The Maiden Voyage

I've been thinking about blogging for a long time. I created this blogspot page ages ago, and never touched it. I couldn't seem to wrap my mind around what it was I really wanted to *say* with my blog. I didn't want it to become another boring, here-is-my-cute-kid blog, and I certainly didn't want it to become a Dear Diary. So it sat here, and I tried to ignore it, but the idea kept haunting me. Ironically, I was never much of a blog follower until recently, either. WHY I wanted to blog when I didn't even read the things, I will never understand. Some inner part of me had a message it wanted to send out-but first I had to find the message! I didn't know it yet, but the me I was becoming, on the inside, was trying to get out....  Then, early this year, I had a midlife crisis.  Ok, maybe it was a third-life crisis.  Regardless of how you want to chop the years up, I snapped. 

I realize, in retrospect, that it had been coming on for a long time.  Since the birth of my son in 2004, I had given up all sense of identity.  Oh sure, I had lots of hats.  I was a mom, a wife, a hardworking employee...but who *was* I?  I had thrown myself into motherhood and caring for our family for so long, that after 4 years I was an automaton; getting up and going through the same routines day in, day out, refusing to spare a thought for myself.  Oh, sure, there were times that an uncomfortable feeling crept through me-what was I doing with my life?  What did I want to *be*?  Why wasn't I moving along in my career or trying new things or travelling or...?  But the reality of facing the big picture-that I was living a lie and deep down I knew it-was too much for me to face.  So I buried it underneath busying myself with working and parenting and taking insanely meticulous care of my home.  I was so hidden beneath layers of defense mechanisms and "comfort" routines and behaviors that I completely lost myself. 

Finally, in 2008, as I approached 30, I could feel the panic attacks building; 30!  How did I get there?  But the worst was barely being reconciled to 30 and suddenly finding myself in 2009 and turning 31 with a frightening sense of deja vu!  Where had the last year, or decade for that matter, of my life gone?  Who was I?  How, and when, did I get here?  The panic attacks culminated in a frightening thought, repeating over and over in my mind; "I can't live like this any more."  I had tried to stifle and bury myself under those hats, under the parenting and housecleaning and sacrifices, for too long, and rather than shrivel up and die, the person I was becoming (unbeknownst to me!) burst out of me with an intensity and energy I had never known before. 

That might sound insane but it's true for so many people and we don't even realize it. The short definition of a midlife crisis, according to Wikipedia, is "a period of dramatic self-doubt that is felt by some individuals in the 'middle years' of life, as a result of sensing the passing of youth and the imminence of old age." This spring, when I was sure this was more or less what was going on in my head, I googled for cures for midlife crises. How did one get OUT of them, was what I wanted to know! The information I found was surprisingly helpful, and very reassuring. The internet resources I located spoke of realizing that the inner person you have become is no longer in sync with the outer person you project, and it discussed feeling unintentionally disingenuous and at odds with yourself and the world you found yourself in. It discussed the panicky, trapped feeling we get when we realize we're not who we expected to be, or where we expected to be in our lives, and it went on to say that, to resolve a midlife crisis, we must identify those facets of ourselves and our lives that are not in line with who we really are, at the core, who we have grown to be, and bring them back in line! This, this was something I could do!


The first step, for me, was so easy.  I...was...FAT.  70+ pounds overweight at only 5 foot 5 inches tall.  And I was miserable.  I was so fat I didn't recognize the person I saw in the mirror, and I really hated looking in the mirror.  Almost, but not quite as much, as I hated having my photo taken.  Every time I looked in the mirror, I kept hoping somehow that person I saw would magically be the person I WANTED to see.  Every time I saw a photo of myself, as I reached to look at it I would mentally cross my fingers that somehow, in that photo, I'd suddenly see the skinny me of my youth, and not the corpulent me of my 3 decades on earth.  And every single time, I was horrifyingly, humiliatingly, distressingly disappointed.  Because the me in the mirror and the me in the photos was everything I was afraid I was, on the outside.  But it wasn't the me on the inside, and finally, the inside me had had enough!

I'd dieted before and lost weight, but even after a year and a half of steady dieting, was still 30 pounds overweight and unable to handle the cravings anymore, so I ballooned back up.  I hated working out, passionately.  I'd always considered myself a sedentary person, at least in adult life (in my teens I'd loved dancing and jazzercise, but what self-respecting, and especially overweight, adult dances hip-hop, and what mother working a full-time job can find time for a jazzercise class??), and I couldn't imagine myself working out.  But this time, I knew.  This time, I needed help.  This time, I had to quit looking for the magic pill, quit taking the easy way out.  THIS TIME, I had to make the change for real, for good.  I needed me.  I was calling out for help, and I was the only person who could answer, and help myself!  I knew that I needed an incentive to work out, but that I was too embarassed to do group workouts and that I'd never stick with them.  I knew that the one way I'd be sure to do my workouts would be with someone whom 1.  I trusted, as a professional, to know what the hell they were doing, and 2.  had something to hold over me, something that I couldn't walk away from.  And that something was MONEY.  I'm insanely cheap, and I knew that if I was hemorrhaging money to pay for the expertise, by God I'd attend the sessions.  What I needed, I concluded, was a Personal Trainer.  I googled Personal Trainers close to my office, and found Fitness Together of Denver.  And that, my friends, was literally, in ways that you can only appreciate when you've had one of those moments, the First Day of the Rest of My Life.

That was in late February of 2009. Today is January 5th, 2010, and I'm honestly not the person I was a year ago, inside or out, and I am immensely relieved and grateful for that. In this blog, I'd like to revisit how that happened for me, and hopefully explore how it happens for other people, and help people who need it to happen for them, to find a way to let themselves out.  I'd like to invite you all to join me on my own journey through my midlife crisis, through my weight-loss, through my own Dark Ages and out into my own personal Age of Enlightenment.  I hope that, along the way, you will find your way in your own journey and share it with me, as well!  Welcome to Don't Think.  Just Go!  Shall we?