Shawshank | Week 12 Weight Loss

I find myself looking forward to Thursdays for a variety of reasons. I have a business networking group that I attend. I was absent from this group for over a year. It was about a year and a half ago when I made the decision (subconsciously) that I didn’t want to go anymore. After missing a few times, it simply became the norm. I felt bad about it because of those early friendships I had made, but I was always too tired to go. I also didn’t want any one of them seeing me walk into the room with a cane. Somehow I was sure it would prove my inability to get my personal shit together; I would look weak. After all, the whole reason I was on a cane was my own fault. After I started feeling better, I decided it was time to start going to back. I missed supporting my business partner. After all, we had done everything as a team for almost 9 years. Little do the attendees know that their warm welcomes and toothy smiles help me. It is helping me put “me” back together again. I see it in my bravery and desire to try new things. I feel it in my step as I walk into the building and I open that meeting door, and I can do it smiling. I can feel the limp in my leg as I walk, but it’s not a cane.

Discovering life again after being alone and cooped up for so long at times feels like Shawshank. There’s a conversation that Andy has with Red. Sometimes I feel it’s equivalent to the right and left sides of my brain communicating with one another. One, despite going through the worst, understands… profoundly this concept of Hope. The other….. bruised by life, is a bit cynical. I don’t know what life in a body I can be proud of feels like but I can see it. I must have daily conversations with the “Red” part of my brain that says… “You can forget about that, it’s futile.” To some degree, this is a daily struggle. One side of me is elated, the other side is struggling to catch up. Everything seems new to me and I’m learning to live a different life but with that I leave comfort zones. Some of them have been challenging because they are…. in fact……………. familiar. Once you step out of “familiar” – it’s all unknown. Here’s a small guide for the terrified – I’m learning that in order to be successful – you must get comfortable with discomfort. There really is no other way.

I get frustrated some days when I feel held back by my own insecurities but I swear I’m working on them. I don’t say everything I want to say and half the time I come out sounding like a dork. Instead of chiseling some hole through a wall, I’m chiseling down the weight which feels much like a prison sometimes in its own right. My blog is my voice because sometimes I am unable to articulate what I’m feeling *smile*. They are just balls of emotions that I have to unwind and this is the place I have chosen to do it.

I feel I’ve been crawling through a river of shit the last 90 days. Some days are exhilarating, but some are hard. It’s up….down…and it all starts looking the same. Days can drag by – frequently blur together. Some days I get on the scale and I just want to smash it. Other days it’s….. “oh, how I love you”……It’s a mental game more than anything. However, I know somewhere down the line, there is an opening at the end of that muddy tunnel. It won’t be next week… But I’m just going to keep digging. What else can I do?

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