Dear Reader:

I am riding a wave of optimism and, after the last few posts detailing some struggle, I thought I'd better blog - quick - before my quicksilver mood changes of recent weeks come into play!   Maybe if I pin down this feeling, I can recreate it?   Also, tomorrow is the start of official activities for the academic year.   I've mentioned before how much I love the cyclical nature of the academic life.  There is ALWAYS a chance for a new start.

So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I am also viewing tomorrow as a fresh start on the health and wellness and body acceptance front.   I have my two "sponsors" lined up and ready to go.   I have joined WW and will weigh in tomorrow morning.  My fitbit is charged up.   I have decided to run on the Salt Trail each Tuesday and Thursday morning after the kids catch the bus and take a Candlelight Yoga (Mondays) or Gentle Yoga (Sundays) class each week.   We'll start there.   I have decided, along with my friend, to plan on running/walking my first 5K on Thanksgiving Day in Marion, VA.   The Turkey Trot!   My goal is simply to do it.

Today, for some reason, I felt completely comfortable in my own skin.  It made me realize how rare that feeling is for me.   I have spent so much of my life ignoring my own body that it feels strange to look at myself and just be OK with me being me.   It's interesting.   When I analyze my own feelings, it is not that I have ever felt jealous of anyone else's body or life or level of fitness.   In fact, I don't know if this means I am some sort of freak or something, but I am unsure as to whether or not I have EVER experienced actual jealousy.   I admire the looks or bodies or minds or hearts or relationships of other people, but I have never wanted to have their looks or bodies or minds or hearts or relationships.   I have, however - as this blog tediously outlines - wanted my looks and body to be "better" than they are.   And I felt insecure about the way other people might judge my looks/body.

You know that I am into analogies and metaphors, dear reader.   Well, I was talking with a friend the other day, and it occurred to me that a good description of my recent attempts to come to terms with my body issues is that of a sort of black hole of insecurity and fear.    For a long time, I ignored the black hole and pretended that it wasn't there in the name of my focus on other things in life - my music, my mind, my friends, my career, my dissertation.   The hole was off in the distance and I just thought that it wasn't important enough to deal with...   Well, when I achieved the terminal degree (ha, I've always loved that the doctorate is called the terminal degree because, well, it feels rather terminal while you are in the midst of it) and got the job and gave the recitals and learned the music and ended up in a place that was a good place in life, I looked around and realized that the black hole was affecting my enjoyment of the things that I had achieved and carefully grown.   It was growing bigger and closer.   So, I built a fence around it and tried to contain it.    Pushed all those feelings and fears and insecurities down deep because I felt that I shouldn't have them, given all the other positives in my life.   The central question for me then was "Why do I have these issues when all things in my life point towards my being able to overcome this?"     So, the black hole grew and swallowed up the fence and almost started to pull me down into it.   So, I started this blog, and I began to realize that the answer was not to ignore or suppress the fears and insecurities and I tried to understand and accept, without judgment, the things that were causing me to rely on unhealthy habits.   Let me pause for a moment here and insert an amazing quote from Harriet Lerner's "The Dance of Anger" which struck me as completely illustrative of the point I was trying to come to terms with when I started this blog:

“Everyone freaks out. Sometimes the best we can do with fear is befriend it. Expect it and understand that fear will always reappear. Eventually it subsides. It will return. The real culprits are our knee jerk responses to fear and the way we try to avoid feeling fear, anxiety and shame. Don’t get me wrong, wanting to feel better fast is a perfectly natural human impulse. It is healthy to seek relief when you feel hopelessly mired in the emotional soup.

Calming down is an essential first step to accurately perceiving a problem and deciding what to do about it but the last thing you need to do is shut yourself off from fear and pain – either your own or the worlds. If there is one over riding reason why our world and relationships are in such a mess, is that we try to get rid of our anxiety, fear and shame as fast as possible, regardless of the long term consequences. In doing so, we blame and shame others and in countless ways, we unwittingly act against ourselves. We confuse our fear driven thoughts with what is right, best, necessary or true.

It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run but, it will never make you less afraid.”

So, after 10 months of blogging and an initial loss of thirty pounds, I stalled.  I backslid.  I did retain some healthy habits, both psychologically and physically (regular exercise, less blaming of myself for having difficult emotions), but I also found being enlightened about the black hole was harder work than I thought it would be.   I was trying to achieve that Buddhist equanimity by allowing the black hole to pass through me, but I found myself trying to hold onto some of that darkness when other things in my life became stressful or difficult.   I'm not someone who often wishes for something that I don't have (there are some exceptions), mainly because I feel like every moment wishing for something is a moment that I am not able to appreciate what I have.   But, if I could toss a coin into a fountain and make a wish today, it would be that I could bear the experience of fear and insecurity in my life with equanimity.  That I could look those fears and insecurities in the face, accept that they are part of who I am, and move through them to the other side.   That I wouldn't let them grab hold of me and envelop me.   Or, at the very least, that the duration of those moments of submersion were brief.   

Anyway, wasn't I saying that I was optimistic?   Yes, yes, yes.   Of course I am.   I'm starting fresh again tomorrow.   That's one of the spectacular things about being alive, isn't it, dear reader?  You can ALWAYS START FRESH.   ALWAYS.     

So, I'm doing this thing.  Again.   And, always.   Because I have a great life.  And, I continue to want to find ways to enjoy it and live it more fully.    And, dealing with this black hole stuff is part of that process.

I will go ahead and make a wish at Candlelight Yoga tomorrow that I have more days this academic year where I feel comfortable in my own skin and that I feel as though I am more than "enough" for my own life and my own relationships.    

Also, I really want to get back to including more funny items in this blog.   Too much earnestness makes for a dull read, don't you think, dear reader?    Never fear.   I'll be back to my usual snarky self soon, I am sure.

As always, thanks so much for reading!    I'll see you later this week with some serious details about food and exercise and less rumination.    (I just did a little boxing move - you should have been here to see it - it would have pumped you up :)).