Lonely Dinner

So I’ve spent the first two hours of being awake today looking for and applying for jobs I KNOW I don't want, won't enjoy and probably won't stick at. It’s frustrating. I’m not particularly good at administration and I certainly don’t enjoy it, but it’s the only thing I have any palpable experience in. That and a customer facing role where if I know what I’m talking about, I know I can blag my way through and probably succeed if I don’t let my insecurities eat me alive.

People have this perception of me as being a people person. I somehow manage to be confident and warm towards people I don’t know, and have been known to crack a smile out of the most stubborn of people. I have no idea how this happens, because on the inside I am usually dying a little bit with every word that comes out of my mouth. I dread it, every second I have to talk to someone I feel like curling up into a ball and rolling away. It’s very easy to not be alone but feel very lonely. I feel this almost every day and it’s very difficult to explain to people who think you’re an honest, open, warm human being.

Suffice to say it’s not fun feeling like you’re the only person in a room full of people. And the people aren’t bad. The people sometimes even give a shit about how you feel and what you think, but a lot of the time, the barricade you put up and the mask you hide behind is SO good, cleverly concealing all those lies and hidden agendas you have, that no one notices you haven’t said a word worth listening to for years.
You shouldn’t burden these people with such problems. They don’t understand when their go to person for happiness is feeling less than stellar. It’s a lose-lose situation most of the time. I go round in circles thinking that I can fake my way through certain social situations, and usually I do. But there are times when people notice, and I have ALWAYS, ALWAYS run away in those situations. Rather than telling people what’s wrong or how I feel or if I’ve messed up, made a mistake or am just feeling slightly down, I would rather give the illusion that I’m just busy and have no time to chat. I realise that’s not fair on them, and I am only just starting to realise it’s not really fair on me, either.

I don’t know what’s happening to my body recently, but after a few weeks of not being able to sleep, I am now all of a sudden sleeping EXCESSIVELY. I slept for about ten hours last night and I’m STILL tired. The effects of the Sertraline are actually really frustrating. They have definitely made a positive difference, but I’m still stressed and I am making myself more stressed thinking about the things I have to do today. I have to go up to town tonight and I am DREADING IT. The thought of doing the journey that is, not what I’m doing once I’m there. The thought of getting on the train and tubes are genuinely frightening to me at the moment, I feel very, very uneasy but I HAVE to do this, if I back out now I will never forgive myself and I know the people involved will never forgive me either.

Today I’m going for dinner with three girls I have known for a little under two years, and who I think very highly of indeed. They are lovely, funny, clever girls and as a group we seem to get on really well, and individually we get on really well too. The thing is, I’ve spent the best part of six months avoiding them, with no real reason other than to hide away from the mistakes I made regarding my business, and I can sense their frustration with me. Back in March, I went all the way to Camden to go out for Trudy’s birthday and couldn’t get in to the place she was at so I went to a pub around the corner and misspelled the name of it in a text so they spent all night looking for a pub that didn't exist and I got drunk and then my battery died. It was freezing and raining and I was utterly mortified at myself for the mistake, but rather than explain it rationally, I avoided the questions and messages and phone calls, until it died down and I could get away with not discussing it.

When tragedy hit my family (I use that term loosely, as I no longer count my father or any of his relations ‘family’) Trudy was there, offering her support and shoulder to cry on – but I never took that opportunity. I ran and hid away. The same thing happened when I started missing appointments at work and Egita asked if I was ok... I didn’t respond to her and I instead stopped all access for others to be able to post things on my facebook wall, for fear of someone posting something someone else would see and pull me up on. I don’t know if that makes sense, but at the time, it seemed like the easiest option for me and I spent the next few months with my head buried in the sand.
When I look through their facebook profiles now, I can see I’ve missed out on so much. Trudy is in a lovely relationship and seems happy, which makes me SO happy I could burst because she is the one person in this world that I think really deserves it. Egita managed to find someone to carry on her business with her and seems to be thriving in both her career and her studies, and Zindzi... well; she is just the icing on the cake. Beautiful, stylish, caring and kind, Zindzi is the archetypal wonder-woman. There’s something about her that oozes calm and she is a welcome light in the darkness I bring to the table in this somewhat dysfunctional group. It’ll be the first time we’ve seen each other since April last year, and I have no idea if they’ve met up without me or how much contact everyone else has been in.

These girls don’t know it, but they gave me faith in friendships. They already have their own lives going on, with their own groups of friends and their own little cliques that I will never be a part of – but the fact that they have invited me to be part of their lives on a small scale, and that they STILL are willing to see and spend time with me after the shitty way I’ve treated them is something I am eternally grateful for, I don’t deserve it, and they don’t realise what it means to me. I know all this sounds terribly dramatic and over the top, perhaps it is. But it’s just how I feel right this second. The deafening silence I’ve surrounded myself with over the past few months has done nothing but hinder me and tonight I am going to take my chance to explain myself fully, openly and honestly to these three people, with the small hope that they might understand it a little bit better. It’s a MASSIVE jump for me, talking about depression, anxiety and the triggers that cause them.
These are people whose opinions and thoughts I care desperately about and I feel like I’ll be putting a HUGE part of myself out there, in their hands and only they can decide whether to hold on to it or drop it. I wouldn’t blame them if it was the latter, but I am hoping and praying that it’s the former.

Grey Today

Today is a day I don't feel particularly good. I don’t know why. It could be the grey skies, it could be the frustration of my internet dropping constantly, it could be the bad mark I got on my last uni TMA, or it could be the impending birthday I have looming ever closer.

Whatever it is, today I feel like I’m taking two steps backwards and I want to start thinking about how I can combat this, and to do that I need to figure out, if I can, where it’s come from. So here is a list of things that I’m thinking about A LOT that are bugging me and could be possible triggers for today’s anxiety –

• Not being able to get to the gym (Rachael’s injury).
• The Internet not working or, worse – working intermittently.
• Reading my tutors FAIR comments about my last assignment that was less than average work.

I think that’s it, today, actually. I don’t know why I’m letting those things get to me so much. I’ve been a bag of panicky nerves all day though, and it’s making the thought of going out later seem REALLY unappealing. The internet not working is annoying, but when I think about it, it’s the only reason I started writing this post, and it could be the contributing factor to getting some other stuff done. Stuff that I otherwise would put off until the very last minute like usual because I’ve spent all day convincing myself that I am doing enough to find a job or improve my life by staring blankly at all the open tabs on my screen. Ugh.

Poor Rachael has slipped a disc in her back, so is out of action for a little while. I could probably get to the gym and get let in by Joe or maybe Mel but they would have to dictate the times and I am slightly nervous about getting caught out, to be honest. Also, with the internet not working this would be the IDEAL opportunity to go out for a run, or at the very least do some P90X training whilst I have the place to myself. But what is stopping me? It’s not ALL laziness.

Lastly; my TMA. It’s my own fault, I didn’t pick up my books AT ALL since TMA 02 and I was so smug with my last result that I guess I didn’t think I needed to. Then it got later and later and I panicked and pulled 1000 words totally out of my arse the day before it needed handing in. This was stupid. I got 59 out of 100. This is made up out of 22 marks out of 50 for the first part and 37 marks out of 50 for the second. I realise this isn’t TERRIBLE given the stupid time frame I gave myself AND the fact I had done NO study, but it just is not good enough, for me. People do NOT realise this about me, but I am a perfectionist. This is the reason I do not put effort into things I don’t believe I can’t do well – because if I attain anything less than top marks, I see it is a failure. It’s the reason I pull stupid faces in photos too; I would rather pull a silly face and look stupid, than try and pull a nice one and still look stupid. I apply this in almost everything I do, which is why I approach things either very cautiously or very gung-ho and without proper research. It’s something I’ve always done and it’s why I always disappoint myself.

That is disappointing to me. I don’t know where the secret lies in feeling better about these types of things. Sertraline is certainly taking the edge off my rage fuelled moods and teary outbursts – but that doesn’t tell me WHY. Why do I feel sick when I think about leaving the house? Why am I twitching my leg uncontrollably? Why am I feeling chest pains just THINKING about doing some studying?

I don’t know where this shit comes from but I want to punch it in the face. I am so, so sick of this feeling.

WEIGHT A MINUTE

Being on Sertraline has definitely decreased my stress levels and going to the gym (a total of four times in a week and a half – hoorah) has increased my hope at getting back to an acceptable weight.

I have ALWAYS had issues with my appearance and with my weight. I can remember as far back as early primary school when I was the only girl with boobs and I tried to strap them down, utterly mortified at being slightly bigger than my stick figure friends or at that time, simply not being a boy because I liked playing football and I was the only girl who was any good at it.
When I got to secondary school it was even worse, with a massive increase in the amount of people who noticed my chest, it was like a running joke in the first year – I think some people actually thought my name was ‘boobs’ because that’s what I was addressed as by most of the members of the opposite sex for a long time, until the prettier girls started growing their own weapons of attraction of course, and then I was just ‘one of the lads with tits’.
I remember being very impressionable at one point and wanting one of those tasteless, gaudy, awful tribal symbols tattooed on my lower back. I also remember being told by my tattoo laden father, not that it was unattractive, or I was too young (I was 14 at the time), or that it would hurt or that I’d regret it, but that simply “Errr I think you’re a bit chubby for that, why don’t you lose some weight first and then it will look nicer”.
I imagine that’s when I started hiding the food I was eating and throwing it back up later. I think that’s when the grey cloud settled in for good.  I have diaries and diaries full to the brim of self hatred, food and exercise regimes, calorie counting... I even went to the trouble of hand-drawing a graph and pie-chart WEEKLY of what my weight and measurements were saying. Thinking about food and my weight took up a THOUSAND percent of my time.

I have been through the yo-yo weight game enough times now to know for certain that being two stone lighter won't make me any happier, won't change my situations, won't increase my motivation and certainly won't give me the personality overhaul that I need. But what it will give me is a small sense of accomplishment and that is something I rarely achieve. I am a perpetual avoider. I can start things with gusto and steam ahead with plans and goals and ambitions, however small or large, but I almost NEVER finish anything. I’m determined this year to finish my Open University module, and not even concentrate TOO much on the actual mark I get. I need to get it out of my head that I deserve to be getting 80%+ or distinctions with the lack of work I put in. If I can just manage to see the whole thing through to completion AND get some sort of mark, it will make a huge difference to me. The same goes with losing weight, because this will be the first time I'm actually putting effort into it.

In the past, I have flown up the scales to a horrifying 12 stone (how hilariously low is that when I talk about how much it impacted my life?) when I was really too young to be that, and slid back down to a teeny 8 and a half when I was too old. Now, there’s nothing WRONG with either of those weights, in reality they are at neither end of the scale, but for me, personally, I wasn’t healthy at either of them. I like being curvy, I don't want to be thin. But I hate the feeling of clothes that fit me perfectly six months ago now won’t go anywhere near my ballooning thighs. At 12 stone I was uncomfortable in my skin, let alone my clothes, I was out of breath, cripplingly self conscious and filling my body with all things sweet and unsavoury. It affected my skin as well which at the time was riddled with acne, so it became a vicious cycle of feel shit, eat shit, feel shit, eat shit, etc.
I was young when this was the case and after various counselling sessions and eating disorder ‘cures’, I found myself in a job where I woke up too early to have breakfast, ran around all day, had half an hour for lunch and would usually go out for a drink after work. I also preferred to spend my money on cigarettes than food, so my weight plummeted obscenely low to 8 and a half stone, which again, is not particularly small, but it is FOR ME. I wasn’t built to be skinny. I have an hourglass frame, which when empty, looks just as awful as it does when it’s overflowing. My ribs stuck out, I had saggy boobs, no bum, my arms looked like twigs and my watch was dangling from my wrist. I even lost a beautiful bracelet that I adored, because no more links could be removed and it was STILL too large. Although my cheekbones were chiselled, my skin was grey and my eyes were black. I thought it was great, I could finally sit down without a roll of flab in sight, but my friends and family were worried about me. My BMI dropped, my energy levels dropped, my mood dropped along with my concentration and focus which led me to start being overly emotional and making mistakes at work. I hadn’t overtly tried to be this slim, it just naturally happened. It wasn’t attractive, and most importantly, it wasn’t healthy. I wasn’t leading a healthy lifestyle and so my body wasn’t responding in a healthy way.
I stopped working for a bit and went back to studying, which meant that, again, totally naturally, I put on a stone and looked a lot better. However, when I stopped smoking at 20 for two years, my weight shot up from nine and a half stone to about ten and a half, and whilst I realise now that that weight is fine, at the time I was mortified. I had a boyfriend who was cheating on me and who the world thought was the most beautiful man to grace the planet, none of my clothes fit me, and I was in a job where everyone judged you on your hair/clothes/looks rather than your skills and I was being undermined and bullied by a girl who looked like Jennifer Aniston. I started smoking again PURELY for the hunger suppressing that smoking brought to me, sure that my life would improve if I lost the weight. What a disgusting thought.

Disgusting it may have been, it worked. I lost weight again and found myself back at 9 and a half stone, and although my health and skin was shot to shit, my body looked amazing (if I do say so myself). By this time I had a different boyfriend, who didn't really care about my looks, but HATED smoking and had been a fitness instructor in a previous lifetime. This made me go insane with conflict. I gave up smoking again, not totally because of him, he never MADE me do it, but I just smoked less around him to impress him and it drove me insane with cravings so I would snap and be moody. So I thought I might as well give up, plus my skin may well improve.

Suffice to say, I got a little fitter, but the weight eventually piled back on.

Things are slightly different now; I have the contraceptive implant in my left arm which mucks around with my hormones, as well as the Sertraline coursing through my body, doing its business with my brain and metabolism. This is making it VERY easy for me to put weight on and VERY difficult for me to lose it just by sacrificing a few packets of crisps a week.
Because I’m not working at the moment, this means I spend a large portion of my day sitting in one spot, trawling through the internet wishing I was somebody else, and consuming so many calories that I’m otherwise, just not shifting.

I know this seems trivial and shallow to some, but with the battles I've had and the skewed view I have on my own body image and self esteem, this really, really does something to me. I don't seem to understand how my boyfriend can still find me attractive, even though J has absolutely never judged me on how I look. It makes me uncomfortable in all my clothes, to the point I sometimes don't bother getting dressed for the day and it just makes it difficult for me to leave the house sometimes. I want this to change, I want to not care so much about how I look naked and how my clothes fit me and to just feel comfortable being me, whatever weight, but I can't. I have no idea where it all stems from initially, and I have no idea how to move forward with it. I'm self deprecating enough without having added worries about J leaving me for a slimmer, fitter, tighter, more agile thing.

When I read that back I feel pathetic.

STEP IN THE GYM.

So far, it’s been quite amusing. Each time I’ve gone, I’ve really not wanted to. I’ve thought up a thousand excuses to get out of it, but I HAVE gone. And each time I’ve gone, I’ve left feeling better. Alright, it’s not glamorous – I’m red, sweaty and aching and I still feel guilty that my family and friends are working and I’m getting free gym time to work on something that shouldn’t be a priority in my life, but I AM losing weight. I have lost three pounds in a week and a half and I haven’t changed my diet TOO much. I’m spending time with Rachael, who I haven’t really ever spent that much time with on a one on one basis and I REALLY enjoy her company. I’ve so far met some nice people, and even though there are women there that ordinarily would make me want to hide away and fade into the background, I can see that no one really pays attention to anyone else. Everyone is there to achieve something; whether it’s losing two stone like me or feeding the obsession with the body beautiful, we all have a goal and we’re not too concerned with anyone else’s.

Its super early days, and I know it’s going to take hard work, focus and whatnot, which I’m certainly not known for. So far though, it’s making me feel, not better, but just better than I was. Things somehow seem brighter and not so grey after a workout. I'll always have pizza days and lazy days, but I DO undoubtedly feel better when I've done my crunches, squats, and walks and not eaten a week’s worth of bread in one day.

I’m going to carry on for as long as I can, recording my progress and taking it step by step, pound by pound and see what happens. I know what I want from it, but when the dark days overtake me it’s VERY difficult to fight my way through it, but I’m going to give it a decent shot.