Not a horse

I had a friend, who is one of the teachers at the high school where I work, stop by my office on some business today.  While she was in there, she asked me how I was doing with my health.  She was one of the people who knew I had cancer at work and has a family history of the same kind of cancer.  She always

asks how I'm doing on that front.  I expressed that everything is great with the cancer being in remission, but not good with the pain in my legs.  As I've shared before, I have been dealing with on-going, chronic pain in my upper legs ever since I began Optifast over a year and a half ago.  Even though I'm no longer on the program, the pain is still with me and makes things difficult.  Some days I can manage the pain and then there's other days where it just kills me.  So she comes back with, "Well, just be grateful you're not a horse!"  I looked at her with a WTF look on my face, wondering where in the world that was coming from.  She must have seen my look, so she went on to explain that when she was a little girl, whenever she was in pain or something bad was going on, her father would tell her, "Well, just be grateful you're not a horse because when they are in pain, they shoot them."  As a child, she said it was comforting, but as she became an adult, she realized that it was pretty morbid.  Um, yeah!!  So, apparently, on my blessing list today is the fact that I'm not a horse.  I know, it was a weird conversation, weird enough for me to share it on here.  Yeah, you're welcome.  I guess the moral of the story is just be happy things aren't worse.

Things have been pretty busy for me at work.  Right now, the kids are in the thick of college applications.  One of the things I do in my job is coordinate all of the college visits that occur on our campus.  Because our students perform well academically, we have over 100 colleges coming onto our campus this year to meet with students.  That means I interface with each college counselor, help the kids with signing up and clearing their absences and sitting in on the visits whenever possible.  Often times, I'm running all over the campus because I might have three colleges coming on at the same time and so I've got them all in different rooms.  It has me "on" all the time, being the person that represents our counseling department and maintaining good relationships with the various admissions counselors.  Some have been to our campus year after year, so they have gotten to know me well.  One in particular was coming onto campus today.  Every year that I see her, we greet each other with a hug and catch up on the previous years' events.  Last year when she was here, she commented on how fantastic she thought I looked after having lost so much weight on Optifast.  At that point, I think I was down about 150 pounds.  I was dreading her visit this year because I knew she would notice how much weight I had put on since then.  I almost didn't want to see her this year because I was feeling so ashamed of the gain.  She's a completely lovely and friendly person, so I can't

imagine her ever giving me a look of anything other than being sweet.  It was just what was swimming around in my head.  I hate to admit this, but even when I was getting dressed this morning, I was trying to find pants that would be the most flattering on me so hopefully she wouldn't notice too much of my gain.  Omg, the things that go through this kooky head of mine.  Of course the visit went great, we had a great conversation and she didn't make one comment or give me one yucky look about my weight gain.  I tell you, sometimes I am so self-involved that I think everybody is looking at me and accessing my success/failure by how I look.  Vanity run amok!!  I don't think I'm a narcissist, but now it's got me wondering about that a little bit.  The truth is that, in general, most people don't think the same way about me that I think about me.  In my mind, I think so much is about the weight gain, when really that is my own battle.  People still care about me just as much as they used to, if not more because of the perseverance they see in me in that I am not giving up and trying my best to be healthy.

With all of this said, I get to keep working on myself and moving forward.  Another friend at work and I started our lunch time walks again today.  We haven't done any since starting back this school year.  With my pain, I told her I am going to have to go slower which, of course, she is perfectly fine with.  I'm glad we do that.  It gets us both out of our offices fore awhile and then we for sure eat lunch for the rest of the hour because we're hungry for it after walking.  I find that the walking is not only good for my body, but really feeds my soul as well.  Anything that can do double-duty like that is definitely something I need to do again and again!