so wrong, so right

I read somewhere that diet is actually the key to weight loss...and I really do not doubt it at all.  I have been trying to pay attention to my food choices and why I pick what I do and I am finding it really hard to pick the right things.  I want the butter the bread the pasta and all the things that are guaranteed to ensure I stay hippy.  I find it fascinating that what I consider good food is all the stuff I shouldn't really eat.

I had a friend once say that he treated food like fuel and never thought about it in any other way.  I have other friends going vegan and doing several different cleansing - everyone is thinking about about how to change their diet habits.  Even my super athletic friends are struggling with the right fuel/food to put into their bodies and how to do the right thing.

I wonder if given the option would I take a drug that would make food taste irrelevant or would prevent any hunger or cravings or some how controlled my reaction to food - would I?  I love food and I have being over weight and as I get older I notice my body has less bounce back from the tasty meals and it requires more effort to not explode.  If I had the choice to completely deny myself the pleasure of food, but I would be guaranteed good health and weight loss - I do not know if I could do it.  I wonder if that is the root of why I pick the wrong food - because it feels so right......

tired, a little sore, and elated.

Ragnar how I love thee.   It is hard to understand because why would I love running for days with no sleep being "killed" by the "real" runners left and right.  I look around and there are beautiful bodies and amazing runners every where.  I feel like I stand out and they are probably looking at me going "really?"  I still love it.

My final leg my insides were trying to leave my body for some reason.  I had been at every pit stop in the port a potties trying to get ready and hoping that it would clear before my run.  It didn't.  I was ok for about the first half mile and then the cramps hit me and I felt like I was going to lose it.  Mind over matter and I tried to focus on the run so I could just keep going.  I then see my team on the side of the road and they are all cheering me on.  It is those moments that make the Ragnar something incredible.  The community and camaraderie of not just my team but most of the people on the race.

As those gazelle's pass me, they say great job to me, van's drive by honking and cheering and when you cheer someone on they smile, wave and you can see the joy.  Ragnar gives me an opportunity to experience something I have never even had a glimpse into before in my life and I feel positively fortunate to have had the opportunity to share this with my friends, my team mates, and all the other runners that makes Ragnar....well unbelievable.

It is true.  Enough already. 

shoes are made for running (jogging, walking, crawling)

It is insane.  I have spent more time agonizing over the Chicago Marathon than I could have ever believed.  I know why, so it is no real mystery.  I have signed up for stuff and then just conveniently forgotten about it and never felt guilt because I just let it go.  I did not take in to account My Guy not living up to my usual slacky M.O. and now I am stuck with facing this "habit" of setting goals and not taking them seriously and bagging out at the last minute.  You add My Guys family coming to support him and I am a complete wreck.  Talk about humiliation.

I actually tried googling "I haven't trained but should I try to run a marathon anyway" and strangely there was no valid results - shocking I know.  A few weeks ago we had a 25K and I said to My Guy how ridiculous it was for me to run that race with as little training and during that race I vacillated between I can do the marathon to there is NO friggin way I could run the marathon.

I am 20 days away and last night I decided I am going to give it my best try.  My goal is to finish before they sweep me up or just close down the course.  It will be almost impossible to complete and will be a brutal sight and it will not really be anything to be proud of IF I manage to walk across the finish.  It will be a wakeup call about what I can do versus what I sign up to do.  I need to figure out what i really want to try to do and accomplish and stick with that.

I guess in the mean time..I have 19 days until I commit suicide pretending I can go 26 Miles in less than 6 hours.  Hell I got myself into this...now I gotta get myself out.

stuck in the middle

“The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating – in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.” – Anne Morriss

I have been trying the whole moderation thing and honestly I am not very good at it.  Moderation has just become doing what I want in shorter more strategically determined times.  I don't drink all day - get my chores done - then drink a bottle of wine.  The good news is that I am feeling way more in charge of my life and not waking up in complete anxiety attacks because I have NOT done all the things I should.  The boys are better cared for, the house is better cared for, and my life is more normal.  The bad news - I feel more lost about my real purpose because life feels more duty orientated and the passion is lost.  I am working to make the right choices and do the right thing.  Some of this could be because I am still trying to break the habit of doing whatever I want - breaking the habit of just having fun is damn challenging.  

I have been two versions of myself through out most of my life.  I have been the one that does not care about anything and just does whatever I wanted to and had a blast.  t is great for awhile but then the emptiness takes over and I have to push further and further to have fun and keep life exciting.  I have also been someone who had to commit completely and focused my life on that it was all i did or think about it, eventually burning out.  I am generally a person of routine and I will keep my routine until one day I suddenly realize that I stopped and left that routine far behind.  One of the thing I admire most is passion and commitment to the passion and yet it is the one thing that I have never been able to achieve.

The inner mean girl reform school "lessons" have been interesting to me because they talk in depth about the voice in my head that just kicks my ass daily.  I am not surprised by this but I do not how to transfer my inner bitch to someone that helps rather than hurts me.  I have been lately able to stop myself, catch me before I downward spiral and I have started making some better choices and thoughts about why I am doing something rather than digging in deeper.  I am making progress and I should celebrate.

The version of me in my head is so much more who I want to be the one I see in the mirror.  She is stronger, braver, passionate, focused, empowered and I feel like if I could just break free of something I could be that person.  I am starting to wonder if I am so captivated by the person I could be and how to become her...that it makes me lost to my true self.

TMI - Texas blues

My coworker and I had to fly to Dallas for a customer issue and the conversation turned to the fact that I grew up and Dallas and did I have family there.  I have gotten pretty good at providing a skinny version of my life for people and I do tell it because it does not really bother me.  However this particular co-worker has the appearance of serenity now and complete family normalcy.  I did not know how he would take my story but it is easy enough: Adopted at 5, out on my own at 17, no longer in touch with my adoptive family and met my entire biological family. I explain it is not uncommon in Texas - or at least in my experience - for a family to have a black sheep.  My bio mom and dad were both the black sheep and my adoptive mom and dad it was their brothers.  Of coarse, I took the role in my adoptive family - someone had to step up.  

The irony is that night I met up with a few family members (wait for the clarity) and I had to do a similar recap for my cousin but I started back even earlier in the story.  It amazed me the ease and fluidity in which I am able to susinctley tell the story and yet feel so completely removed.  It does not feel like a story about me but something I have learned to regurgitate.  This is a story that I would consider too personal for my blog because it exposes me but for some reason I feel like this is part of my current journey right now.  It is the acceptance and the release of a life time of dysfunction that stands in my way.

It starts with them.  My father always speaks and writes about how he spotted my mother across the room and was captured by her beauty.  He fancies himself a poet and has turned the whole event into a Harlequin romance that I can not discern his fantasy from the truth - but I never speak of that - instead I think and describe two young kids first year of college in the mid 1960s that managed to get her pregnant and got married and tried to do the right thing.  Instead my father buckled under the responsibility, struggled and eventually deserted my mother leaving her to move back to her parents house and slowly became mentally unglued.  I am mentally generous (wow how clinical does that sound?) about all of this because I really understand that these are crimes of youth, inexperience and victim of the society expectations that should have never been the life sentence it has been for both of them.  The part I never really share is that my mother tried to end her pain and decided to kill herself and me, but from the stories as they have been related to me, she lost her nerve after giving me the overdose (never giving herself one) and at the last moment begged my grandfather to save me.  The path is confusing to track after that because there was family fighting, my mothers demand that no family member have me, my fathers release from jail, my mothers release from the mental hospital, foster care families and eventually adoption when I was five and half.  I have a 50 page document that attempts to explain the whole thing but the more people I meet from that time and hear their stories the more vague it becomes.  The first thing that I remember really - much to my natural grandmother's constant dismay before her death - was meeting my adoptive family.

It was not really a good match and right from the start it was pretty acrimonious.  I probably was pretty screwed up emotionally and they were people living in a time and a place where you did not really deal with screwed up - toughen up and deal with it yourself silently - was their philosophy. I actually remember that during my childhood my mother had some sort of incident where she went away for awhile but it was never discussed.  Looking back, I think she had a nervous breakdown (whatever that means) and spent some time recuperating but I cannot know for sure.  It was hard between us always until finally in 10th grade when they sent me to boarding school.  I believe they really wanted to do the right thing by me and their intentions were good, but their hearts and own disfunction were the perfect antimatter to my entire world.  Right before I went to boarding school, they sat me down and told me about my mother, the "murder" attempt, the state involvement - the disaster known as my birth.  I think they were doing their own scared straight but at that point the thing I remember most from that talk is the devastation that my dream of two parents being tragically killed on the way back from the movies was wrong and my father kept yelling at me to stop crying (I can still hear him yelling RENEE - Stop Crying right now) It felt like a lifetime had passed in those few hours until they finally sent me to my room to "get myself together."

I remember when they pulled my out of boarding school for my senior year - honestly I do not remember why but I believe it had to do with several events including one of my school counselors reaching out to them concerned for me.  Bitterly I still assume they took me out because they wanted to retreat from public exposure of our issues, but maybe they felt they could help more directly if I was home.  At one point things got so difficult they sent me to a shrink who also expressed deep concern for me and wanted to see me twice a week.  For context, I had been suicidal most of my teen years (one time I told my parents I had tried and failed and they commented that they hoped I realized now how stupid that was) and really believed I would never live past 23 - I was not a happy girl.  

They gave me the choice to go to counseling or not but asked if I really thought I needed someone else's help to get my head on straight.  I wonder if I had been strong enough to go to counseling if it would have helped but I had learned to tow the family line and realized it would be worse to get help and live with them than to just survive. When I was fourteen I had taken money out of saving, researched bus tickets and was going to run away to California, thank god my brain kicked in and thought about what would happen once I got to where I was going and after that my whole goal in life was to survive and get out of that house.  We didn't make it through my senior year before we had the big show down.  The words I can never get passed was my dad telling me that I was going to die someday - probably murdered and cut up into little pieces in the trash - and no one in this world would care.  Sometimes I wonder if that is true (because who would say that to a child and for what purpose) and maybe he did not say that but I can still hear his voice saying that to me in my head so either I have an incredibly creative mind (possible) or it is true.  The shocking part was at that point I was just numb.  I finally did not cry I just let them yell and berate me. The next morning I skipped school, went to the bank and took out all my savings, bought a piece of shit car and moved out.  

There was a very sketchy year for the next year that involved sleeping in cars, trying to go to college, boys, men, and then finally the Air Force where my life sort of normalized.  Well that's not exactly true but close enough.

I talked to my adoptive parents in my 20s maybe two or three times.  I desperately wanted reconciliation and closure and healing although I was not healed and they were no different. My greatest fear was that they would die before they every got a chance to accept me or even life me.  We tried once or twice to talk and be together again but it was always an opportunity for me to apologize for my crimes against them, the pain I caused them.  I thought as time passed the pain would lessen for both of us and as adults we could find our way to at least forgiveness.  I tried in my late 20s again and then in my early 30s but finally they sent me a note that said they never wanted to talk to me again and did not care about me or my life and I finally got the message and have never tried again.  

I met my biological mom when I was 20 after finding out she had registered at the adoption agency for matching if I ever joined.  A few years later I went on an emotional journey and met her family, my dad's family and a half brother.  I took another ten or fifteen years before my dad was found and we met for dinner one night.  Meeting my origins is not like what you see on all the day time TV shows, because for everyone the event of your birth and then your loss had significant impact on their lives.  It is hard to absorb the blows of what your existence did to the family.  I begin to feel like it was important to do this for them and struggled with what it meant to me.  I am still meeting relatives as the other night I met my cousin (my father's sister's daughter) for the first time.  We had dinner and my Aunt and I discussed (more like debriefed/decompressed) the trip where we visited my dad - she had not seen him in 30+ years and I had only spent a few hours before that trip with him.  I wish I could say I take comfort in these people and it has healed old wounds but there is a strange curse about the whole thing.  We are like puzzle pieces that were cut slightly wrong - all of us.  We see how the picture fits together but it is painful to force it together.  

Not sure where this is going or why I put it down.  Being in Texas always does this to me and I am really glad to be home.

spare you from thinking

I have been debating in my head for like ever about this stupid vegan/gluten free cleanse that a friend of mine has going on.  Several of my friends have done it and rave about it and have continued being vegans.  I struggle with this because people I love meat.  I like red meat, white meat, the other white meat - you name it I will eat it and that does not even being to cover my passion for cheese - not eating cheese would be like dying a little. 

Why in gods name would you want to live a life that was lacking in these basic pleasures - what the hell motivates these people to make these extreme choices?  With the outbreak of allergies, hormone fed animals and environmental chaos due to the food we eat - is that something I should worry about?  Should it worry me that I have turned a blind eye to the environmental impact, the health benefits and the respect of animal quality of life? Maybe I should on all these counts, but it doesn't.   (Have you seen the TED video about the future does not have to be a nightmare,  worth a view)  The better question is why do I think they are better than me, and better off because they have the will power and commitment to do these things?

I tend to get lost between the extremes.  I do not know if I have always had a problem with moderation but I think I have.  I never have 1 or 2 glasses of wine, I drink the bottle.  I never run 3 miles and feel good about it.  I rarely eat a moderate dinner - it is either super healthy (rare) or indulgent (most common) or just skip (see indulgent meal before).  My lack of commitment to the moderate leads me to be susceptible to these extreme ideas to right myself.   The lack of moderation definition allows me the room to be a slacker where as the extreme is so well defined I know if I am on path or not.  

Is moderation really something that can not be defined?  For example, I will eat out a few times a month (try week) or I will have 1 or 2 glasses of wine - but they are decision that have to be made on the fly and committed to through the duration.  I suck at that.  I do not think I am alone on this because I think all the extremes come from the desire to have your decisions made for you so you do not have to make the right choice or allow yourself to change. 

I watched this TED Video about how rules and regulations are causing us to lose our mental muscle for making morality decisions and depending on virtue.  If you have a rule for it, you do not have to think and if most things do not make you think - you struggle when you actually have to do it.  The irony is that I do not live in a very rule driven world, but a world of routine.  Foursquare has shown me how completely bland and boring my life is because I go to work and come home and that is it most days.  There are no decisions to be made.  I have responsibilities and I do what is necessary.  I am a gerbil in the wheel except I am smart enough (who knows maybe gerbils know too?) that I am just in this treadmill of responsibility.  

All my choices have constructs and outside influences that really never let me wander too far off the beaten track.  This means that when I am trying to manage my behavior I have let the moral decision muscles get flabby and wallow in inadequacy and self-hatred and just keep waffling all the while idolizing my extremist counterparts for their discipline.  I think though it takes more discipline to not be held by strict rules and guidelines and try to find the balance.  The definition of balance and moderation is internal to every human and not something that you can find written down somewhere - there is no recipe.  

Happiness has to be defined by the individual. I should idolize and realign my heroes with the ones that have found a way to make their life about all the things that they must do plus the things that they like to do and have managed to make it work for them.  Just a thought but maybe I should start using that muscle to find the way to keep the balance between the things I love to do to feel alive and the things I need to do....without feeling such pressure to commit so much to either so that neither succeed.  I cannot help but wonder if it is the word commit that is catching in my brain when I say that or if it something else?  I always claim I do not know what I love to do - who I want to be - but am I just afraid to relax and just be me?  

too many words

Its been almost two weeks since I have written and as I am sitting on this plane I feel I have an opportunity to get some of the things out that have been bottled up and stuck inside me.  I have a few things I want to write about so I am probably going to just blast the blog with several installments as all in one long post would get tedious, but I might lose steam or time as the words come out.  I had an altering (life?) experience last weekend that added on with some other recent things makes me feel like I am starting to figure out - which at my age should not be such a miracle but it is.   

I had a 25K race that I signed up for back in the early spring.  I expected to have been training the whole summer and this to be a simple stop on the way to my marathon. Instead I have been struggling to do any run at all and have not committed to a real training program.  I wonder now if I really believed I would be training, or if more of my typical behavior - hoping signing up would make me commit and feel pressure to succeed (even though it never does).  So the last few races I had bagged out of, one due to sickness (which was real but I could have just done what I could regardless) and the other one was because of a complete mental breakdown and fear of failure and embarrassment.  I was in no shape for this race and I knew it was just ridiculous to try.

My Guy has been great, doing all the races, running regularly and going to his track coach.  He has kept to the program even through emergency surgery and honestly it has caused me personal resentment that he could stay so motivated while I was wallowing in - well whatever swamp of disillusionment I have been in.  One morning last weekend he wanted to know how he could get me out of this depression/funk/self-deprication and I honestly did not know.  The problems at work are tough - but it is just work right?  I am allowing it to affect my entire life and I had to ask myself - really is it that bad?  If I step away from the self-grandizing of the issues, its a job and I am struggling but it isn't that bad.  The problem is that I have wound myself up so tight on everything I am a knot of indecision, depression, lack of motivation and have lost perspective.

The day before the race we had two choices, be smart and stay healthy and rested so we could do our best - or not.  We, of coarse, chose to have a fabulous day that unfortunately included quite a bit of wine, food and staying out late - but it was an absolutely fabulous day.  After weeks (months) of forcing myself to let go and laugh and have fun, this day felt natural and easy and it was really perfect.  

The race morning was hard - headache, dehydrated, terrified.  It is easy enough to be discouraged and beat myself up about things when it is just me and my guy, but this was me, my guy and a few of my friends that are awesome runners.  I told my guy to make sure the fast people did not wait for me and everyone went on without me so I would not be horrified when I came in hours after them.  He never agrees with my whole fear and shame attitude but he has learned that I am completely unreasonable on this topic and is a saint in the way he deals with it.  

So we go off, the first mile is hard as it is the first mile in like 3 weeks and then after that I start to enjoy the run.  It is a gorgeous day and I have no illusions that I will do well but I am on my own pounding the pavement with each step.  About mile 4 - almost directly after thinking this will be better than I thought - we hit this hill and I have to laugh because I realize I am in for it and it is not going to be pretty.  I some how managed to keep a good attitude and not start the self-beatings and run as much as I can and walk when I have to.  Around mile 7 or 8, Stew starts being road crew.  He brings me water, then a few miles later some Gatorade and then some red bull (which i have never had before and is really pretty strange).  As we are running along - and lets be clear - there is a guy about 3 minutes ahead of me and a guy about 1 minute behind me and other than that there is really no one else I can see from the race.  The town is awesome though as they are still out there cheering and I know they have been there for awhile.  

A woman gave me a dark chocolate hershey mini bar that may have saved my life because I literally felt it add energy to my body.  I managed to stay out of failure mode and keep a positive attitude.  At mile 10 or 11, I actually felt pleased with myself because I could have done a half marathon and that made me happy.   I didn't remember until later that it was a HALF marathon point and how ridiculous a marathon would be...but anyways.  At mile 11 or so I asked Stew to tell my guy if he could I wouldn't mind him finding me and running me in.  I knew I was running out of steam, my legs were wrecked and honestly just his presence next to me makes me feel better when I am stressed.  Well....that turned out to be a decision that had very interesting consequences.   

Stew's wife had been running in front of me...she was probably a good mile/mile and a half ahead of me (maybe more) and she turned around and found me and started running with me.  By that time we were mile 12 and I was walking, jogging and whimpering.  I felt awful that I ruined her race but her kindness towards me didn't let that feeling linger and I just focused on trying to finish those last 3.5 miles.  About at mile 13 or Stew dropped off my guy and then my super fiend running friend showed up.  

I laughed at one point to my guy and said "you know this is kind of the opposite of what I meant by make them go and not wait for me" and he shrugged said it was all Stew.  Well I struggled with complete and utter embarrassment but the need to stay focused on finishing kept my mind focused because my legs were rocks and starting to cramp and I was going to finish that race regardless of the time or how I got there.  My friends were so unbelievably supportive - even super fiend.  I always feel so inadequate around him and them but they stuck to their guns about being there for me.  It moved me ...it may have changed me forever I do not know but for right now, I feel like it broke some dam or something open. In that moment it was ok to barely finish and it did not make them mad or angry or like me less or anything that I needed to feel bad about.  I was also amazed that during most of the race - I actually really enjoyed the run.  Not being in battle mode and just accepting that I was going to do badly and just keeping moving - the day was beautiful and the run was gorgeous. It was a good run.

Later that week I was telling a friend about how badly I had done and how I was gaining weight.  She said to me you are not overweight and I do not know where you got this terrible self-image.  STOP BEING SO BROKEN. It hit me in just the right was as I realized she was right.   It impacts everything.  It is my default pattern so I am constantly in judge mode - but I allow myself to make the bad choices and then use them against myself.  If I eat badly - see you are just a fat slob, if I do not exercise - I am so lazy, if I drink too much - what a hedonistic fool.  Hell I even use other peoples actions against myself - she ran I didn't - he ate better than me - he isnt even hungry - i suck.  what if none of it matters.  what if I do the best i can and I leave it at that.  could i really rewire myself to let go of the hatred and stop being so broken.  God I hope so.