Open Box

So now that Pandora's Box has been opened, I think my doctor truly understood the magnitude of the internal struggle I had going on that was behind my depression and my weight gain. And this of course was only the first step in me getting some form of help. She saw that I was struggling with my demons. Even though they were internal, I still felt like if I let people know what was going on, it would somehow cause them some stress and pain, and that's something that always bothers me even to this day. The hardest thing I do is keep things inside me so that people around me that I love aren't affected. What I didn't realize that was by doing this, people thought I was distancing myself fro them, when it's really not them, it's me that I distance myself from.

My husband knew none of anything I had gone through and I was terrified to say the least to let him know what was brewing inside me. Around my loved ones, I try to seem so well put together and so organized. Well, that's because my chaos lives within me. Hidden deep and just now reaching the surface with the help of my doctor.

After my first conversation, which by the way, ended with me crying uncontrollably. It took me awhile to calm down, but for the first time, letting the words start to surface, was somehow comforting. She sat me down and looked at her schedule and blatantly told me that this is only the beginning. So here we were scheduling appointments every couple weeks. She is an amazing doctor, and opening up to her was very comforting because she didn't look at me like she was judging me. We talked a bit more about my medical history to see if we could maybe work on a couple things at once. I told her about my PCO (Poly Cystic Ovarian Disease) and she asked me if I was ever checked for diabetes. Well, I didn't understand the question until she explained the relationship between diabetes and PCO. Wow, go figure it took me falling apart to learn something new about something that I've been living with since I was 16. She scheduled the blood glucose levels test for me for the following week.

I left her office that day feeling a tiny bit lighter, but she was right, it was only the beginning, we had merely scratched the surface to tell you the truth. She prescribed a prescription to help me deal with the depression and the anxiety. In all honesty I didn't take them at first because I didn't want anything to change ME. But at the same time, the crying fits had become uncontrollable as have the anxiety attacks. There were times at work where I would be sitting at my desk, and the tears would just start falling. Good thing I sat close to the bathroom and could easily get in there without anyone noticing. It got to the point where I decided to take them. Well that lasted all of a couple days. The prescription she gave me was some pretty potent stuff. After a couple days of taking them, I realized, that somehow I wasn't me anymore. So without the medication, I wasn't me, and with the medication I wasn't me either. I mean, they reduced the crying fits and the anxiety attacks for most part, and oddly enough I noticed I was eating alot less, but I was wayyyyyyyyyy too calm, and that just wasn't me and I was afraid people would notice and ask me what was wrong, so I stopped taking them. I figured the best way to fight this was to fight it head on. So that's what I'm doing now. Fighting my internal battles head on and finally bringing it all to the surface.

The open box was exactly what the doctored ordered, but I know it will be a long hard road. There is still so much that needs to be said that I need to deal with. It's several years of build up and of secrets that I promised I would never let out. Some that I don't even know where to begin with. But I am BEGINNING, and that atleast is a good step forward to me Looking for myself within all the pain within.

Floodgates

So here I am, in my doctors office crying like the world has just ended, and she must have seriously thought I had snapped. Everything just started pouring out. Stuff that I don't think she EVER expected to come out of my mouth. I told her about my childhood. Specially how I grew up feeling like I was NEVER enough. My mother was a teen mom and while I love her now, alot has happened in the past that I am still dealing with internally. My grandmother, who I absolutely adored and miss terribly, always kept me close to her. The first 10 years of my life were the times I miss most because she was always with me to keep me safe. My grandmother got sick I think when I was around 6 or so, and that's when things started changing and when I realized that somehow I just don't fit into this world.

I was molested shortly after my 8th birthday by a friend of the family. Like most kids, you keep it too yourself because of the threats to those you love. Yes, he did the one thing that would kill me, and that was threatened to harm my grandmother. She was my world, and I could never let that happen. I never told anyone about this person, or what had been happening to me, and it went on for a good little while, until something happened that had caused him to not come around my family home as much. No one in my family even knew how much him not being around really meant to me. This was the beginning of the bottle that I had kept within the depths of my soul that held all my deepest secrets. Even as a kid going through this and feeling like it was my fault and if I didn't keep the secret, it would harm my grandmother. So, I did. I kept the secret. I couldn't even fathom a world where something had happened to my grandmother and I was the one responsible. She passed away not knowing any of this had ever happened because I knew telling her would do one of two things. It would hurt her like he said he would physically do, or it would crush her heart and her spirit which were both something I could never let happen.

Many kids are out there are just like I was at that time, and we as parents, need to truly open our eyes and watch our children CLOSELY. I'm not saying that I wasn't watched closely, but as adults, I think we don't realize the signs that there is clearly something very wrong or something going on with our children. Maybe I had reactions to his presence that might have been a clue, maybe I could have spoken up and said something. Maybe, someone could have just asked me if anything was bothering me that I wanted to talk to them about. There are so many MAYBE's that could have been explored that may have gotten me to open up about what I was keeping in. But those MAYBE's never happened. And so, I kept it in and bottled the secret up, until that one day when the bottle exploded and the FLOODGATES of my life started to open up.

It wasn't until years later when I had this breakdown that I started to tell my family what he had done and who he was. It was the BEGINNING of me telling my story and it all started because the FLOODGATES opened and I just couldn't keep it all bottled up anymore.

Pandora's Box

So let me go back to where it all began.  And I mean WAYYYYYYYYYY back to where I think some of the trouble with my weight actually started.  I'm not going to say it's always been a problem, because that just isn't the case.  I used to be a tiny little thing.  Worked out alot, ate properly.  My weight started piling on when I had my second child.  Now, I love both of my babies equally, my son has turned into an absolutely amazing young man, and my little girl, well, she is turning into an amazing young little girl.  I've always wanted children but was told many many years ago, that because I had PCO (Polycystic Ovarian Disease), that it just wasn't in the cards.  Well surprise surprise.  Looks like the doctors were wrong about that one.  hahahahhaha  Thank goodness for that because in all honesty, I don't even want to think of what my life would be like without my babies. 

So back to my story.  When I had my daughter, a lot of things changed.  I had just become a mom for the second time, and I cried ALOT.  Not because I was becoming a mom again, but because I was always worried that I would in some way fail to always protect my children from anything that could potentially harm them.  I felt the same when I only had my son, but having the second baby, somehow made the job seem to be so much harder.  I always stressed even when I had my son that I was never doing ENOUGH for him.  I literally spoiled him and protected him to no end at all.  After all, he was my little baby angel boy and that was why he was put on this earth.  As the years passed, and he grew, we decided we wanted to have another baby.  So here comes my little angel girl into the world.  What a beautiful blessing they have both been for me to have. 

Protecting your kids is hard enough in todays society, but when you have so many bottled up emotions and stress about failing to parent them and protect them to all ends of the earth, well, it really does start to wear you down.  I kept all my doubts, all my stress, all my worries and all my hidden thoughts to myself.  Anytime they would creep up in my brain, I would cook because at that point, cooking and eating had become my own little version of therapy.  Soon enough, there I was. Stress cooking and eating.  At first, somehow I didn't notice, or maybe I did, and just refused to deal with what I was doing to myself.  Stress eating can easily be one of the most calming things I had done for myself, and no one could tell me anything about what I was eating or how often.  I just wouldn't listen.  So on it went, stressing and cooking, stressing and eating.   Anyone who knows me personally, knows how much I love to cook and eat.  It got to the point, where I started battling depression because I felt lost in myself somehow. 

I had days where I honestly would just sit alone and cry, without even really knowing what I was crying about because I never sat down and thought about what I was doing, what I was dealing with, what I had dealt with, and what it was doing to the ME that I had buried deep deep within.  I had become an emotional disaster according to my doctor and needed help. 

The journey to find myself couldn't really start until I started dealing with the emotions I had buried for years.  The memories, the pain that I had hidden since I was a little girl.  Having children started to trigger those memories and my way of dealing with them was to stress eat.  So I did.  For many many years, until I just couldn't get through the day without finding myself in tears for one reason or another.  I suffered from panic attacks, and crying bouts that I couldn't figure out how to stop.  To make matters worse, the heavier I got, the more depressed I became because I was not happy with ME.   So I guess that's really where my journey begins.  It all began with an emotional meltdown that was bound to happen at some point, if I didn't talk to someone.

So that's what I did.  I started talking to my doctor.  That first discussion was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.  I honestly felt like I was opening Pandora's box, and to be honest, I was scared of what the box held inside.  But I guess that was it.  That was the beginning of the journey for me to truly start looking at myself.
 

Where to Begin!

So I guess I should start off my introducing myself and provide a brief summary as to why I decided to start this blog in the first place.  Normally, I'm not one to put my feelings, thoughts, struggles or successes out into the world, but lately, I seem to have alot of people asking me what is going on in my world and how have I been able to finally lose some of the weight.

So first off this blog is about my journey to find myself.  I'm doing this through a variation of different methods.  New adventures, new friends, new weight loss journey, and new self awareness.  It really all started back in January 2012 when I got on the scale one day and tipped it at almost 200lbs.  I've struggled with my weight for the past 9 years so to see that I had gotten that high on the scale, almost without realizing it creeping up on me.  Who am I kidding!  I saw it creeping up on me, I just got way too busy with other things to really take a hard look at myself and what was causing my weight gain and my health to spiral out of control.  At that point, I was 38 years old, mother of two a wife, and an individual that pretty much hid under layers of hoodies and sweat pants.

Well, the day I tipped the scale, was an absolute eye opener.  A friend of mine had been telling me about this health program that she had tried and worked for her months before, and I just shook it off thinking that there is no way anything like that would ever help me.  Well let me tell you, when the scale hit that magic number, I just couldn't deny it anymore.  I was gaining weight and I NEEDED to do something about it.  I had already been on Metformin for about a year and a half, and in all honesty, I didn't think for a minute about what I was doing to my body or my health long term.  Truth was, even though I was happy in my life, I had and still have so many internal struggles that I am just now learning to deal with. 

I ate because I was depressed and I was depressed because I ate.  It was a horrible battle and is something that I still struggle with to this day.  I haven't had the easiest life by no means at all.  I grew up seeing and hearing things that I internalized so that they wouldn't impact people around me negatively.  Especially my children and my husband.  Under no circumstances did I ever want any of them affected by what I dealt with internally.  What I didn't realize was that by internalizing all my pain and all my internal battles within myself, it lead to alot of comfort food which then made me bigger and bigger. 

The bigger I got, the less I felt like doing things with my husband and my children.  I was ashamed to go out and enjoy myself because I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin.  I lived like that for 9 years.  You have to keep in mind as well, that I am only 5'3 so at that height, that amount of weight is just not distributed in a healthy way.  I spent alot of time crying to myself, not only over my weight, but over everything that is going on inside me that I NEVER dealt with.  Unresolved feelings about my childhood, my family, my future.  It all weighs on you at some point especially if you hold everything in and don't tell anyone.  Telling people about your deepest secrets and fears is one of the hardest things to do.  I didn't ell anyone because I didn't want to be judged or I didn't want anyone to look at me differently.  In a way, my weight was my comfort and I could hide behind it.

So this blog is about my journey.  I'll share with you some of my thoughts, my struggles, my successes and by doing so, I'll be helping my inner self deal with the pain that I've kept in side for so long and hid it all by eating for comfort.

If this blog can help anyone in any shape of form deal with internal struggles that will help them get their weight and their life under control, then by all means, I'd love to hear about it. 

Keep reading, there is alot more to come.