As midnight approaches

My dear readers please be prepared for some ugliness. Here I sit in bed on a Sunday night and I am left with only negativity. I have been struggling through some pretty immense pain, physical, mental and emotional. The physical pain is the pain of which I am in least amount of control, so it looms as the most frustrating. My knee is no longer swollen, but there is still this intense burning pain every fourth of fifth step. Adding to that is this severe tightness in my back. It is not a place on my back where I have ever experienced pain before. I can feel it in every single movement I make. How did I hurt it, you ask? I answer with a very sad and pathetic, getting up from the couch. You know you are an obese human being when getting off the couch can trigger this amount of pain. I cannot even express into words how defeated this has left me. I have been working so hard, and I know that this pain is most likely due to the amount of work my body has been getting, but in this moment, it does not help. All it means is that I have been disgustingly unhealthy my entire life. As if I needed yet another reminder of that. I knew this process would be tough, but this two steps forward 1 step back dance I am doing is starting to really get to me.

This physical hiccup paired with yet more financial struggles led to a food breakdown. I truly hate to admit this, but if I am not going to be honest, what is the point? I broke down and bought Taco Bell this week. I just could not handle any of this anymore. If I am not seeing progress, why should I deny myself the food that comforts me. There was a problem with this theory though. See, this food no longer comforts me. Every damn bite I could feel myself judging, well, myself. There is a commercial out right now where a guy who cannot afford a gym membership hires middle school girls to tell him when he is being gross. That is how I felt with every bite of Taco Bell. As soon as I bought it I knew it was a bad idea, but with money being tight, I could not throw it away. I ate it. I ate it all and I drank a large soda. The Taco bell WRECKED me. After roughly 2 months of not putting that crap in my body, my body was not prepared for it. I felt awful. It was not just the mental judging, it was the physical awful. I felt lethargic, and gross. It was clear in that moment, that I cannot continue to put that kind of junk in my body. It was such an interesting experience. I could feel myself hating every single bite, yet I could not stop myself from eating it. It was like I was trying to convince myself that this is exactly what I wanted and needed, but it really was not. Through all of the other doubts and negativity, my food intake has remained pretty healthy, and now I know why. My body does not want this garbage any longer.

So what am I left with on this Sunday night? I am left with a body feeling completely destroyed. Rehearsal was a real struggle for me tonight, but we do not have enough time left for me to sit out numbers, so I powered through. I miss the walking and the swimming. I no longer enjoy sitting around doing nothing. I want to be active. I want to do something and my body is not letting me. This has led to me having a really difficult time keeping myself mentally healthy. I am really down on myself. I have been all weekend. I can tell that I am not myself, but I cannot seem to stop it. I have reverted back, in a way. I pulled away from Martina, momentarily, but I did. I hated it. I just wanted to shut myself in my room and wallow in this awful feeling. It made me angry, which leads me to my next big goal.

When I was younger, like early teenage years, I had a serious temper. There used to be holes, or cracks in the house in which I grew up that were caused by my fists, or by me throwing doors open or closed in a fit of rage. In 8th grade I got into a fight after school with the kid who was basically the only person in 8th grade that did not make fun of me. I beat him up pretty good. I do not say this proudly. It is an embarrassing part of Kyle history, but it exists. After that fight, I vowed to not take my anger out anymore. The problem was that I just stopped dealing with anger all together. I bottle it, badly. I have no idea how to express anger when it happens. I keep it stuffed down until one event, usually tiny, causes me to unload in a way that is completely disproportional to the trigger. This anger has been boiling just below the surface as of late. I can feel it every day. Little things will start to irritate me to the point where I get more frustrated than I should. I need to work on that. I have to learn how to express myself in the moment. I have such fear of being alone, that I am afraid of confronting someone because I feel like they will just leave. It is utterly ridiculous, but there it is.

I am not going to lie. Tonight, I am not loving myself. I have this dark cloud hovering over me and I am not sure how to shake it. I have been moving forward so well, and this roadblock has truly found a way to interrupt my flow. And no one likes to have their flow interrupted. I was hoping as I was writing that writing would maybe shake these feelings, but it honestly has not. I have reached a pretty significant length, and I am still under this grey cloud. There is still so much work I have left to do, and I know this attitude is not going to help push me closer to living a better life. In fact, it is toxic. I have been working to get the toxicity out of my life, but I still have to deal with the toxicity I feel towards myself. When you have told yourself you do not deserve to be happy for so long, it is more of a fight than I thought to remind yourself you do deserve happiness. I deserve happiness, and whoever is reading this does as well. I know I have to shake myself out of this funk, and I hope that this honesty will help me and maybe help someone else. We all hit these roadblocks, it is how we bounce back from them that will determine who we are. it is easy to be positive when things are going well, it is these tough moments that define us and I am no longer accepting personal defeat. I will wake up tomorrow determined to fight back. If I do not fight for myself, how can I expect anyone else to fight for me? See, I knew if I kept writing I would eventually motivate myself.

The Toxicity of life

I am finding my summer to be full of activities, which has left me with less time to myself at the computer, so what will follow is sort of a few ideas I have been kicking around since I returned from a family reunion on Sunday.

First off, seeing my entire family was just heavenly. I could easily write a whole post about the feeling I had throughout the weekend, but I will spare you all the cheesiness. I will say this, my dad is the single most focused man I have ever seen. He is on a health quest and has just met and surpassed every goal he has set for himself over the last few years. It is astounding. I can only hope to find that sort of progress in my own life. Also, for a brief moment over that weekend, my mom and I talked about the toxic things in life, in my life in particular. It has had me thinking for the last few days and what follows will be a summary, or meandering word vomit of these thoughts.

I have been doing a good job of cutting all of the toxic food out of my life. I have been doing a pretty good job of upping my physical activity to remove that toxic laziness out of my life. As I have detailed in this blog multiple times, I am working hard on eliminating the negative thoughts that continue to plague this journey of mine. These toxic thoughts lay at the root of everything in my life. I am constantly giving myself new goals, and my most recent goal is to stop being so self-deprecating. I am at a point in my life where I need to take myself and my journey seriously and in order to do that, I have to cut out my jokes at my expense. When you have spent 20 years conditioned to make fun of your own weight so no one else does it first, this is quite an undertaking, but I believe it is vitally important to my progress. Yes, I need to work on getting the thoughts out of my head, but first I need to work on not making jokes at my own expense. If I want other people to take me and my journey seriously, I need to take it seriously. therefore, I am trying to cut down, then eliminate the amount of time I spend making fun of myself. I have done fairly well so far. Try it, it is difficult.

The next part of the toxicity of life is people. I have had many toxic relationships in my life. I had a seriously toxic romantic relationship in my early twenties of which I still feel lingering effects some times. I have allowed myself to carry on extremely toxic platonic relationships out of fear of not having any friends which have done severe damage at times, and I have had a few toxic relationships where the line between platonic and romantic have been extremely blurred. Any sort of relationship can be toxic. Having the strength to pull yourself away from it is challenging. However, I know that I need to expect better of people. I need to make myself expect to be treated better and that starts internally. I am working on removing everything toxic from my life and that includes relationships. Currently, I am working on not carrying all of that baggage from the toxic relationships into my current relationships. I am working on letting go of anger, resentment, sadness and frustration. it is yet another roadblock on my journey. I must figure out how to knock the roadblock over. I can no longer afford to go over it, under it or around it because it invariably pops up again and knocks me on my ass. I am 31 years old and it is time to start dealing with my damn issues! It is never too late to try and fix the things you dislike about yourself.

Onto some random quick hits:

I walked to rehearsal the other night. It was lovely. I am enjoying walking. It allows me to clear my head, and get a nice workout in. However, I cannot forget my knee brace because the difference in my pain level is astounding!

I have hit a weight loss plateau. I have not lost any weight in about a week. Normally this would send me into a fast food binge, throwing up my hands in a metaphorical manner and going back to my old habits. My motives are more clear this time, so I am taking it in stride. I will continue to take it in stride. If I do not lose weight for a week, but I make a break through in another realm, so be it. My life will not crumble around me with a bad health week. (Also, it was not a bad health week, but did not lose any weight.)

I have found my desire for french fries and chips slowly draining. It is nice. I never thought I would live in a world where I thought I would be cool off french fries.

I am still looking for good healthy side dishes. I love salads, but I need something else healthy to eat with my proteins. It is tough to not just whip up some pasta!

Also, my my desire for snacking is not going anywhere, so I am trying to substitute nuts and fruits for ice cream and candy. It is mostly working!