Finding My Forward

Two years ago. Two years ago I was about fifteen pounds lighter and was doggedly training to run my very first half marathon. I’m not a runner and that was way out of my comfort zone, but it was something I'd had on my bucket list for years and had finally decided to just go for it.

I had spent half a year sick and in bed which ended with a funeral at the local cemetery with a tiny white casket with a light pink rose delicately laying on top and our stillborn daughter inside.

My physical sickness may have ended, or at least start improving slowly after that, but my mental and spiritual sickness only continued to worsen.

A year and a half later I found myself driving away from our beloved camper and our beloved lake campground community for the season, and had decided it was time. It was time to change. It was time for ME. It was time to start to heal, and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

And it wasn’t.

I slowly started making healthier eating choices. I slowly started to exercise again. I slowly started losing a little weight again. I slowly started reading personal development books again. I slowly started therapy and working on coming to terms with myself, my body, and with my anger and frustration and disappoint in God.

And the tiny spark began to snowball and every day it seemed to grow a little bit bigger and brighter.

I trained and trained and you know what ... this non runner ran her first half marathon without stopping once. Wow. That is a feeling of accomplishment I will never ever forget. It was a rush. A high like I’d not experienced before.

In time I would donate basically my entire wardrobe and replace it with all new clothes. Smaller clothes. Stylish clothes. I was a new me inside and out.

For the first time in my life I remember feeling both beautiful on the inside and on the outside.  All my life I have battled with a perfection complex. All my life I have battled body image and self worth issues. I’ve dealt with the demon of an eating disorder my whole life... always just right around the corner trying to take over and sabotage.

All my life I have battled not being enough. Always driven and searching, seeking for something greater, bigger, better, more. And all my life I have never found, achieved, accomplished, acquired, attained what my mind has continually been drawing me, propelling me towards.

For about two years I held on, kept the spark kindling. Kept the weight off, kept the training up, kept the outlook strong and positive.

And then mid summer this past summer something started to change, to shift... ever so slowly, ever so gradually.

A few pounds gained. A few morning training sessions skipped. A few inner lies listened to. A few more inner whispers believed.

Days and weeks and months passed and the downward spiral was well in motion. I tried to fight it, but its pull was so strong... the path so engraved with all the times in the past I slid backwards down that path, over and over again. I had gotten to the very top finally this time, seen the view, tasted the sweetness... only to lose my footing and slipping, tripping, stumbling backwards, yet again.

The upwards path had been new and hard but exciting. That top, that summit, had felt so great and glorious. But this path back down, this is as dark and rough and ugly as it has been every other time I’ve found myself on it.

I don’t want to be on this downward path. I don’t want to be dealing with the demons of depression and weight gain and inner dialog feeding me with all those not-enough adverbs and adjectives over and over and over.

I don’t want to have again outgrown my favorite clothes. I don’t want to spend the weekend in bed doing nothing because well, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to "people", I don't want to go out in public, I don't want to go to church, I don’t want to write or read or blog or share. I feel like a big fat hypocrite, a fraud, a disappointment. What would people think if they really knew?!?

I'm Sad. Frustrated. Lost. Disappointed. Angry. Hopeless. Do I need to continue?
Ok, am I being a little overdramatic here and feeling sorry for myself? Sure, of course I am.

I’ve felt the fire and tasted the success, and now there is nothing. The forward motion gone.

The forward motion gone.

Writing these words make me stop. Stop and just look at those words, that sentence, that reality.

I need to find my forward back. I know I do. Lord knows I want to. I would love to be back on that mountain top of success and achievement again. But you know what, I just want to be air lifted back up there- you know, picked up at the bottom and gently dropped off on that flat sunny spot on the very tippy top. Back to when I was healthy inside and out. When the scale and the running was still exciting and on my side. When hard work was still my friend and rewarded me eagerly and generously.

I don’t want to do it all over again. I don’t. I don’t want to have to climb all the way back up... through the mire and mud and muck. It is hard and unpleasant and uncomfortable, and I’ve already done it once. I’ve done more than once, who am I trying to kid.

I told myself never again. Never again would I slip backwards. But I did. And I’m still continuing. And it’s slowly killing me... although obviously not enough to actually get me to dig in my heels and stop the damn avalanche around me.

I don’t want to. I don’t want to do anything, especially anything hard. But I know if I want to somehow feel like I felt two years ago I need to figure out how to stop this free fall. Stop the hollow empty within and relight a fire deep in my belly. A heat I haven’t felt for almost nine months now. I am desperately trying to find it, light it, ignite it, fan it, flame it...

But my insides are wet with the tears of defeat and depression and apparently not allowing those embers to embed.

So the backward continues and the forward waits. But I pray it’s not for much longer. Oh I pray for this winter and cold and arctic season of empty within me to again experience warmth and heat and expansion and sunshine and slowly find its way forward yet again.
I can. I have.
I can. I will.
I can. I must.

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