Muchness and Light

(Please disregard Stephanie.)

Yet again, I've come across a greeting card that triggered a blog post.  This time, I wasn't looking at the cards; I just happened past it, walking through the grocery store.  I have another copy of it somewhere, buried in a box, but I'd completely forgotten about it until this fateful trip.

No, it's not a younger me, though God knows I had that haircut (and color) forever—thanks to my mom for standing me on the front porch with the Fiskars and whacking some bangs to frame my face.  That doesn't look like my dad, and I don't have a younger sister.  And I'm betting the Buffy-Davis-looking sibling didn't make that bubble-lettered sign.  (Did no one teach the maker {possibly Stephanie herself} to plan her layout, so the compound word wouldn't have to be broken up?) 

I like Stephanie and her sign.  I mean, it doesn't have the colorful burst of salutation of the others, but she obviously digs corn on the cob.  She took the time to scrawl her love across the page—again, note the lack of planned layout—and share it with the world.  I'm betting she was rushed ("Hurry up, so we can take the damn picture, Steph!") and didn't have time to illuminate her proclamation of maizean love.  But she seems more joyous about sharing her thoughts than the other two. 

So the whole Please disregard Stephanie thing really irks me. 

This Stephanie hates the feeling of being disregarded.  I don't care if you don't like me.  I can deal with people being angry or upset with me, as long as there's the promise of communication regarding the problem.  But to feel like I've been dismissed, as though my feelings and I suddenly aren't worth the time and effort... well, that's just infuriating. 

I can look back at my life and pinpoint very specific moments when I've felt dismissed by others.  Many, but not all, surround traumatic events.  The sting of having had my feelings pushed to the side is still strong sometimes, even when it seems the drama was a lifetime ago.  Usually it involved being on the receiving end of acts that were completely outside my control, acts that made me feel worthless as a person.  Memories of those real and imagined transgressions can still catapult me into questioning my inherent value. 

But there have been times when I've been the cause (or the catalyst) for people withdrawing from my life, deciding that I was a liability to their own worth.  It's like I've suddenly been told that I can't do something—talk to you, see you, tell you what I'm thinking.  I can guarantee that the worst possible way to get me to stop doing something is to tell me, through actions or words, that I can't do it.  It makes me petulant and bratty, and I tend to lash back in ways that are likely to hurt me the most.    

Regardless of the mode of dismissal, I need to find resolution, some kind of emotional detente, to be able to move forward.  I have a tendency to get stuck in the mire of overanalysis, picking apart the woulda-coulda-shoulda of the whole situation.  Again, I'm okay as long as there's the promise of communication, the possibility of potential closure.  It's when that's withheld from me that I get annoyed and angry and vindictive. 

So I hope that Stephanie doesn't feel bitter that's she's effectively being told, "No one cares about you or your damn corn, girlie!"  I hope she revels in the fact that she's not like the others, that she's unabashed in sharing her eccentricities and uniquely profound view of her inner world.  I hope she reaches over and pulls her sister's pigtails, right before draws sardonic stick figures of her dad and a cob of corn on the back of his picture.

97, 98, 99... 100!

It's been coming, I've known for days it was on its way, but it happened, finally.

I've lost 100 pounds.

It's a magical, if arbitrary, number.  It's only one pound more than 99, and certainly less than my ultimate goal of 115, which is well within my sights now. 

It's been a year since I started this part of my journey.  After blowing two discs in my back and being generally miserable in my own skin, I knew it had to change.  I found a great site and app, MyFitnessPal, where I could track everything I ate and did.  I started walking, and then eventually started seeing a trainer.

I still see that trainer twice a week for strength work.  It's expensive, yes, but it makes me accountable.  Some days it's hard, and I'm sore and tired, but I can see and feel the results—and so can other people.  That's a major driving force to keep me motivated when I don't really feel like working out.

In about twelve months, I've abandoned 100 pounds of ass, but I've also lost about 15% body fat.  I'm now in an "acceptable" range of body fat percentage.  My type 2 diabetes has been in remission for over six months.  I'm no longer hypertensive and sometimes have issues with my blood pressure dropping too much.  My resting heart rate is about 70, and I have to really try to get my rate above 120 when I'm working out.  I'm off all meds, with the exception of the thyroid hormone I will likely always have to take, and Zantac because I drink too much coffee.

I started at an 1,800 calorie limit.  Now it's about 1,250.  I usually eat the calories I burn from working out, so most days I actually take in about 1,500 calories.  If I'm hungry, I eat, even if it's over my prescribed limit for the day.  Hunger is a sign your body needs something—it's dangerous to constantly deny those needs.  I avoid refined sugar, because I know it will trigger a binge for me, though I still drink it in my coffee (plus real half-and-half, and I don't even count those calories).  I eat good carbs, a lot of fruit and whole grains.  I have days when I protein pack to help build muscle.  And I almost always get at least 25 grams of fiber. 

I am unquestionably smaller now than almost anyone who knows me has ever seen me.  I'm three inches taller and a size slimmer than when I met DH and Tiff and Mo.  Mo commented a couple of weeks ago, "I forget how freakishly tall you are until you look so skinny!"

The morning I hit the 50 pound mark, I caught my friend, Adam, online.  He and I had talked at length about my weight and body image issues.  He congratulated me and said, "Pretty soon, you'll be at 100.  You'll be so damn skinny!  You can do it!"  I remember thinking that seemed so unattainable, such a distant goal that I couldn't imagine when it would actually happen.  That was six months ago.  And he hasn't seen me in 30 pounds now. 

So I have a little more to go before I feel I will be completely comfortable.  I will never be anything but a curvy Amazon.  Not only am I okay with that, I like it.  I don't want to be rail thin—I know my body could never support itself at 120 pounds. 

I could be at my goal by the beginning of 2012.  It'll be my luck that I finally get the body I want, and the Mayans turn out to be right.  So I intend to enjoy the hell out of myself, with all the people I love.  Even if the world does come to an end, I'll have had a year with the ass I always thought I deserved. 

12:51 is the time my voice found the words I sought.

DH and I have had a couple of conversations recently about the purpose of my blog.  It's definitely a personal blog (as opposed to a corporate or organizational blog), meaning that I'm reflecting on what I think and see and feel.  Originally Muchness and Light started with a definitive Alice in Wonderland slant that shifts my writing from time to time, but I quickly realized I had more to say than what Lewis Carroll or Tim Burton could directly influence. 

I don't run ads, with the exception of my links to Zazzle and my Amazon aStore.  If you purchase products through those links, I get a small percentage, which helps cover my blog and domain services.  I've debated setting up an agreement with an ad service, but I don't really see the necessity or the long-term benefit.  There's already enough going on on my page.  I don't want to clutter it further with unrelated content or pretty pictures.  I can handle being scattered without any help from the outside. 

I don't write a lot about the day-to-day facts of my life, though I'm likely to mention them on my Facebook fan page.  Most days for me are a mundane mix of errands and chores and momness.  Sometimes, something exciting or extraordinary happens.  If I'm inspired, I'll write about it.  If not, I'll keep it to myself.  But I always try to find something more to say than just what I'm thinking and feeling. 

There's always the issue of what the reader adds to my words.  You aren't me, you aren't in my head, and you may or may not know the impetus for a piece I've written.  You certainly don't know the thought process I went through, jumping from one point to the next.  But you bring your own experiences and moods and expectations to your reading and that will undoubtedly influence your own perception of my writing.  That's what's expected of the audience, and I think that's what makes feedback interesting. 

Sometimes I'll discover that someone has read something and totally missed my intent.  It can be frustrating, making me question whether my words were effectual.  I have to remind myself that I'm also not in your head.  I'm a reader in my own right, and I know there have been many times when I've reread something, perhaps for the dozenth time, and realized I was interpreting it in a completely new and unexpected way. 

Every so often, I'll go back and read something of my own—an old post or random writing—and be surprised to see context and meaning I hadn't noticed before.  I've written specific things that were intended to be about one thing and ended up being about another, only recognized in hindsight.  I've been in one mood when I wrote, then in a juxtaposed frame of mind when I reread it, and seen my writing in a completely different way. 

I guess that's part of the fluidity of the written word.  It can say so much or nothing at all.  I'm sure I have days (and posts) where I do both. 

But, like me, Muchness and Light is a process.  My voice is on a journey of its own, and I'm excited to see where it takes me.  For the first time perhaps in my entire life, I feel like there are other people who want to hear me and who value not only what I'm saying, but the fact that I'm saying it at all.  It's simultaneously humbling and gratifying, knowing that you've made the choice to read this—that you have sought me out and want to see what I have to say, even if it seems like I'm only talking to myself.

 

(Yes, I know it's a Strokes song.  So does Adam.  But he's the one I love the most, not them.)

Un-break my heart. Say you'll love me again.

I was in a store today and saw a greeting card that advised the recipient to "follow your heart".  What if you're headed in a direction that's the opposite of your heart's desire?  I thought to myself, "What if your heart doesn't want to follow?" 

I know the easy answer is to turn around, to change your destination, and to let your heart be your guide.  As Steve Jobs said, "Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition—they somehow already know what you truly want to become."

But sometimes, it's just not that easy.  Sometimes there are things that prevent you from giving your heart what it wants—which is nothing more and nothing less than simply what it wants.  They're almost always external forces.  I started to say that they're almost always outside of your own control, but that's just not true.  There's always a choice, even if the consequence is dire or heartbreaking. 

 

I guess that's what I started thinking about, the fallout of breaking your own heart by refusing to let it have what it wants.  It's a difficult position to be in, and it feels self-sacrificing, no matter the reason.  We're either letting going of something to help someone we love feel safe and content, or someone else is keeping the thing we want from us, which makes us feel persecuted and lets us fall easily into the role of emotional martyr.   

Either way, it sucks. 

So how do you continue on your journey, stumbling over your own broken heart?  It's not easy, for sure.  You take the pieces and focus on laying the path toward your destination, wherever it may be.  But stepping on your own pain and using it to propel yourself forward may not be enough to numb it. 

Do you cling to the hope that you can one day, someday?, backtrack to that fork in the road where your heart was sacrificed and go the way of original intent?  If it's feasible that you're making the temporary choice to ignore your own desires in order to bring about this sense of contentment, then hopefully there's no harm in planning to hit that road again.  But if you know there's no way back, that there's truly no way to ever return to that place and attempt a different forward... then hope is a dangerous thing.  It can send you caroming precariously up and down unfamiliar slopes, always looking over your shoulder for what you think you're missing.  And we know how well that worked out for Orpheus....

Sometimes you have to learn to deal, to put your big girl panties on and do what you gotta do.  Again, it sucks.  It hurts like hell but just has to be done.  Hopefully, eventually, you'll come to terms with the choice—whether yours or someone else's—and find some semblance of detente with your heart, so that it agrees to quit its bitching and give you a little peace and quiet, even if only for a while. 

Is this lump out of my head? I think so.

I went to see my endocrinologist today.  I have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, which led to the removal of the right lobe of my thyroid in 2006.  I've taken a daily replacement hormone for the last couple of years, and I'll be on it for the rest of my life.  I have to check in with my doctor regularly to monitor those levels.  I also get regular ultrasounds of my thyroid to check nodule growth and the like.

Today my amazing doctor (who might be the smartest person I know—he worked on the Human Genome Project) was running the transducer over my neck, checking every square millimeter of my remaining thyroid. 

"I'm almost done," he said.  Then, "What the hell is that?!?" 

 Not really what you want to hear from the guy doing your ultrasound. 

"Let me go check something in my office," he said quickly.  He rushed from the room and came back a few moments later, clearly baffled. 

Turns out, my thyroid lobe grew back.  But it didn't come back where the right one was removed.  It grew at the end of the left one.  It's kind of like if I'd lost my right leg and a new left leg grew out of my left shin. 

The doctor said it looks like thyroid tissue, with blood flow.  It's not a nodule, and it's not a cyst.  It's not common, but it does happen, though he's never seen it like this.  (He said he has one patient whose entire thyroid regrew in about thirty days!)

He doesn't think it's anything to worry about, though he's not sure yet what he wants to do.  I have to have more blood drawn and go in a few days for a needle biopsy.  (I've had a thyroid biopsy before; it's no darn fun.)  It may be that it comes out, or it could just stay for a while.  I'll be interested to see if it's producing hormone.  I'll keep you updated.

But this may finally answer the question of what my superhero power really is.  Apparently I can regenerate glands.  My elder son's tonsils may be growing back, so maybe there's some weird genetic component to it all.  Maybe somewhere in my ancestry, one of the Amazons mated with a Merman whose dad was really a starfish. 

DH says he fully expects some black ops unit to come in the dead of night and take some samples, to see if I hold the key to having soldiers regenerate limbs and organs on the battlefield.  I say they don't need to sneak in—I'm more than happy to offer my services in exchange for an all-expense paid, month-long "vacation" at a research facility, where there's no dishes or laundry or homework. 

Either way, I think it's freakishly awesome.  I was going to say it has nothing to do with my muchness, but maybe all of my reclaimed muchness is being stored in this new thyroid lobe.  Oh jeez... now I gotta really think about what to do with it.  If it has to come out, should I get it in a little jar for posterity?  Is that beyond creepy?  (Am I suddenly channeling The Bloggess??)

So please chime in with your stories of weird organ regeneration and extra limbs and stuff.  Chances are one of you has a second set of tonsils or an extra toe or a third nipple or something.  Really.  I can't be alone in this, can I?

You'd be so good, so very good for me. What do you think? Tell me honestly?

Like most women, I have lots of girls I can hang with and laugh with and do generally whatever with.  But there are two, in particular, who've been there with me through the thickest and thinnest, for more than twenty-five years.  I was a freshman in high school when I met each of them, and we have done it all together.  (Well, okay, not that, but honestly most women don't do that with their besties.  That's another blog post, though.)

These two, Tiff and Mog, have been there to help me breathe, both when I couldn't stop laughing and when I couldn't stop crying.  They've rolled my drunken, stumbling ass home more times than I can count.  They've answered my unexpected calls in the middle of the night, and they've soothed my swollen, puffy eyes the next morning.  Our shared laughter has borne so many inside jokes that it's all a big, cheek-aching blur.  (Unicorns! <thumpboomroll>)

Being scattered around the country, I'm thankful every day for the ubiquitous technology that keeps us in each other's loops.  I've lost track of each of them at different times; sometimes life just gets in the way.  But, just like we said when we were sixteen, we'd find each other again and it would be like no time had passed at all.  We're all connected by this web of history and experience and love that binds us together, no matter how much time or distance is between us.   

I was, in fact, talking to Mog this morning.  There's an episode of Sex in the City (#206, "The Cheating Curve" to be exact) where Carrie's diaphragm gets stuck.  Miranda and Charlotte each decline to help, but Samantha agrees and goes on a recovery mission.  Tiff and Mog would totally retrieve my diaphragm if the situation warranted, and I'd do the same for them.  (No innuendo.  Again, that's not what besties do.  We'll talk again in the other blog post.)

For the record, Tiff is a Charlotte, with a little Miranda thrown in for good measure.  Mog is a Samantha-Miranda mix.  Me, I'm a Carrie, with a late-night-poison-control-call dose of Samantha.  Our personalities aren't so defined as to be this one, stereotypical character.  Like most women, we are complex, and we thrive on it.

Women can be freakishly competitive about the strangest things, and girls are mean.  We tend to show only our best sides to the other women in our lives, horribly afraid of the snarky backbiting and weird judgments we know women make about each other.  (We all do it.  Really.)  These are the women I don't have to be that way with, and vice versa; they don't care if I haven't washed my hair in three days or worn make-up in a month, looking oh-so-snazzy in my holey sweats and flip-flops.  When I do look great, they're the first to tell me.  But they'll also tell me those jeans make my butt look big.

More importantly, they'll tell me when I'm being a dumbass.  They have absolutely no qualms about letting me know when I've gone off the next deep end.  They also have no qualms about being the ones to rescue me when I need it.  Believe me, they have—time and time again.

I have one guy in my life like that, and I hope I never, ever lose him and his Hammer of Honesty <wallop, wallop!>.  There have been a couple who filled that roll through the years, but they almost always ended up becoming lovers, which ultimately blew the relationship in its own way.  I do think it's much, much harder for men and women to cultivate the extremely close platonic relationship, not so much because of sex but because of undeniable differences in gender.  (I could blog about it, but just go watch When Harry Met Sally and let's be done.)

I hope you, the one reading this, have someone in your life like Tiff and Mog.  I hope you have someone who can be brutally honest with you—not despite their love for you but because of their love for you.  I hope you can be that same person in return.

It's good for everyone to have someone there when you get something stuck where you just can't reach it. 

I'm on the road of least resistance. I'd rather give up than give into this.

DH and I were recently discussing promises.  He stands firmly behind the premise that promises are made to be broken.  Not that it's a relative juxtaposition or anything, just that there's an implication of potential breakage when any promise is made; the swearee knows the swearor will, in fact, not follow through if given enough time.  Just as staunchly, I believe that you don't make a promise unless you intend to defend it, to do whatever it takes to make the promise of the promise come to fruition—fully recognizing that shit happens and sometimes you just can't help it when things go awry. 

 I try really hard not to offer things I can't deliver, whether an actual thing or an act or a non-act, as in, "I promise not to do such-and-such."  It's kind of surprising, really, because I'm a very selfish, very determined girl, who will generally do whatever it takes to get what she wants.  I can be dogged when it comes to fulfilling my own heart's desire.  Sometimes it borders on being a bit obsessive.  (Bite it, Absolem.)  But I just can't get behind making an empty promise only to make someone else happy.

There's something about intentionally promising to do something that I know damn well I have no intention of ever doing... it's innately deceptive.  Believe me, I've been known to lie, cheat, and steal to get the things I want, but there's always some weird sense of moral truth to those desires, like I deserve to have those things, like they're destined, so it's okay to do whatever it takes to get them.  Promising something to someone else, for no other reason than to make them momentarily appeased, seems wrong to me.  It's a blatant lie with no greater purpose, and I have a hard time wrapping my heart around that. 

So if DH is right and there's an underlying fracture in a promise, is there a reason to keep it?  Is there something sacred in the vow, even if it's inherently imperfect?

Yeah, I think there is.  A real promise, as a compact between two people, is made in confidence, both in the sense of trust and in the sense of secrecy.  Only the hearts of the avowed know the depth of the oath.  The circumstances of that connection are worth defending, are worth trying to protect, even in the face of extreme internal and external adversities.  The selfless intimacy that gave birth to such a promise is what makes it sacrosanct and that's what gives the promise its own inherent value. 

And what if a promise is broken?  What happens when one party digs their fingers into the minutest cracks of the covenant and rips open the facade? 

It doesn't make the occasion of the promising any less inviolable.  If the hearts and souls of the swearee and the swearor were truly as one when the pact was made, the circumstance of the emotional communion is in-and-of itself a thing of undeniable beauty, worthy of exaltation even if the fruits of that labor have spoiled. 

Maybe I agree with DH more than I realize.  Maybe, deep down, I assume all promises will indeed be broken, ushering in an inexorable amount of drama and possible trauma.  I certainly have historical reason to assume I will be disappointed.  Perhaps, as I'm prone to do, I weigh the potential consequence of my actions, of breaking a promise (intentionally or not), and choose to avoid the difficult burden of yet again examining my own motives and culpability when I fail. 

Often my refusal to make promises I think I can't keep is perhaps for selfish reasons, a way to protect myself from my own disappointment.  I'd like to think my lofty (if seemingly random) ideals push me toward making the honorable choice, but I think it's really more a matter of lowered expectations: if I don't climb very high, the fall will hurt a hell of a lot less. 

But I'm still enamored of the experience, of the extant intimacy that led to the communion.  I'm enthralled by those dark, quiet moments that happen between two people, two of billions, and the intensity of the emotion surrounding that connection.  That is the kind of stepping stone I'm looking for, laying my path and edging ever closer to the ultimate destination of Me. 

Even if the promise will eventually be broken—even if there will inevitably be shards of trust lying about, ready to slice my fallen knees—there's still something virtuous about the bare hearts bursting with their own affiance.  It's tender and fragile and budding, and that is worthwhile, simply because it ever existed at all.