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

At exactly the right moment

I finished my summer classes on Monday.  I am now officially a college graduate - WOO HOO!!  That feels really good to write.  I am the poster child of perseverance.  I started my college journey in 1991.  Obviously I didn't take all my classes without stopping because who takes 22 years to get their degree?  No, I had starts and stops in there with a big gap of years where I didn't take any classes at all.  But, once I decided to really get my degree, I pushed through and did it.  I even did well in my last two classes.  I went in with the attitude that all I needed was a "C" in each class, that's all I needed.  The people that really know me, though, know I wouldn't have settled for just a "C".  I tell you, the most challenging class for me was that last darned Spanish class.  It had been three years since I had any Spanish, so I was pretty nervous that I wasn't going to do well because this class was taught all in Spanish with not a lick of English.  While it was only six weeks instead of the typical 16 weeks, I felt like a robot who was learning so much in such a short period of time and having to be fluent in it.  The new words weren't so bad, but it was the verb conjugations that were killing me.  Do you know how many ways there are to conjugate one word?  There are many tenses, like present, present perfect, imperfect, preterite, past, past subjunctive, future, conditional, past participle, blah blah blah.  I feel so much empathy for those that are attempting to learn English or any other language for that matter because there are rules and exception to rules.  Ick.  That's over, thank you God.

I was supposed to be on a summer road trip as I type this, but I'm not.  On Friday, I took my car in to get serviced for the trip.  I thought I'd do an oil change and have them check out the tires.  Turns out, for the distance of the road trip, I actually needed some major work.  I just had several things coming due at once and they would have to be done before I could hit the road or I would likely have major problems on the road since it was a 1,600 mile round trip journey.  They were things like both my front and rear brakes, all four tires needed to be replaced and more.  It ended up costing me $1,375.  I was completely unprepared for that.  I have gone to the same shop for my car needs since I was 17 years old, so I trusted them when they told me what I needed.  They were even gracious enough to throw in two additional things and no cost to me to make sure I would be safe on the road.  So, I had to make the difficult decision to cut out the Utah part of my trip because of the unforeseen expense.  I am still going to Vegas because I really need a mini vacation away from home before I return to work.  I've done nothing this summer except those two classes, so I need a break.  If you've ever taken a summer class, you know how absolutely intense they are and I was taking two.  I didn't do anything else besides the two classes because there was no time!  I'll be heading out to Vegas on Sunday and I'm definitely looking forward to it.  This morning I was playing a game on my computer through Facebook, just totally in relaxation mode, when someone "liked" a post of mine.  I was curious what that was about because I didn't know the person.  So I clicked on it and saw the post below in an Optifast forum (I erased names and pictures of people to protect their identity):

As I was reading my original post and all of the comments, my heart sunk for a little bit.  This was back in September, not even a year ago.  I absolutely remember the feelings I was going through when I posted this.  Imagine being nine sizes smaller.  It was just a feeling of utter joy like I had never felt before.  I got a little bit sad because I know I'm not there any longer.  I have gained a lot of weight back for a myriad of reasons.  Actually, the reasons are unimportant.  They are important because I need to deal with them, but the fact remains that the weight gain is there and that's something I have to walk bravely through.  I know this post came at exactly the right moment because, just this morning, I was looking at the mirror and being incredibly critical of myself.  I'm not where I started, that's certainly true.  But I'm also far from the happy girl in the post above.  In fact, my Facebook profile picture now is the same one from back in September.  I guess there's a big part of me that hasn't updated it because if I change the picture I think that somehow I'll never get back there.  Silly, isn't it?  There are many things that have hurt me in my life, but I have to say this battle with weight has been gut-wrenching.  It's the single greatest challenge of my life by far and many of you know I have been through absolute hell and back several times.  So for me to say that, it's saying something big.  I really do believe, though, that God put that message before me today to get my attention and to remind me that I absolutely can do this.  I can be healthier and I can feel better about myself.  I'm working on it, but it's not always an easy thing.  Food is a battle and I think it always will be.  However, in that moment, I knew that I needed to see my joy to remember that I did it once and I can be there again.  I must remember, I drank shakes for ten months and didn't eat any real food during that time, so, seriously, I can do anything!  I won't be doing it through Optifast this time because of the medical toll it took on my body, but the will and perseverance are still alive in me.  If I ever doubt that, I can look at college degree that will soon be in my possession as a reminder.  I can even look at my own smile at that smaller size and know that, one precious day at a time, it is possible.  I just have to do the work.  That doesn't mean just exercising and eating right, but that means the emotional work that feels so much bigger than anything else.  It's just one foot in front of the other, though.  I don't have to run at full speed to the finish line.