Memories

Or, my life as I remember it. What I even remember. Though, I'm noticing that I can remember more and more as I progress with my therapy and getting in touch with myself. I know where I was born and when, Gold Beach Oregon, December 1973. That was the beginning, or so I'm told.  I know where I am today. But so much in between the two, I don't remember.

I find lately that I think about the past. Especially as memories come back. I wonder, is it exactly how things happened? Probably not. Is it completely factual? Highly unlikely.  It is in my memories. But the people, the places, the events, they all mix and mash together into a confusing jumble.

Things are slowly becoming more clear to me. The fog that has shrouded so many of my memories and so many years of my life is finally lifting. Many patches of dense fog still remain, hiding places, faces and events from my minds eye. Like a recovering amnesiac, one memory triggers another. Every day it seems I remember a little more, understand a little more.

Still, I can only put together a rough time line of my life. Many holes still exist. Some things I have only a vague memory of, others, no memory at all.

What do I remember? The things that made me who I am. The things that caused me to climb inside myself for so many years. I remember moving constantly. I remember my pets getting killed, given away or left behind. I remember leaving friends every time I finally made one. I remember my parents arguing constantly. I didn't deal with these things well.

I remember a lot of anger, resentment, fear and lack of hope. I remember constantly wondering when I would come home to be told we had to move again. I remember becoming very jaded, bitter and cynical at a young age. I now remember shutting off, no longer letting myself feel or care. I remember giving up. I stopped trying. And then the depression took over my life.

I have spent most of my life floating along. I've always taken the easy way. I've let other people dictate how I lived and what I did. After all, this was my childhood, it's all I knew. I simply didn't care, about anything. I didn't care if I lived or if I died. I didn't care how I lived, I didn't care if I lost a job, a friend, a relationship. And most of all, I stopped caring about my mental and physical health.

That was my life, year after year. Closing myself off and being numb to everything. I tried making things better with alcohol. That certainly didn't work. I tried moving, like my father, searching for something new in a different town. It never occurred to me that the problem wasn't the location.
I became an expert at avoidance, deflection and denial. Nothing was ever my fault, I always found blame in others, but never myself.

 All of this caused me to abuse my body for years. I didn't care. I think it was a subconscious attempt to kill myself. I really didn't care if I lived. I woke up so many mornings with the thought in my my of "shit, I'm not dead". So at some point I just decided to eat.

I've used food as an escape for years. Used it to fill an endless void in my life. Used it to build a shield of fat to keep people away. Fat makes a wonderful barrier. It's superb at keeping people away, at forcing them to keep their distance. And when you don't care if you live or die, you don't care how fat you get. I developed a very dysfunctional relationship with food. I love food and food has tried to kill me.

I've spent years eating simply to eat. Eating because, even though it's momentary, it comforts. It's a friend. I forgot what hunger actually felt like. I would just eat. Food was a wonderful thing to me. Food doesn't leave, it doesn't die, it doesn't yell. Food simply fills the belly. It provides warmth and comfort. And I recently realized that without some drastic changes food would eventually kill me. And I suddenly care if I live or die.

I developed a desire to live at some point recently. Not sure exactly when it happened, or exactly why. But it has been a very drastic change in the way I think and the way I feel and the way I choose to live. My past has made me who I am today. My past does not control my future. It is time to regain control of my life.

It feels almost like a rebirth. I'm starting all over again, from a new beginning. I can learn from my past, but I will no longer let it control me. I feel like I have so much to do. Like I have an entire life to make up. I must get healthy. For me, for my kids, for my sanity. I can not, no, I will not continue to live the way I have. I refuse to be a slave to food any more. I refuse to do nothing because of the pain. I can do something and hurt or I can do nothing and hurt. Either way I hurt.

I'm learning skills I never developed in my previous life. I'm learning to listen to my body instead of my mind. I am stopping to think, am I truly hungry, or do I just think I'm hungry. Is it truly hunger, or is it boredom. Am I eating because I need to, or because I want to.

I'm changing the way I eat. I'm working on eating slower. I'm cooking real meals. I'm avoiding drive throughs and buffets. I've changed how I shop and what I buy. I no longer eat a candy bar a day. I eat one perhaps once a month. I've stopped ordering pizza because I don't feel like cooking. I've quit buying frozen, processed crap.

Not only am I changing how I eat, but what I eat as well. I'm adding vegetables into my diet. I've always avoided vegetables, never liked the. I'm adding more whole grains, another thing I never liked in the past. Fish and lean meat instead of hamburger. Pasta was once a main staple, now it's a side, or something that gets eaten a couple times a month instead of every couple days.

And it all seems to be working. I feel better. I have more energy. My attitude seems better. I'm not feeling as depressed. I've even quit smoking. I have a new found desire to get and stay healthy. Failure is not an option. Failure means death. If I don't change now I won't get the chance later.

The most important thing of all is, I want this. I need this. I desire this. I'm finally ready. It's not like in the past, just a passing thought. This is a strong desire. It's what I think about most of the time. It's a slow road, but if they can move an entire bridge down the road, I can move myself.





Now if I could just get myself to focus on things for more than 30 seconds at a time. It's really quite annoying.