i am never broken

9:00pm comes, and for the first time all day, I am ready to write. I've rested on the couch and had dinner. We have laughed over a sitcom streaming on Netflix and also watched an episode of Design Star. The house is cooling down, after my leaving the broiler on for too long. The glass from the broken wine glass is picked up.

Instead of opening my MacBook and typing, I force myself off the couch and then climb into bed with my husband and two dogs. It is a night of almost seven hours of sleep. In the past, seven hours of sleep would be nowhere near enough, but now, with leaving for the gym at 5am most work days, I cherish any sleep over six hours.

So often, in the midst of a busy day at work or while navigating my car through traffic, ideas come to me. Realizations. Questions. Thoughts on life, on love, on faith, on journeying through all the ups and downs that accompany any and every little thing.

And then, when there is time to write, the ideas dissipate. Or the need and desire for sleep wins out.

This time of my life, this journey, is about so much. One of those things is deciding what matters in my life. It's about putting certain things and people first. It's about disentangling myself from the things that hold me back. It's about forgiving myself and others for past mistakes so that I can move on - never again to be captured by those emotions of anger, anxiety, and uncertainty.

And the things that matter include exercise, cooking, laundry, writing, reading. And the people that matter include my husband, our families, our friends, and our two dogs (because they are more people than pets).

Deciding what matters in my life is just one piece of this neverending puzzle. The other piece that I am struggling with currently is finding and making and keeping time for all the important things and people.

It's so easy for me to put myself last. To make everything into an excuse for why I can't do something like eat better or spend at least two hours at the gym every day. For so long, I did everything I could to stay where I was. To continue to hide in whatever fashion I could. To put everything else first and remind myself that eventually there would be time.

But there is never enough time unless you make the time. Life is so full with jobs, marriages, friends, and all that goes into living the life of a 26-year-old professional. It's all to easy to stay in a coccoon of life. To never move past this stage and into the next. To never become that butterfly.

I had to come to grips with the fact that my cocoon was not the safe place. The cocoon was the suffocating place, the place where my vicious cycle continued and I asked, Why is there no light? Why am I stuck here? without actually finding an answer. The cocoon was tight and uncomfortable, not safe and inviting--a trap, not a haven. And the more I wrapped myself in layersand layers of protective coating, the harder it was to emerge from that false sense of security. It was not until later that I realized a cocoon is not a sweet escape from life. It is the absence of life. --Abby Rike, Working It Out

I haven't spent my entire life in a cocoon. There have been moments of beauty and brilliance. Moments when I was so close to understanding who I was. Moments when I felt like I officially beat every demon and had cleaned out every skeleton in my closet.

And then something would happen. I would retreat back into the cocoon. I would pull myself in and wrap myself in something - anything - to hide. Sometimes it was extra weight. Other times an unnatural looking tan. Sometimes losing too much weight.

I had my mother send me pictures from these moments. And I have every intention of going through them all and understanding who I was in that moment and why I was that way. I have every hope of sharing those understandings here and moving on. Because it is time to leave the cocoon permanently. There will be no going back this time.

9:00pm comes, and for the first time all day, I am ready to write. I've rested on the couch and had dinner. We have laughed over a sitcom streaming on Netflix and also watched an episode of Design Star. The house is cooling down, after my leaving the broiler on for too long. The glass from the broken wine glass is picked up.
Exercising is part of leaving the cocoon. Eating healthy is as well. Opening myself up is another part. And I am doing all three of these things all at once. Even on the days when I feel like doing nothing of the sort. Also on days when I feel like I have already blown it and wonder why I should even keep trying.

But that's the thing. Those days will happen. Always. It's my choice to make on how they impact me. And this time, for the first time, I choose to not allow those days to keep me from moving forward. I refuse to let anything stop me.

(title from "hands" by jewel)

working the rest out

After months of taking Saturday and Sunday off from working out, I joined a second gym. It happened on a Tuesday after work, and I spent the next Wednesday morning on the treadmill and then lifting weights. I repeated the same thing on Thursday and Friday morning. And then again on Saturday. I didn't make it to the gym this morning, but I did make it to the gym before 4:00pm.

My reason for joining a second gym was to make up for the days I didn't want to, or couldn't, drive the 30 minutes from my house to the other gym. And I promised myself, as well as my husband and our bank account, that I would spend every single day at the gym - whether it be the gym near my house or the gym close to work.

Today was more difficult. I forgot to set my alarm when I went to bed last night and did not make it out of bed until almost 8am. So, instead of spending at least one hour exercising before eating any real food, I spent an hour exercising later in the day and after having had both breakfast and lunch.

I waited until later in the day, allowing myself time to rest and my stomach time to digest. In the past, I might have waited with this as the reason and then not worried about actually making it to the gym.

But this time, as I have said before, is different. This time I am not going to allow anything or anyone to stop me - including myself.

Still sore from an upper body workout on Saturday, I decided to concentrate on cardiovascular activity. I needed a break from lifting weights, and I wanted to spend the majority of my time burning as many calories as I could.

Saturday, I climbed on the elliptical machine for the first time in months and pushed myself harder than I had in quite some time. The pushing resulted in completing a mile on the elliptical in under 14 minutes. So when I arrived at the gym this afternoon, I made the decision to climb back on the elliptical machine.

I made the conscious decision to start with 30 minutes on the elliptical. Punching in that large of a number was the easy part. Actually completing the 30 minute work out was a different story.

But I did it.

It was relatively easy until I made it to the 15 minute mark. With sweat pouring down my face, I wanted to stop, climb off the machine, and move onto something else. But I didn't. Instead, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I was halfway there.

It happened again at the 20 minute mark. And then again at the 25 minute mark. Finally, after several Britney Spears songs and "Unpretty" by TLC, I finished.

It's a small accomplishment but an accomplishment none the less.

It would have been easy enough to walk into the locker room, grab my bag, and head to the tanning bed. Instead, I cleaned off the machine and made my way to the row of stationary bicycles. Armed with a new book to read and more songs to listen to, I spent the next 25 minutes biking.

The new book I am reading? It's on my mother-in-law read in two days and then suggested I read. Written by Abby Rike, it is a story from a contestant of The Biggest Loser. Never having watched the show, I wasn't familiar at all with the story, but now that I am thirty-seven pages in, I'm finding myself drawn to the story and also remembering that I too have a story.

It's still early in the book, so I have very few thoughts to share about Abby Rike or the road she has traveled. Though I am sure I will have some the further I get into the story. But the one thing I do know is that if she can face the loss of her husband and two children all at once and lose weight then I can too.

So if I hit a wall while exercising I will continue to move forward. If I am sore, I will still go to the gym. Just because I want to eat a Sonic Blast doesn't mean that I will actually do it. And if I am tired, I will still get up in the morning. And after a long day of work, I will still make it to the gym in the evening.

And when I commit to 30 minutes on the elliptical, I will complete it - no matter how difficult it seem at the time. After all, once one work out is complete, the ones that follow will be just the tad bit easier. At least until I make them harder.

(title from "take a bow" by greg laswell)

something told me to run

picture found here.

I fell asleep before 10pm last night. After the previous night's limited sleep and an early morning work out, I was exhausted and cranky and needed a reprieve from the world. I think the world also needed a reprieve from me.

I woke up, for the first time, around 4:00am. My eyes were blurry, and my feet barely lifted from the floor as I moved from our bedroom and into the kitchen. Somehow I made the coffee and tossed lunch and a snack into a lunch sack for my husband. We shared a quick kiss, and I stumbled back into our bedroom. The moment my head touched the pillow I fell back into a deep sleep. The kind of sleep that swallows you whole and makes you forget there is an outside world.

There was a window of ninety minutes between the time my head touched the pillow and the time my alarm would sound. I hoped it would be enough sleep but thought it wouldn't be.

My alarm went off once, and I immediately hit the snooze button. The second time it sounded I forced myself out of bed. I let the dogs out and moved into the kitchen. Each step helped me wake up a little more. Every blink cleared away the sleep I thought would swallow me whole until it was time to leave for work.

Minutes later, I was out the door with good company by my side and iPod in hand.

After two weeks of not lifting weights, every muscle in my body ached. Rather than pushing myself past my limit, I depended on a heavy dose of cardio with fifty crunches thrown in at the end.

When I first started exercising, I barely sweated. I thought it was my body's composition. Then I started to drink more water, and slowly, but surely, more sweat appeared. Still, though, it didn't seem like much. And what I figured out today was that it wasn't much because I wasn't fully pushing myself enough.

So I pushed myself. I pushed myself with walking on the treadmill with an incline. I pushed myself while on the stationary bicyle by increasing the level and moving my legs no matter how much they hurt. And even though I was tired, I felt even better than I had the day before.

And it hit me. As I sat on the couch waiting for the air conditioner repain man to arrive at my house (and then to finish servicing the unit), I realized that I finally broke through my wall. A week after writing about it, I finally broke through it.

I don't know when the last time was that I broke through a wall. In the past, I would hit a wall and then try for a few more days. Then, I would decide it wasn't worth trying (because it wasn't working anyways) and stop. But this time? This time I didn't stop even though I wanted to.

I felt lighter a few days ago. But today I feel even lighter. And more excited. After weeks of feeling like nothing was happening, and even wondering if it were possible for me to lose 100 pounds, I now know that it is possible.

It's another small moment. A much needed reminder that all of this is worth it - so very worth it.

And these small moments.. Some of them come by chance and by the grace of God. Others come by choice. Choices like snacking on dried cranberries instead of riding the elevator downstairs and then driving in the car to Sonic for a chocolate milkshake. Choices like eating half of a reuben sandwich for dinner instead of gobbling the entire sandwich down.

I miss eating as much as I want to. It's odd to post that here. Almost as if that's one of the things you aren't supposed to say. Why do I miss it? I'm not sure. Maybe it's because it's just what I did for so long. Maybe it's because I'm still adjusting to this new healthier lifestyle.

But what I don't miss is how I would feel after eating as much as I wanted to. Not just how I physically felt (bloated) but how I felt emotionally (dealing with whatever it was that made me want to eat the much to begin with) as well.

It's a balance. A balance of waking up early to go to the gym and sleeping in late to let me body rest and heal. A balance of eating what I want but not overindugling just because I want to. A balance of counting calories but not obsessing over the numbers. A balance of walking on the treadmill and lifting weights.

And that balance? The one that is so hard to obtain. It is the reason I finally broke through the wall.

There will be other walls. I know that. But now that I broke through the first one, I feel ready to face the next one when it comes. I just hope I have a few weeks worth of a break before I have another wall to break through.

(title from "where i stood" by missy higgins)