Operation Me

Oh, jeez.

I wrote this exactly five years ago:

I am really unhappy with my body. Not gonna lie…especially when I think of how I used to look… Even a year and a half ago, I was a size or two thinner (though, I smoked, so that was not due to entirely healthy reasons). I say that I would like to lose 50-60 pounds, but I do not own a scale, so numbers aren’t really going to matter. Instead, I am focusing on how I look and how I feel and how I feel about how I look (not necessarily the same). I want to be strong, I want to feel good, and i don’t want to feel so ashamed of my size.

I feel that I’m trying to hide in me, but I’m not sure what it is that I am hiding from.

Now, though, is the time to focus on the positive and not the negative feelings about me. I am aware that this is going to take time. It took about six years of lumpitosity to get to this point, it will take time to reverse it. But, I feel like I can.

I did turn it around.  I felt very good about myself.  I kept at the gym habit up until I was put on bed rest with Katja at the beginning of December 2010 and I just have not been able to get back into it.  I weigh the same now as I did when I was nine months pregnant.  Very awesome.

That said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and all that nonsense.  I did not get to the gym on Thursday, as Katja was sent home early with a mysterious fever and I just wanted to make sure she was okay.  Rowan was not particularly fond of my “we may have to cut reading short” plan, even though I explained to her that this would make me a better mom.  I felt pretty crappy that I could not even get out the door on Thursday night, like, how will this new plan ever succeed??!  Katja was feverish on Friday (so, again, a short day at work for me) and again on Saturday.  BUT, I made it out the door on Saturday afternoon.  I went to the gym and I slowly ran/walked almost 3 miles (ran a little over 2 miles, walked the rest).  And, Steve and I BOTH went to the gym on Sunday!  Our workout got cut short by a poopy diaper, but we still made it.  And, really, I was in the cooldown phase anyhow.

I managed to jog 1.5 miles straight both days.  For someone who has NOT done anything hardly at all in all of 2012 (I was gymming sporadically in 2011, and then the move and the sickness and all that hit this year), that is not so bad.  Did I run as fast I once could?  NO, I did not.  But, I did it and it felt pretty good.

My goal for this week is to walk every single day at lunch, despite the mercurial weather.  And, Steve and I plan on going to the gym on Tuesday night.  We figure that if we can start with Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday, then that is something.  That is far more than what we were doing before.  It would be nice to fit another weeknight in, too, but it is hard due to Rowan’s schedule and all that.

I am looking forward to the summer, when Rowan is in her Summer Power program at the Y, as it would be really nice to pick up Katja, go to the Y and pick up Rowan from Summer Power and put them both in the Kids Stuff area and get a quick 30-40 minutes in and then go home.  I wanted to do this last summer, but I always had milk to deal with.  Since I will not be pumping that much longer here at work (not sure when I will stop, but I won’t be doing it this summer, for sure), I should be able to make that work this time around.  But, for now, three days a week is a reasonable and achievable goal, I think.

Of course, things will probably come up that will get in the way – like, family visits and whatnot – but, I think we can still get in three times a week.

This is all a work in progress.

I was texting with Dan last night, and he had some very nice things to say about this whole thing with the gym and my body and whatnot.  I am so lucky to have such a good friend!

Adrift.

I have been feeling so BLAH lately.

I have too much time on my hands, and this leads to rumination.  Some rumination of the self is a good thing; too much is not.  I feel like I am just floating and not taking any action on my life.  Steve and I are like two ships passing, these days, because we’re both too busy.  Work is just….ugh!  There is no word on the new job prospect, and while I think that I have a good shot, the waiting game is difficult.  And then, there is the issue of my body, my self.

Five years ago, I got my body back into shape.  Almost exactly.  I saw the worst picture of myself that has ever existed and I turned it around.  Five years later, and I am back to where I started.  It is enough to make me want to cry.  This is why there are never any pictures of me.  I hate to look at what I have become.

That sounds melodramatic, and it is, but the happiest I have been in my adult life is when I was taking care of myself.  And now I am not and I don’t know how to change that.  There is not enough TIME to do this.  How am I supposed to get home (between 5:30-6:15, depending on which night of the week it is), eat dinner, get both girls to bed at different (and, with Katja, varying) times, and have quality time with Steve IN ADDITION TO working out?  I cannot work out in the morning, because I cannot get myself out of bed as it is; getting out of bed even earlier, in order to go to the gym before work, is not a realistic option.

It is not even a weight thing, but a movement thing.  I was so proud of myself when I could DO certain things, and that radiated into all parts of my life.  My confidence in myself was probably at an all-time high.

I am not NOT confident now or anything.  I know what I am capable of and all that, but I don’t have that determination or that glow or any of the great things that my lifestyle back then gave me.

I would not trade Katja for all of that, but something has to change.  I don’t know what it is.

Tonight, I am going to try to go to the gym after Rowan goes to bed.  Maybe this means an earlier bed time or maybe this means we don’t read tonight.  I don’t know.  But, I need to take care of myself, because I cannot be a good mom or a good partner or a good anything if I am not feeling good about myself.  Operation Erin begins again.

Apprehension.

I don’t remember being so apprehensive nine years ago, when I found out I was pregnant with the baby that would turn into my beautiful little Rowan.  I remember being scared of what the eff I was going to DO with my life and how we were going to make it work.  I was scared of my parents’ reaction to the news that their 21-year-old-senior-in-college-daughter-just-married-to-someone-that-she-met-five-months-ago-who-was-from-another-country was now going to have a baby and possibly fuck things up even more, in their eyes.  (For what its worth, they were worried about me, but mostly cool with it, once they got over the initial shock.  It is not worth it to go into any hurtful things that may or may not have been said to me that I will never ever forget.)  I knew, though, that I would make it work, somehow, and I did.  Somehow, I muddled along and everything worked out to some degree.  I was never scared, though, that anything would go wrong with the baby.

Maybe I was young and naive.  Maybe it was because the baby was wanted, but not planned.  Maybe it was something else entirely.  Whatever it was, I never worried until the day we brought her home, and her dad went off to work and I suddenly had the realization that, “oh, SHIT, I have to keep this little baby alive now!”  That was probably the moment that I really became a mother.

But, now, with this baby, I worry.  I am just shy of 19 weeks (tomorrow) and I am nervous about everything being okay.  I don’t really feel the baby moving.  Some days I think that I do, but I am not sure that it is actually it.  I read too much on the internet about WHAT COULD BE WRONG, and I worry that something is wrong.  I worry that because I am having such an easy pregnancy, that that means that something is wrong (instead of just thanking my lucky stars that I am feeling so incredibly normal).  I worry that I am going to die or something is going to happen.  And, I worry, too, that I am not connecting to this baby.  That I am too worried about something happening that I can’t get all OMG EXCITED about it.  Am I happy?  Yes.  We are elated to have a baby.  I touch my stomach (I know, I KNOW!), and think that I can’t wait to meet this little person.  I have dreams about the baby.  But, am I excited?  Not in the way that many people get.  I don’t talk about it.  Sometimes, I don’t even think about it that much, until I look at my expanding waistline and remember that, “oh, yeah, there is a person in there.  I am growing a person right now.”

I haven’t bought anything yet, for the baby.  I have only begun to make the smallest of plans for my maternity leave.  It all seems like a dream, in a way.  It isn’t real yet.   We decided to go for it and try to have a baby, and BAM, just like that, I was pregnant.  It seemed too easy.  Like, if it was that easy, then surely something is wrong.  This is probably all kinds of fucked up.  I realize that.  I am lucky and fortunate and should just accept that.  But, I can’t.  It’s like, in my life, I feel that if things go my way, then surely THE OTHER SHOE HAS YET TO DROP.  I don’t know why I am that way; I just am.  It is not so very fun, let me tell you.

We go in for our ultrasound next week, and I think that that will ease some of my worries.  My appointments always do.  I thought that I was going to bake the baby by being in Las Vegas, and when I went to my appointment after that, the heartbeat was still strong and everything was okay.  Nothing has changed since then, and I am doing what I can to take care of myself, so I really shouldn’t borrow trouble in the interim.  The appointment is a week away.  Though I may be apprehensive, I can handle one more week.

Crazy.

This is not meant to be the anxiety blog, or the “I am crazy” blog.  But, sometimes, I feel that way.

My little Rowan made it home safe and sound from Scotland.  Life has returned to normal.

I feel mostly better.  Less anxious and crazy.  But, still…. a little “off”.

The other week (March 31, to be exact), I had my first experience with vertigo, which freaked me the fuck out.  I woke up after rolling over, and when I opened my eyes, I was disoriented and the room started spinning.  Also, it felt like my eyes were going googly in my head (I cannot explain it better than that).  I panicked, but just laid there, hoping that it would go away.  Which it did.  But, then, I decided to experiment and went from laying on my left side (the side I normally sleep on) and rolling over again to see if it would happen again.  It did.  The room was spinning and I felt so strange.

I called my mom that morning, and cried on the phone about how worried I was.  I thought it was a heart problem or something, as that has been my latest crazy theory about myself.  She said it was probably my anxiety.

I have not experienced that since, HOWEVER, I now wake up almost every night when I roll over and am AFRAID that it is going to happen.  So, I lie there in a panic waiting for the room to spin.  It doesn’t, but I can’t shake that fear that something is wrong.

This morning, I googled “vertigo causes” and discovered that something called benign positional vertigo is very common and is often caused by sudden movements in the head or whatever – it doesn’t mean that anything is WRONG.  Okay, that should have made me feel better, but I kept reading and discovered that it can also be indicative of brain tumors or lesions.  YIKES!  I realize that I am jumping way ahead of myself, since I have only experienced it once in my life, but I can’t help but worry.

I should add, too, that for at least the last five years, I have experienced on and off major sinus pressure and a feeling of not-quite-lightheadedness, but a feeling of being “off” at times.  Like, my head is just a bit foggy, and there is pressure there.  Also, I tend to get what I think are tension headaches and more pain on the left side of my head.  The side that I laid on and experienced the vertigo.

Now, most people would maybe jump to the conclusion that it is an inner ear thing, or a neck thing on the left side.  That would be the logical answer, when no other symptoms have changed over the last five years.  However, I almost convinced myself this morning that I have a tumor in my left brain somewhere.  (I think that the brain tumor was triggered by the X-Files we are watching, where Scully was just diagnosed with a tumor in between her sinus cavity and brain — oh, why do I torture myself with the thoughts that that could be me!?)

These are the times when I really do think I am a little crazy. 

I also googled “sinus and dizziness” today and came to a message board where people were talking about all of the exact same symptoms that I experience.  The common denominator that these people have?  ANXIETY.

I wrote this two years ago:

Saturday, I felt better, but still off. The pressure in my face was super annoying and I was really tired. I woke up and just felt blah. We had a pre-arranged play date with a mom that I met at the party that I went to with my friend Brian, and I didn’t want to cancel on it. We went and it was a good time, but we stayed way too long and I got home and, again, just felt weird. Tired and weird. My face felt odd and my eyes felt like they couldn’t quite focus on anything.

My mom called me that night and I talked to her more about it. My chest had calmed down (at that point), and so it was mostly my head that felt weird. In talking to her, I’m pretty sure that a big part of it is sinus pressure in addition to the anxiety. So, the sinus pressure in my face is contributing to my sense of imbalance and lack of focus and everything. She recommended that I take a decongestant and see if that helped at all. I felt better after I talked to my mom, but still felt kind of disoriented.

Anxiety is a tricky little best.  That is just how I feel now.  The same.  I am glad that I keep track of my craziness, because at least I know that I have felt this before and, hey, I AM STILL HERE, ALIVE AND KICKING.

I will probably call my mom today and ask her these crazy questions, because that is what I do.  I am not going to worry too very much about it, because I do feel just fine.  I have actually probably never been in better health than I am right now.  I have not even had a cold in over a year and a half!  Aside from being maybe 10 pounds heavier than I want to be, I am doing well.  I just have these mental health issues that I will always need to work on.

In other news, I started reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.  I thought that I overused commas and semi-colons….  turns out, I am not alone in that!  I’m not sure how I feel about this book so far, but I guess we’ll see.

I am so so happy that spring is finally here.  The winter was far too long.

My boots are staying light.  I feel like me again.
This is good.

What if.

Sometimes, I play the ‘what if’ game. What if, what if, what if. While I am happy with my life and my choices, sometimes I wonder about the choices that I have made or the way that the my life has played out that has led me to now. This very point in time. I don’t think that I’m so abnormal to wonder about what my life would have been like if things had happened only slightly differently, but maybe I am. I don’t know.

I have long said that my only regret was when I chose not to see Kurt Vonnegut speak at a small bookstore back in the summer of 1999. At the time,  wanting to ‘be cool’ and hang out with my friends prohibited me from going. I still kick myself over that. So, if someone handed me the keys to a souped up DeLorean, I’d probably rev up the engine to 88mph and go to 1999 to see him. I don’t think that that would effect anything else. I wouldn’t want to change anything else.

Our lives are a culmination of our choices. Right now, me sitting here, typing up this entry, is due to every single decision that I have ever made in my life. It’s a bit odd to think that if you were to make a visio chart of my life up to the present, this is where you would end up. But, you know, that’s just how it goes (and, think about it, if one were to make a chart of your life, it would lead to you reading this entry right now. Weird, right?). Do you ever wonder, though, about the decisions that weren’t made? The roads that weren’t taken? If life were like a science-fiction book, then with every decision that every person makes, a new world would be created right next to our own. We’d be able to find a way into these parallel universes and see what our lives would have been like if x, y, and z had been different.

It’s a bit confounding to think about that, though, because there would have to be gazillions of worlds created. If a new world was created by each choice, then, it would stand to reason that the other worlds would also spawn new worlds. Is space vast enough to hold that many worlds?

I suppose that since this is all hypothetical anyhow, that if life were like a zany science-fiction novel, then one wouldn’t need to worry about the logistics. It would just be. (Has anyone else read Robert Rankin? Yeah, sometimes, you just can’t worry about the details. Just go with the story, people.)

So, in another world, I may have gone on to be a WNBA star after not quitting basketball after my freshman year of college. Or, maybe there is a world in which I became an engineer. One in which I do not have a kid. One in which my college crush was not unrequited. One in which I lived a fairy tale existence (not sure what decisions I would have made/not made to make that happen, but, in theory, I suppose that it is possible, right?). There are things that I have done over the years that are quite stupid and embarrassing. Maybe there would be a world in which I did none of those things that still have the power to make me cringe (oh, that party where I was talking with that guy and threw up all over myself and then kept talking? Still as cringe-worthy to think about now, nearly eight years later, as it was the next day. Oh, lord). Actually, that world might be kind of a nice place. I can be quite stupid.

If we were to take away our science-fiction goggles and go back to reality, what if my life had taken some of these turns? My life, and not an alternate version of me. I do wonder about that from time to time. The two things that I wonder about most are the unrequited crush and not having Rowan. Neither makes me proud to admit. I don’t wonder about it in that I wish that that was what happened, because I most definitely do not wish that. I love Rowan more than anything and the truth of the matter is, I cannot even fathom existing in a world without her. But, sometimes I do wonder what my life would be like if I were not a single parent and if I had done things differently. If I had listened to my parents. Where would I even be? Would I be in Minneapolis? Would I be doing what I do? Would I have had my problems? Would my life feel the same?

When I ponder things like this, it is usually when I am feeling depressed about one thing or another or am feeling envious of someone’s footloose and fancy free ways, and I think that, geez, all of my problems would be solved if I could go back in time and change everything that I have ever done. I suppose that, theoretically, yes, that would be the case, but in reality, even if we had our own flux capacitor and the ability to travel back in time, we’d create new problems for ourselves. New lives with their on unique set of circumstances. Nothing is perfect. No one’s life is.

I actually find myself thinking these questions less and less than I ever used to. Maybe I’m happier with where I am or maybe I have realized that nothing is what it seems and we can only do the best we can with what we have. Yeah, sometimes I wish that I could drop everything and travel the world for a year or, say, flit off the Portland to visit my friends and see Spoon play in December, but my reality is that I cannot. I have a job. I have a lovely daughter. I have my family. I have to be responsible. Bills to pay. Food to put on the table. I’m the provider. I need to do that.

And, really, it’s not so very bad at all.

Though, I totally should have gone to see Kurt Vonnegut. So it goes.