Rude Awakening

Has she been sleeping again?  I wonder that about myself sometimes.  I have a good life. Outwardly. Then I wake up. What has been happening inside of me for the last 30 years.  Really? Yes, 30 years.  Suddenly I am 55 years old and I am not convinced that I have grown emotionally since I was 25.

Well, I have grown. Physically.  At 25 I weighed about 155-160 pounds and I was enormous.  Then, at some point I weighed 267 pounds and I was enormous.  Now I weigh about 235 pounds and I.am.enormous.  My emotional self is clueless.  When I was in high school I was 135 pounds and enormous. There was a time when I have no idea how much I weighed, but I was eating 700 calories a day and wore really big baggy clothes and my head said I was enormous.  I'm pretty sure I was anorexic. Then I discovered the numbing effects of eating. More specifically, eating sugar. That's when I started gaining weight, but not wisdom.

My maiden name was Smith.  Growing up my family had a lot of 'rules' and 'stories' that seemed like truth.  I heard these 'truths' in my head long after I moved away from home.  I've come to call them "Smythologies," because, like most myths, many of them: have some basis in truth, are used to explain difficult concepts, and give a way for me to explain things I don't understand. Thus the name of my Blog.  

Recently I have hit a new stage in life and have made some rather large changes.  Many of the changes are good, even if I wouldn't have chosen to make them at this time without a 'push.'  Suddenly, it is like blinders have fallen from my eyes. Or, as I wrote  before ... I woke up.  

It is disconcerting to find myself still unaware of how large or small I am when I look in a mirror. "Is that really me?"  Much more disconcerting to find that I try to hide my desire to eat compulsively from the people I love, from the grocery store clerk, from people who can look at me and see that I am overweight.  

Don't get me wrong.  It is not as if I haven't done any work.  I went on major diets. I did the 'protein fast.'  I even reached 'goal weight' through a 12 step program.  And I uncovered the fact that I had clinical depression and was placed on medication that caused immediate weight gain.  I went for two years (recently) without eating any processed sugars or most white flours. Except for the last six months ... I'm not sure if I really did. It's like I slipped into some kind of emotional coma.  Like I knew it was time to break out of the chrysalis and whip out some wings to fly into a new stage of life.  Whether I am going to be a moth or a butterfly, I have no clue.  But a new stage is coming ... and I'm a little terrified. 

~ CS