In June. I decided to drastically give up sugar. It's something I had considered for a long while, and inspired by Kevin Smith's own personal journey, I too decided just to give it up. But unlike Kevin Smith, I didn't experience massive weight loss. I'm happy for Mr. Smith, thrilled even, but for me, it was an unhappier version of events. My clothes felt tighter, much tighter. And my personality seemed to change. I didn't have some surge of energy or overwhelming sense of joy. About six weeks into this voyage, I broke down and bought a scale. I tend to abuse scales, so I rarely allow myself near one. I felt like the situation called for one, and sure enough, the scale read a number that seemed "off" to me. Now I have no idea what sort of weight I may have added, but I will tell you that another nine weeks after buying that piece of evil, I have gained eight pounds. My fifteen weeks without sugar and processed foods has been an official bust. I'm sure it's a healthy choice for many, many people, with spectacular results, but obviously, my body had other plans.
I'm not telling you this to feel sorry for me, because I don't blame Kevin Smith anymore or the lack of sugar. I know good and well something had to have been wrong before this sugarless coma I've been experiencing. When I'm in a funk, I tend to torture myself, deprive myself of things. Some people cut themselves, I tend to go on fasts. And I do so not realizing I even do it. In this case, I took sugar away from me, sending my blood sugar straight to Hades, and causing my body to store extra fat for the winter. My body has been through a lot over the years, and with my history with starvation and other fun party tricks, my body always prepares for hibernation in case we're having another long winter. I don't expect that to make sense to you, I'm not even sure it fully makes sense to me.
So sugar aside, I've been in this funk of sorts. I can't tell you when it started or the reasoning behind it. I don't want to call it depression, because that's not my style. I will tell you that I knew I wasn't myself, but I had no idea how to be myself again, or who that even is or was. I will also tell you that I've absolutely hated feeling like I'm stuck in this transitional phase on the West Coast. We've been here two years and three months. This is no longer a transition. This is our life.
We've lived in a transitional mess of a bedroom for that entire time and the room has only gotten worse as time has passed. I absolutely hated living in that room. I really hated it. I kept insisting in the last couple of months that I wanted to move into the guest room. Mister Man didn't understand what the fuss was about it, and he even made the mistake in asking what the hurry was, as though two years and three months was a hurry at all. The walls were a mess of textures and colors and chaos. I couldn't stand it anymore. My surroundings were swallowing me whole. The second room I spend the most time in is also still stuck in transition. And frankly, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of living in transition, because no one was meant to live in a transition....
And if there's anything I hate more than change...it's the transition.
One vital fact about me: when I'm drowning, I tend to swallow water, start to sink, and eventually as I'm almost down for the count, I start to push my way to the top with some sort of rush of adrenaline. I'm happy to report that the adrenaline has reached me. The answers to these feelings hit me as I was sinking to the bottom. I needed a bedroom I could sleep in and not wake up and be reminded how much I hated that room and possibly even my life. I needed a headboard on my bed. I needed action to happen. And I needed to be important. And I probably needed some sugar too. But I'm taking baby steps on that last one. I don't have a normal relationship with food. Most former anorexics/bulimics don't.
Our bedroom walls have gone through a lot in the last week and a half. Much like my emotional state, they've been primed, layered with joint compound, smoothed out with a trowel, somewhat textured, primed again, and painted. My skin may never look normal again, but the room is coming together. We have new summer bedding, just in time for fall, the lamps are attached to the wall (which is a big deal, since one of them has been new in its box in our closet for two years and three months), and all the tape has been removed. I still need to pick out new baseboards and trim, paint all of the doors white, paint the furniture, do the ceiling, and figure out what we're putting on the walls. It sounds like a lot left, but you wouldn't know it if you saw it, as most of those things are merely things I want done. Hopefully we'll get to the office in the spring. And there's still the matter of removing wallpaper in our bathroom and sprucing it up. But for now, I'm feeling a bit more ownership of my space I call home.
The problem is that when our first tenant got behind in rent and didn't seem to realize she needed to pay us back (and she never did), I stopped spending any money on this house. I also made the mistake of telling myself I couldn't start any other projects or updates until our bedroom was finished. If Mister Man had his way, we never would have. Then the house in Kansas kept needing new things and it still does, so I was living my life for that house for someone else and not living it here. I think Mister Man was okay with that, he didn't really seem to notice, but it was doing something to me emotionally. Also, I wasn't venting these frustrations properly. I was allowing all of this to fester, and I think you know what happens when things fester....
I'm not going to stop living realistically, knowing we have two houses to take care of. I'm not that type of person. But I need to take care of my needs. Otherwise I'll pull another stunt, like giving up sugar or holding everything in until I drive to an empty parking lot just to scream my head off. Not that I'd ever do that....
There is a part of me yearning to work again. And maybe I will do that. But I also know that the part of me yearning to work, is also yearning to be smothered in chaos to the point I won't be aware anything is wrong. Also, I was ticked that we had five weekends just home doing nothing, which joined months of doing very little out here. I'd rather work than be home every week and every weekend. I felt trapped, like a rat in a cage, and I HATED it. I'm still sore over some of those things, but I'm working on that as well.
In the meantime, I have some creative juices flowing and a potentially new project, which could solve some of my other issues...like lacking an outlet. I'm attempting to figure it all out. The positive point I'm trying to make is that I've recognized there was a problem within myself and I'm trying to get myself back on track. There have been a lot of promises, and with my memory, I haven't forgotten any of them, or especially the fact most of them were empty. I sacrificed a lot for this move, and while I probably don't need to continue pointing that out, especially to myself, it shouldn't be a surprise that the sacrifices would eventually weigh me down. Therefore, I think I need to start unloading some of this emotional weight, because two years and three months is a long time to be storing it and it's only getting heavier over time. Hopefully, that's all that pesky scale was reflecting. I'm ready to purge. I'm ready to be out of this funk.
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