Facing that hill and those desks

Tomorrow I start another semester of school while also working full-time.  This semester shouldn't be too bad since I'm just taking two classes.  The part that I don't look forward to, though, is the fact that on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I leave the house at 6:45 in the morning and don't get home until after 9pm.  That is a bear of a long day, but it is what it is.  On Mondays, I have my Optifast class, so I have no choice but to stay late at the office and then head off to the class since it's all located south of where I live.  But on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I could come home for about twenty minutes, change my clothes, make my Optifast shake and then head off to classes since my college is north of where I live.  That might be a nice way to break up the day.  As I start this new semester, memories flooded my brain of how the last semester began.

During the days when I was waiting to start Optifast, my semester was getting ready to start.  I blogged about how I had a difficult time climbing a particular hill on the campus, which was a major moment for me knowing I made the right decision to do something drastic about my health.  Tomorrow I will be facing that same hill again.  The school that I go to, Cal State San Marcos, is about 10 miles from my house.  That, along with being affordable and having the exact program I wanted, is why I go to that particular campus.  For those that know the school, it's also affectionately known as CSU Stair Master.  Here's an example of why:

Now, the building where I have tomorrow's class is next to a parking structure.  I can walk across the catwalk, but I'm afraid of heights and it makes me feel queasy every time I cross it.  The other option, if I park in the structure, is park at the bottom and go up a massive, windy hill.  If you read back to the post I mentioned above, it was that very hill that winded me and I made the decision to drop the class shortly thereafter.  I can't be in that all or nothing place anymore ... that's no way to live.  There are other ways to get to the building that won't make me feel queasy for the walk across the bridge and will allow me to get some good exercise in at the same time, which is to just park farther away in a lot that is higher up.  Why am I mentioning this all here?  Because this is part of what goes through the mind of a person who was so heavy that a hill would make her drop a college course she needs to receive her degree.  That's what we do to avoid embarrassment and uncomfortability.  I won't let a hill get the best of me any longer.  I refuse to let it do that!

The other issue for me to contend with is the matter of the desks in the classroom.  This particular classroom has individual desks, whereas my class on Wednesday night has tables with several open chairs at each table.  How do I know this?  Because they have pictures of the classrooms on their website.  Here's what I'm dealing with tomorrow night.

Last fall, I had a class in a room similar to this one where the seats were these exact desks.  The table top lifts up, which I thought was pretty cool to help me fit in the seat.  Yet, when I lowered the table top over my lap, it wouldn't go all the way down because I was too big to fit.  I ended up dropping that class, too.  See a pattern here?  I did pick up other classes in place of the two I dropped, but in classrooms that had open seating.  There's a part of me that looks at these desks and wonders if I will fit this time.  I am down almost 175 pounds (pulling back on the exercise really helped!) and I'm wondering if I'll fit in the desks?  Talk about misguided thinking.  When you have lived in a world where you didn't fit into most places, it does affect how you view things.  It still surprises me when my body easily fits into tight spaces or smaller clothes.  Today I saw someone who hasn't seen me for a few weeks and when he saw me, he literally dropped his jaw and said to me, "Girl, you look gooood!"  I think I blushed.  Or a co-worker of mine came up behind me today as I was at a copy machine in the office and she told me she literally did not recognize me from behind because I looked like a different person completely.

These are the very things I mean when I describe being like a foreigner in this new world of mine.  I don't know how to maneuver appropriately.  I don't even know my own body.  Facing these little challenges help me to continue growing and feeling stronger in the body I have now.  This is not the body I will end up with, so baby steps are what is needed, which is frankly all I can handle right now.