Boogieman | Week 69 Weight Loss

Day 496. 207 pounds lost.

I’m kind of a sucker for big comfy couches. I bought a lovely big sofa for myself when I moved to Minnesota. I didn’t necessarily need a new one, but it was a way to usher in the new home purchase. Why not right? I found myself quickly attached to this thing. It was my hangout spot when I was miserable and lonely; quietly wondering to myself some days why I had made the move North in the first place. As the years passed, this couch became my “transitional object” or…. security blanket. It’s called a security blanket for a reason. I had an object become emotional, and it was this stupid couch.

When I had to start popping hydrocodone’s to manage the pain in my legs, the sofa started out as my place to “nap.” I found myself sleeping all the time. Painkillers will do that sort of thing.  75 pounds later, it became my bed. Partly due to pure laziness and the other part was because I could get a better position on my leg and for a few hours every night it wouldn’t throb, and I could get good sleep. For whatever reason, be it the right amount of cushion or merely the width, it became quite comfortable to sleep on. After several weeks, it became a habit thus turning into months and then finally turning into two years.

Last summer I did a purge of my home and part of this project was the master bedroom. My dad came over and pulled all the gross carpeting out of the room, and we shook the dust off everything and transformed the room into someplace quite pretty. I couldn’t wait to start sleeping in my room again. I thought, “How exciting!”. That excitement was short lived once I realized that I had slept on this couch so long that it was giving me anxiety not to be on it. It’s hard to describe, but it became all I knew. The draw of a pretty new room wasn’t enough. Here I was six months later, and I’m still sleeping on the damn couch.

What was wrong with the upstairs bed? It was beautiful. It had an incredible king-size luxury mattress set, four posts with etched walnut, and fit for a king. Was there a boogieman under my bed? I mean, after all, it was so tall I had to shut the light off at the door and get a running head start superman-like jump onto it. It should have made me feel like a princess, but it didn’t. All I wanted was this couch.  It was confusing because at the same time every evening when I would spend time in the living room playing with the dogs I would look at this sofa with disgust. It wasn’t because it still didn’t seem new or that there was a single rip or tear on it but it had to get out of my home. It represented a prison-like state I lived in for a long time. I didn’t sleep on the couch because I wanted too, it became impossible to get up my stairs. If there was a chance I might have made it up the stairs after all of the huffing and puffing, the possibility of actually being able to throw myself up on this thing was unthinkable and impossible.

Shortly before I left for California, I was still sleeping on this couch. For some reason, this was a piece of my old life I wasn’t able to part with. Something happened out there, and for whatever reason, I was ready to come home and get rid of it. Perhaps as a symbol of my willingness to walk forward into unknown or…… that I didn’t feel I would indeed be able to move on unless it was gone.

There was a strategy in selecting the new couch. It COULD NOT be comfortable to sleep on. I knew I was going to have to force myself to start sleeping upstairs and accepting the fact that this old life didn’t suit me anymore. When I say this, I mean every part of my past life. There was still remnants, and this couch was one of them.

There is a brand leather sofa in my living room. It’s not comfortable at all; I tried to fall asleep on it and guess what? My plan worked. Begrudgingly, I am now sleeping in my room again. Before too long it will become a habit, and I will wonder why I would ever want to sleep on a couch in the first place. But for tonight, it’s still new. I find myself walking out to the garage from time to time, and I stare at it as it gets ready for liftoff out of the Perez house.

What else is there standing in my way from jumping off the cliff into a new adventure? There is one more thing.  Sometimes we all stick something out despite desperately needing and wanting change. This kind of behavior is known as “irrational escalation.” It’s the behavior that leads us to continue to invest time, money, or effort into an unproductive course of action even when, deep down, we know it’s all wrong. I need to permit myself to change my mind. I’ve changed… and something else can too.

Lovingly,

Bean