Oh what a difference a day can make. *smiles* I woke up feeling rested and so happy. The conscience choice to improve my life has really made that much of a change. I mean for a few years now, I have said i needed to get things back on track, but I never would get around to it. I always had a reason why I didn't get started, but they were just excuses. No matter how valid i might be able to make them sound, they are still just excuses for why I couldn't get motivated. I realize now why I just couldn't manage to get myself to follow through with all my plans. I was doing them all for the wrong reason. I wasn't doing it for myself. I wanted to do these changes for someone else. I wanted someone else's approval.The funny thing is I have read similar stories from people. Not just about loosing weight, but for drug or alcohol abuse or even to quit smoking. They tried to stop because other people said they needed to, but it never worked out because they were not ready for the change. That is where i have been for the last few years. I knew what changes i needed and even wanted to make, but i just wasn't ready. I am not just talking about weight loss here. Yes weight loss is one of the major changes I am making in my life, but it's not the only thing I was putting off.
I was putting off furthering my education. Not so much that I wanted a degree, but more I just wanted to learn. The thing that has kept me from continuing my education is ADHD. Yep. I was diagnosed with this over 30 years ago, yet i didn't find this out til after I had graduated high school. My mother said her reason for keeping this from me was that she didn't want me to be put in special education classes. She was worried of the stigma associated with them, but in all honesty it would of been better than personally just thinking i was stupid. I would try my hardest in all my classes and barely scrape by in most. I did excel in math and art, but the rest were such a struggle. On top of that, my parents were constantly on me for not getting better grades like my older sister who was a straight A student. It hurt then, but it hurt even more when I found out that I had an actual learning issue that hampered my learning. It actually caused me to cry. It made me feel some what vindicated, as I had truly done my best. At the same time, I cried at what i saw as intentional cruelty. I eventually got past this, but i could not and will not forget. The adverse effect of this was that I was afraid to even try college. I didn't want to fail, so I didn't try so there was no chance of failure.
That in itself is a huge problem. Yes, it sounds good. Don't try and you can't fail because you never started, but this is a horrible way to live. I have a huge long list of things I want to do, but fear of rejection or failure has kept me from trying. A simple one is my art. I once painted something for my step-dad, and I was so incredibly proud of myself. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had painted, and the subject was something he was really interested in. I presented it to him. I stood there so excited to see his face when he saw it. With in seconds my joy was smashed against the rocks. I was told that the picture was okay, but then he gave it back to me and told me I needed to work on it some more. That was the last time i shared my art with someone. I was 15 at the time. It destroyed me.
I guess you could say, I grew up constantly being told by my own parents and siblings that I was not good enough. My parents would complain about my grades or insult my talent. My siblings insulted the way I looked and dress. It was nothing for my siblings and my step-dad to gang up on me, and make fun of me. Telling me my hair looked like straw. Making fun of the fact that I had a small chest compared to my sister who was very top heavy. They even made fun of my weight saying I was going to be so fat when I got older because of my stomach. The ridiculous part of this, at the time I weighed 92 pounds soaking wet. The reason I had a tummy was that I was so thin that when I ate I would have a tummy pooch right after I ate.
The reason I felt I needed to share this back story was that it sets up why I have a deep seeded fear of failing or being seen as not good enough. I was letting other peoples views of me and my talents skew my view of myself. I let that control me. The constant attacks by my family, the one group of people I should be able to look to for positive reinforcement, made me loose faith in myself. I only saw myself as they did. Ugly. Stupid. Lazy. Worthless. Because of this, any time anyone showed me attention I saw as positive, I did anything to keep that attention. I wont tell you all the things, over the last 30 years, I have done to seek the approval of people in my life. Some of them were what you expect, change hair color or type of clothes I wore, but some of them were much more extreme. Either way, I did all these things in hope to receive the approval of a person, and in hopes of making myself feel good. The truth is that by changing myself to please someone else made me feel even worse about myself. I learned very quickly that I was only valued as long as I continued the charade that made them happy. I was not valued or loved for who I was, but for the part I played. Which meant that they didn't value the true me. This was incredibly destructive to my psyche which was already very worn out by years of mental trauma.
Some of you reading this might think that this sounds like I just need some good counseling. Over the years, I have done a little counseling here and there, but I still had that deep seeded need to be accepted. This caused issues with counseling. I didn't want the therapist to look down or think badly of me, and because of this i never dealt with my charade issues. Fear again stepped in, and I ran away.
Now, we come back to present day. I knew I would never be truly deeply happy as long as I continued to play the charade. It was a scary thought. Not just the idea that I would never be happy, but the thought that I would have to completely drop the charade in order to be deeply happy. The reason the later part of this is scary, is because the fear that I would loose what I had in my life. I was scared that my husband would love me less if I made these changes. I was just scared. I finally got up the guts to talk to my husband. I felt horrible having the conversation with him. Not just because of my fear, but even more how much it hurt my husband that I thought he would love me less. He was upset that I thought so little of his love for me. He said he loved me. He said he knew the real me, the me I hid from everyone else. This mentally knocked me off my feet. Tears were running down my face. I had been told this before by him, but I guess I never really heard him. I think this was my turning point. Not that I needed his approval to make these changes, but to know that me changing was seen as a good thing by him helped me know this was the right choice.
Is it going to be easy? Not at all. It is going to be a lot of hard work. It is going to take dedication. The saying 'Nothing worth having comes easy.' pops into my head. How true that saying really is. It is just like 'You get what you pay for.'. We all have learned that lesson the hard way at least once in our life. In life, you get out of it what you put into it.
I am determined to put all I have into changing my life. I want to get everything i can out of it. It might be baby steps, but each step gets me closer to where I am going. Just remember, it's the journey not the destination.
