, but that phase of life has ended.  Sorry, if you want to make it public and personal, then it will be public and personal from my side, too....especially if you owe me money for my time.

Please understand that a man cannot fix everything.  There I said it.  I know I wanted Crush to be my everything.  My life preserver in this wild sea of change.  BUT, I have to save myself first.  Love, money, a big diamond ring....none of that will ever make me feel whole unless I am whole on the inside.  And I will have all that.  And where I am from, those things: the money, the big ring...that determines who wins.  SICK.  BUT TRUE.  And in those ways, I will win.  But, none of this matters to me anymore....and it once did.  I have said it before and I will say it again, I kinda dated Awful for his money.  Because that defined him and made him more attractive to me.  His money presented opportunities and I liked them.  HATE ME.  I get it, but I am not lying.  Yet, Crush has so much more than anything Awful did and I am over it.  I wish Crush had less, so we could live a bit of a simpler life with less expectations and obligations.

Where I want to win is by being a good person.  An honest person.  A real person.  A kind person.  A person that can actually do all she says she will do.....

I think this is where I am conflicted these days.  AND I KNOW BETTER.  I have been thin before for little blips and whenever I would slip into those size 29 jeans and strut around like a little proud peacock, I would get this sense of "that's it?"  All of the deprivation, hours at the gym, self-obsessing and hatred....that's it?!  Yes, of course being slim feels fucking fantastic, but not mind blowing.  Just okay, really after the novelty of it wears off.  Because 155 pounds or 210 pounds, I am still a bit broken on the inside and this may be my life struggle.  Not fixing my outside, but fixing my inside.

So, yes, Crush's love gets me through my days.  The promise of tomorrow and September and all that jazz.  But, he is just a man.  Just a person and like me, far from perfect.  He is the one for me, but now that I found him, he is not my entire identity.  He is not what defines me.  I am still me.  I am just no longer single.  

I HATED when I was single blog reader and a blogger who I once identified with so much would find a significant other and all of a sudden there was no longer darkness and only LIGHT.  Everything was sunshine and roses.  AMAZING.  Moonlight strolls and sex on the beach.  I was her for a little bit, too.

Now, my honeymoon period is over.  It is.  I think this is where most people stop with the honesty.  Because they don't want to admit that what they yearned for is not all they hoped it would be.  You can still be head of over heels in love with someone and have bad days, weeks, or months.  I met my prince charming and I am still fat, broke, and anxiety-ridden. I am still struggling.  I am still conflicted.

On this birthday (in a few days), I give myself a gift that I never have before....the ability to be myself.  I hope this will be the gift that keeps on giving, until I am old and gray....To say, do, and feel whatever I want.  I give myself the permission to be sad, happy, lonely, or stressed...to accept failure and to learn from it.  To eat ice cream for breakfast if that is what my body is truly craving.  To have good days even if the scale is not where I want it to be.

This last year, a client that fired me (a miserable person who I should have NEVER agreed to work with....I felt like I HAD to because I helped several of her friends, but it was a bad fit from the very start and I am happy I didn't continue, my biggest mistake was accepting them or not firing them first and this haunts me....) told me that she doesn't know how I can "wake up in the mirror and look at myself because I am such a terrible person, a liar, a con-artist, a fraud."  She told me, "I will never make it in life, never amount to anything" that I will "die unhappy and alone and broken" and all I could think was...YOU.  You are this person.  Not me.  You are projecting your life onto me.  Your divorce, your failed relationships, your fading beauty.

This conversation has taunted me 100s of times a day.  It has.  It has given me doubt.  It has led me to rush to the toilet and vomit sometimes when I think about it at the gym where my mind really wanders.

It was my rock bottom.

Because none of the things she said are true.

If anything, it was my goodness and heart that she will never understand because she is the example of the kind of person I can never help: vapid, stupid, self obsessed, jealous, cunning, and insincere.

And yet, she fascinates me...how does a person like her get the power to make me unhappy?

This is something I am still working on....

First Impressions and Broken Rules

When I dated, I dated hard.

I hit the websites.  Sometimes, Jdate, Match.com, and OkCupid all at once.

I double booked days.  Sometimes three dates on one Sunday.

I treated dating like a second job. A means to an end.  When I was ready to face the shame, embarrassment, rejection, and emotional turmoil that naturally came with it....I embraced the wave because I knew it would come crashing over me again and I would need and deserve a temporary dating break..... gasping for air, tired and exhausted from being beat down again.

On the round of dating that I met Crush, I had pretty much given up entirely.  I had felt like every single person online in my town; I had either met, had been out on a date with already, or knew of and I didn't like and that was leaving me feeling pretty darn blue.

My last round of dates before I met Crush was the "almost" I had gotten used to.  The good on paper guy.  He was Jewish, taller than me, very sweet, an Ivy League doctor completing his fellowship.  We went out 5 times, never kissed, and I knew in my heart, he wasn't the one.  When he sent me a text message telling me that "he didn't think we could get together anytime again soon because he was so busy on his new rotation," I was devastated even though I didn't like him, couldn't imagine being intimate with him, and he hated coffee and thought coffee was evil for some reason, so being with him wouldn't have been the best for me anyway...no sex OR coffee?  Life wouldn't really go on for me if those were the terms.  No guy was worth that.

After Doctor and I parted asexual ways....I broke down.  "WHY WHY WHY.  Why me...!?!?!?!?"

A few weeks later, I went away, made my husband list and focused on immediate goals and clients.  When Crush and I started corresponding, I thought VERY little of it.....because I was used to the never going to happen....now I reason that because I broke my own rules, I think I may have caught Crush without even realizing it.

Crush and I got off to a slow start our first go round.  We actually had two starts....which I will get to below. The first time, he made promises to call and never did.  He responded to a long heartfelt email I sent (after he sent me a LOOOONG first one ALL about him, so my response to his) with a "thanks for the email, I am super busy and will get back to you soon" and never did.  He randomly called me to complain about his broken down Saab convertible and how the dry cleaner messed up his tux that he needed for a charity event....and I almost barfed.  PRETENTIOUS LOSER ALERT was flashing in my mind.  He went on to tell me that he had 1600 friends on Facebook and that I was strange for not being on there (he is now contemplating deleting his account) and that he went to prep school and had a maid....I gagged while talking to him and made fun of him which was very poor character thinking about it.  I deleted him from my phone and email.  I thought, what a spoiled self centered prick.

SIDE NOTE: The thing is that my Crush is the most literal person I have EVER met.  I told him once that his earnestness reminds me of Forrest Gump and he thanked me.  All of his recounts were just him telling me about his present life and I read WAY into it.  I now think this could be a nerdy inexperienced guy thing and I bet all of these guys I wrote off for being "too cool" were probably just "SUPER nerdy" and are most likely making some lucky gals,  great husbands.

At the time Crush and I had our 1.0, I stopped telling everyone my personal business and started to date a bit secretly.  I decided to protect myself.  My life was not a story for people to chat about over dinner (the blog is....hahahaha, chat away!)....Other than the blog, I decided to not to over share the dramatics of my life because it was taking a toll on me.  I was getting sick of explaining all of my never going anywhere male company to friends...."no, not that guy, we stopped texting a month again, this guy is new, he is really cute and a lawyer, no the other one was an accountant........!" I was feeling like a mockery, a fraud, a joke, a broken record of "well, it was a good date, but nothing happened and there is no second one scheduled".  It was killing me on the inside, yet, I put my best foot forward and tried my hardest to be happy, open, and positive.

One day, I was leaving an appointment and my phone rang.  Weird number, weird area code.  I decided to take it as I was working out of town that upcoming weekend and reasoned it was most likely a call regarding work.  It was Crush.  Had I known it was him, I would have NEVER picked up the phone or returned his call.  EVER.  I wouldn't have even listened to his voicemail as I HATED him at this point.  He told me he would do things and didn't.  He bragged about himself.  He was spoiled.  He was dead to me.

But, he caught me off guard and that led to a wonderful conversation. One that lasted hours and hours.  He let me know why he was distracted earlier in our correspondence: because his grandmother passed away, his ex-fiance who he hadn't spoken to for months came back to return the ring (he told her she could keep it) and his 8 year old Saab broke down under an underpass during a massive storm and he had to handle insurance, renting a car, and buying a new one all at the same time.  The tuxedo was for an event honoring his deceased and beloved Nanny and he was supposed to wear a specific one (tails) that she loved and he had been running all over town trying to get a new coat as to not stress out his family......it all made sense.

From that conversation, not a single day has passed that we haven't chatted on the phone.  I gave him TONS of credit for calling me up after we had a huge lapse of communication, admitting his reality which wasn't super glamorous (I was picking up on something.....and it was that he didn't want to scare me away with the broken off engagement), and following his heart.....

We are trying to figure out our anniversary for the purposes of what date to celebrate and we decided on the date of this conversation mentioned above...which is just 2 months to the day after I wrote my husband list down on paper and 3 weeks after we first became acquainted.

Last night while we were having our daily before bed chat, I asked him why he called me up again and he told me that he just had this intense feeling that I was his wife from the first time he looked at me and even though it got off to a rocky start full of misconceptions, he figured that the things out of his control were out of his control (passing of Nanny, car, ex), but calling me was something he could take ownership over, so he took the risk.  He then said that he would have called me as many times as it took to connect as he could feel something when he spoke to me, even if I was guarding myself...up until Crush, I had dated the same man in different bodies ten times, so I thought I was being so smart...

Also, he loved my email response to his bitching about his broken car which was....

"So sorry about your fancy car breaking down.  That stinks.  I know how frustrating life can be sometimes and how telling someone "that's life!" when something annoying happens is just about the most annoying thing ever.  If it makes you feel better, I am off to deal with a business situation much like your car....pretty from the outside, but absolutely broken from the inside...best of luck with your flooded ride and if you can't get it to start again, perhaps you can use it as a boat or a flower planter.  Always have a plan B and I wish you the best of luck.  I know it is hard to get up after you have been knocked down and I applaud you for it, not everyone can do that.  Have a great day!

That email was off the top of my head, I didn't even reread it before I sent it off (as can be seen with the use of "best of luck" twice.....I stopped caring about all men at this time down to the emails I was supposed to impress them with) and it captured my real voice and my real heart and now........my real future.