Home |  Week 48 Weight Loss

Day 333. 177 pounds lost.

The further into this journey I travel, the more I realize that the weight loss was the positive side effect of healing. The journey was inspired by many things, but it was a gift from God because he knew I needed to heal. He knew the things I would discover along the way that would make me “whole” again. I didn’t know this when I started. Our greatest triumphs can come from our deepest pains, and I know this.  It didn’t start a year ago, it started many years ago when I attended my first therapy session. I am only now realizing that all those years of therapy was for this year, it was for now……today. It was so that I could apply what I learned, to the greatest challenge of my life; to heal myself.  

During Friendsgiving holiday I was telling a friend about my family; specifically my 5 brothers.  They were surprised to learn that one of them passed away in the fall of 15’. I still talk about all of my brothers like they are all here, but they are not. One of them (Colin)  is no longer with us. I never talked about it. Partly because it was painful for me.  It was painful on many levels; one of the reasons was because I was unable to travel home to say goodbye. His sister had become big, and her legs couldn’t support the trip. What kind of sister doesn’t go HOME to say GOODBYE! Me…… it as me. If I didn’t talk about it, then it released the burden of having to describe the guilt I felt because I wasn’t there.  Our past was riddled with pain, and the six of us dealt with our pain differently. I dealt with it by drowning my pain in food. Colin drowned in prescription drugs, and he finally had enough…… either that, God finally decided that his journey was done. It was time for him to come home. Whatever the case may be, one of us didn’t make it. One of us was never able to crawl out of all that pain that we experienced. I honestly believed it was going to be me. This time last year, I was headed that way. I had a lot of pain pills and various bottles of hydrocodone and Percocet, and it crossed my mind. I felt guilty for thinking it, but I did.  In all of my screaming and crying pain last Christmas, I prayed that I wouldn’t be the second one to go. God heard me. I wasn’t ready to die, I wanted to beat this damn thing that plagued me, that ate my life alive.

I grew up afraid. Afraid of everything. Mostly I was afraid of a woman that was bigger and more powerful than I was. She made me scream, she made me bleed, and she convinced me that I would never be anything. She programmed me at seven years old to believe that I was fat.  When I looked in the mirror that’s how I saw myself. I carried that with me and punished myself my entire life because I believed her. She told me many things growing up; many of those phrases were…. “you can’t, you don’t deserve, you are trouble, you are fat, you are disgusting.” Somewhere in the back of my head, those phrases were stored. This year hasn’t just been reprogramming food. It’s been reprogramming how I think of myself and how I look at myself in the mirror.

One of those phrases, “You can’t” has been a hard one for me to deal with. In my life whenever someone told me that I couldn’t do something, I did it in spite; whether it was good for me or not. It was my way of taking control. It worked against me many times, but there was a lot of pride there. Nobody was going to tell me that I couldn’t do anything.

Fast forward to my life today I still have trouble with people telling me that I can’t do something. I can’t stand it when Doctors tell me something isn’t possible.  It has taken every part of me to discover who I am and what I like; things I am passionate about and where I want to go. It took every ounce of faith to crawl out of that hole I was in just one year ago to get where I am today. Even though the journey isn’t over, I have every right to pursue anything and everything that makes my heart sing. It doesn’t matter how impossible it seems. Nothing seems impossible anymore.  I post pictures all the time because there is a level of pride that comes with finding beauty in myself. It took my whole life to get there. I share my journey because it helps me. I’m not trying to save the world, I was trying to save my life.

Over this last year, I found a lot of passions. Every time I find a new bone or muscle I am proud, and I share it. How hard is it for all of us to look in the mirror and be happy with what they see? I have made peace with my body and how I look. I have made peace with that woman that told me I couldn’t, that I was ugly, that I was fat.  I found a simple piece of equipment that made me realize there is so much more power in my body that I ever gave myself credit for. It’s a goofy weight bar, and I love it.  It’s not the weight on the bar that brings a level of happiness, it’s the fact I can even lift that bar, that its even part of my existence. It’s not something I could have wrapped my head around last year.  The weight on that bar is not relevant. I had someone tell me that I didn’t belong on that bar and that I wasn’t ready for it…. “I cant”…….I’ve made peace with that as well. I pursue it because to the contrary, I can.  It’s not your journey, its mine. 

It’s been a long time coming, but this next month I will go home and say goodbye to that brother. I haven’t been home in four years. I might even visit the grave of the woman that I spoke of here. Maybe it’s just to talk, maybe it’s to show her I didn’t let her break me. It’s time to go home……  Home, the place where I can go to take this off my shoulders. Someone take me home.

Lovingly,

Bean