Amazing news!

My day went pretty well, although I got reminded of that I am a larger person.  Of course I know I am, but there are moments when I'm going merrily along in my life that I just forget.  I feel almost normal in those moments, as if I'm not the biggest one in the room or no one is focused on my weight.  I had two such reminders to sort of punch me in the gut.

The first was when I had to crawl under my desk at work for a duck and cover drill we had at our high school.  Living in California, we do have earthquakes quite a bit along fault lines to varying degrees of intensity so we have to prepare for worst case scenarios as much as possible.  The drill required us to hold in position under the desk for about a minute. A minute is not very long for most things, but when you're trying to get your body in a contorted position and have to hold it when it hurts to be sitting in a normal upright position most of the time, let me just say it was beyond uncomfortable.  It hurt in ways and in places it shouldn't hurt.  When there is a large amount of excess weight, things hurt indescribably.  I'm sure I don't have to explain this to most people.

Then, after student lunch, my friend and I went for a walk to get some exercise in during our lunch hour.  It was even my idea!  I thought it would be great to do because we haven't really been walking since I was sick this month. Since it was about 75 degrees out and so I thought it would be good for me.  We have several places we can walk in the neighborhood surrounding the high school.  We took a course that we normally walk.  It takes about 40 minutes and we usually do about 2 miles.  I'm still having respiratory issues, so I knew I would need to walk not as fast, so I slowed my friend down during the times when she was walking a bit too quickly for me.  I hate to admit this, but I was miserable during the walk.  I really enjoyed being outdoors getting fresh air and spending the time chatting with my friend, but I sweated a lot.  That's what happens when you're bigger.  When I was on Optifast, I went through being too cold all the time because I had lost a ton of weight.  Now I'm too hot.  By the time we got back to the office, I had sweat dripping off my neck, some around my boobs making my bra damp and I was breathing heavy.  I was starting to feel sorry for myself, comparing my 371-pound body against her 120-pound body.  If I would have admitted that to her, she would have scolded me for even thinking that way and she would have been absolutely right.  However, I did catch myself after a few minutes, just remembering that I don't have the right to do that to myself.  I'm a work in progress and I have to keep reminding myself of that.  When I forget, the lovely people in my life do a great job of doing it for me.

My little pity party didn't last long because just an hour or two after that happened, I got some really fantastic news ... I got into grad school!!!  Yahooooo ;-) I was so excited, more than I could express.  I have worked very hard to get to a place where I could even apply to grad school, let alone be accepted. That was the most amazing news and I've had so many people just as happy for me today.  When I was growing up, I felt pretty stupid.  I was given this message when I was younger when I was told that I was worthless and should just get a job when I was done with high school.  Even during my high school years, I ended up finishing at a continuation high school.  Not because I couldn't do the work, but because of a traumatic event that made me decide skipping school for six weeks was a pretty good thing to do (it wasn't).  Instead of choosing to come back as a fifth-year senior, which you could do at the time, I elected to finish high school elsewhere.  So to go from that to going to graduate school is beyond description for me.  The take away from this is that no matter what your circumstances, if you want something and work hard for it, anything is within the realm of possibility.  Hmm Kathy, that probably applies to losing weight, too!

Water Challenge Day 15:  Drank 186 of 186 ounces