Feeling alive for the first time in a while.

I feel freaking amazing!

I don't know if it's because I had a really intense time of prayer and worship the other night, but ever since then, I have had a very different perspective on just about everything. I have been trying to be authentic to my character and since starting in the place that is most important to me, I have been able to let my heart shine and sing. I feel rejuvinated, recuperated, revived!

I wrote the first page of my novel. It's wobbly, and I have no idea how to tie the overarching theme around all the bits and pieces I have in my head, but it's a start and that's more than I can say for the last year of my life. I'm also going to sign up for my first 5k next month. Even though I think I could be more prepared, I'm just going to do it. The worst that can happen is that I walk some of it. I'm doing it, I don't care. And then I'm going to do another one in the spring with Gigi. I'm singing again... very loudly. In front of people... In the shower. I am even contemplating getting a she&him like duo together with any of my talented singer/guitar player friends. I'm wondering where I can start volunteering and getting involved with my community. I feel good about myself again... I mean, I am nowhere near the kind of healthy that I want to be... my body still hurts from the weight but I am learning to love myself despite what I've been through.AND!!! I can't believe I waited so long to talk about this; I'M FINALLY GOING TO EUROPE!!! I'm going to visit my friend, Morven in Scotland. I decided I just have to do it. i have to go and get the things I want or I will never get them. I should have done it long ago, but I was afraid. I'm not going to be afraid anymore. That's dumb. Life it too short, and like I said to Kyle last night, I want to hand my kid a shoebox full of photos and movies I made from all the wild adventures we had.

I feel alive for the first time in a long time. I'm making some break throughs, emotionally and I'm starting to feel mended.

My heart is totally full!

XO

Elle

Don't be normal: Letting go of falling in line, caring what people think, and taking off ideals that don't fit.

I'll do what I want.

It sounds willful and defiant. Like it's falling out of the mouth of a child. And as I say that, I stop and wonder why that's such a bad thing in context to how I feel now. I will do anything I want. As an adult, I've fallen in line with everyone else for way too long because that's what I thought I was "supposed" to do. I'm excellent at being submissive to the ideals of our culture and yet, I disagree with most of it. Which has in turn, made me miserable. I wrote a post similar to this on a different blog, regarding my faith and how it is the thing I cherish most in life but I don't show it very often because I fear what others will think about me.

So far in my life, it has gotten me nowhere, caring what other people think. It has gotten me nowhere but at breakneck speed. This is MY life, darn it. I don't know if I deserve it if I let anyone other than myself and God influence my decisions. Why do I cringe to myself every time I have a new business idea? Because the thought of sharing it yet again, for people to think how flighty and indecisive I am and how my career has been after me for ages to get married and I just can't commit. So what?! I wouldn't settle down with any old guy, I don't know why people expect me to settle down with any old career. I have standards. Another puzzling thing I seem to care about is my perceived intelligence. I have been in gifted classes and on the honor roll since the third grade. Stabilized IQ scores have been called into question, but it was high enough last time I was tested, that I can consider applying to Mensa. I come from a family of certifiable geniuses. My ability to use context clues and pick up on things that most people miss or don't want to admit is undeniable. Why do I freaking care if anyone thinks otherwise?! The million business ideas? ONE OF THEM IS GOING TO STICK ONE DAY AND MY BRAIN WILL BE THE BRAIN THAT THOUGHT IT UP.

So what if I wanted a blue wedding dress or that I want to have pink hair most of the time. Who the hell cares if I don't enjoy being a homeowner and would rather live in a studio or loft and be a minimalist!? What does it matter to anyone else if I fantasize about traveling around the country in a camper, gypsy style?? I have experienced "normal" and it made me so miserable, that I've been depressed and nearly suicidal.

Excuse me if I no longer feel like working at a job I HATE to pay for things that I don't even want because that's "what I'm supposed to do". From now on, I will do what I want.

Depression, a long summer and finding my fire again

It's been a month since I last posted. I've got a song playing on my ipod by All Time Low called 'Weightless'. The lyrics go "Manage me, I'm a mess. Turn a page, I'm a book half unread. I'm stuck in this effin rut, waiting for a second hand pick me up... I'm over getting older. Maybe it's not my weekend, but it's gonna be my year. I'm so sick of watching while the minutes pass as I go nowhere. This is my reaction to everything I fear... I've been going crazy, I don't want to waste another minute here."

I got really depressed the last couple of weeks. I let myself get stuck in a rut... It's difficult for me to crawl out of those funks. I've struggled with depression my entire life. For a long time I tried to ignore it and pretend it did't affect me; and then wonder why I was always so messed up. I finally learned to accept that it was a part of me and that I should try to deal with it. This blog was part of my way of working through things. But I have a hard time being honest about the times that I struggle, personally. I don't want people to see me fall apart, so rather than admit what I'm actually going through, I just stop being as transparent. I hide. So for the sake of trying to get over my issues... here's some brutal and uncomfortable (for me) honesty.

At the end of July, I had to euthanize my beloved cat, Hadley. I got her when she was 8 weeks old, and shortly after that, she developed a weird skin condition that caused her to itch her face raw... that I spent the next three years trying to cure. I dragged her to the vet many a time, only to find that they would just pump her full of steroids and send us home. The cycle would start all over again when the meds ran out. I tried everything I could possibly think of. We cleaned, we painted, we got rid of the carpets, we gave her special food and made sure that she didn't eat out of plastic bowls. We tried flea dips, special shampoos, holistic creams and oils, raw food, vitamin e, sardines for her coat, plastic tips for her nails and the dreaded cone. She spent half her life in that bloody thing. Most of the photos I have left are of her with a crusty face and half of her fur gone. It was time. That's not to say it didn't break my heart into a million pieces. I cried for three days. I miss her all the time...  That's what really sent me spiraling recently.

There's been other things. But I wasn't really thinking about them, I was just doing what I have to do. One is probably the fact that my marriage is really difficult. Like.... what?! I don't even know how we got here... I assume this is what we call a rough patch, I just didn't anticipate how hard it was going to be just to talk to him sometimes. I love him. He is my best friend. However, in instances like this evening, doing our budget together for the first time in a very long time was super laborious. We fight hard and I just wish either of us would freaking get it together and read a book on communication or something. I think we are going to kill each other.. maybe... then he turns around and tells me how beautiful I am. I can't tell if we are really resilient or really toxic.

Speaking of the budget, our financial life is atrocious. We were on a really good path for a while; paying off debt and keeping a good budget but then something happened. I'm not even sure what but we stopped talking about everything and he let me just start handling it all. I think that made me shut down because I stopped being 'good with the money' ... I spent... And I ate.. a lot. This has actually been a really long five years of my life. Nearly since the beginning of Kyle's and my relationship, we've had to overcome stuff... Stuff that I wasn't really prepared to deal with. I don't know... I don't want to spend this entire post complaining, I just don't know where to start to really sort through all this crap. I don't even recognize myself anymore. I used to have a lot of fire and passion and I just let it burn out.

I think I have to start by simply admitting that it has been my choices that have lead me down this path. There is no one to blame or congratulate for my successes and failures except me. I don't know if that is necessarily going to help or cure the clinical part of my issues... hormones are hormones but maybe I can jump start something in me again... If I truly start to believe that I am responsible for all the crappy things I have going on, maybe I can start to be responsible for making good things happen for myself too.. Like getting motivated enough to find a job that doesn't bore me to tears. Or to lose the weight I've been lugging around for the last five years, or to get started on my novel, or be a better wife, or work with my husband to get us into a better position in our finances and learn to communicate better with him, or get up the guts to finally apply to mensa.

I don't want to carry this shit anymore. I don't want to be this person anymore. I just gotta find my fire again.

"Happiness isn't a real emotion...It's a generalization of positive feedback emotions that exist as a reward for overcoming adversity"

This. weekend. has. been. THE. most emotionally draining couple of days in recent history. I'm kind of at a loss for where to begin explaining. I learned a lot about myself. Stuff I never realized and things that scare the hell out of me.

It all started Friday night, with an argument I got into with Kyle. Things escalated pretty badly until we were both screaming at each other, things were being thrown, words were uttered that can never be retrieved. Married people fight. It's, for sure, a thing... We just haven't had a night like this in so long. I don't know if all the pressure we've been under just boiled up and exploded, but it was something that made me double take at what we've been doing. To be honest, it made me question if we would last. I know it's ridiculous for me to say that coming on the heels of the post I wrote the other day about how we are hanging in there and coping, but I've never really experienced this with Kyle. I've always just adored him and our marriage, despite the difficult things. I always felt like we'd come back together no matter what, since we came together so organically in the first place. My heart hurts, though, because ever since the fight, I've felt distant from him... He doesn't feel like mine, he feels strange in my life. It's pretty scary for me because for the last five years, I've had my best friend. We've always been able to make up and get back to our path. This time, I can't put my finger on the wedge between us that is so cumbersome.

Something else that is sort of view changing and telling is the realizations about myself. Without getting into too much detail, I finally understood that the abuse I received my whole life has shaped the way I view myself and my relationships and I am constantly setting myself up to carry other people's crap, be their punching bags, neglect myself and my feelings and just shut up and take it. I never realized that I don't actually deserve that life. I don't want that life. It's possible that Kyle and my dynamic is skewed because I don't ask him to carry much of the burdens. I just assume I'm supposed to carry it on my own. So he never has a chance to grow from it. I'm not saying he's not any to blame for the crap we deal with... there's plenty he could work on. Mainly his minute grain of empathy and his communication skills when things are hot and scary, but if I was the person I'm supposed to be more often, he might be becoming the person he's supposed to be. Something else that I'm sure ties into my warped sense of myself, is how I have developed a very refined flight response to adversity. When things get difficult... I just run. I've been running for so long. The thing about running away is that even though it's easier to do at the time, it never makes me happy. Usually, what I want is just on the other side of the dragon.

Having just written that, I realized that maybe it's not really a wedge between Kyle and I... maybe it's me just shedding some old skin... It's not that he particularly feels strange, but new. Maybe our relationship is heading into something new. Maybe, if we can learn to fight the dragon together (the dragon being each of us working on the respective baggage we brought into our marriage) instead of fighting each other, we can come out on the other side stronger and better for each other. As difficult as it is, I know God wants me to keep loving Kyle, even when I feel sad or distant or like I just want to run away from it all. Love isn't always how we feel about each other, it's sometimes choosing to stay and fight for each other. 

I'm scared, but it's time to pick up my sword. Stay. Fight. Conquer.

Trading in 'skinny' for Strength

I made a facebook update about this yesterday, but I felt like I needed to expound upon my thoughts. After clocking around 30 miles in the last two weeks, I can already feel my legs getting stronger. So much so that I haven't woken myself up with a charlie horse in quite some time and when I get out of bed in the morning, my feet don't hurt nearly as much as they used to. Dealing with plantar fascitis for the last three years has been hellish and debilitating, but the last few weeks have been almost pleasant for my feet and me. I can take stairs easier, walk longer, breathe easier. It's a gorgeous feeling and I feel that way about myself. Some new and ground breaking thoughts sort of came rushing in yesterday and I think it's the most healthy I have ever percieved myself and my goals. I no longer just want to be 'skinny'. I absolutely want to be smaller, but now, it's for the right reasons. Not because someone told me that skinny neccessarily equals beautiful, but because being a smaller person would allow me to do things I haven't been able to do in a long time or ever. Not only do I want to be a smaller person, but I want to be a strong person. I want my body to have strength and grace so that I can enjoy what I'm doing. Three months ago, I couldn't be on my feet for longer than a few hours. Now, I'm marveling at how strong my calves feel and how far they can take me. One of my best friends once told me that I need to make working out a hobby; that I need to get to a point where I enjoyed doing it. I could never understand where he was coming from before because my goals of 'getting skinny' weren't enough to make me want to do the hard work. It was a lazy goal but, now, feeling the rewards of working harder than I ever have is leading me to want to put the time and effort in. Now, I'm addicted to feeling my body strengthen. It is so good. As trite as this sounds, nothing is more fitting for me right now than the Nike slogan, 'Just Do It'. I got to a point where I ran out of excuses and I just went out there and started working for it. Some of the miles are challenging, mentally, but I can't think of many things that are more rewarding than doing the best for your body. I wish I would have gotten here sooner.