Time Machine

6 years and 10 months ago I posted the last entry on this blog. When I reread it this morning it kind of floored me because all of the things I wrote in that post were a foreshadowing of what was to come and back then I couldn't have possibly recognized it for the storm it truly was. 

I worked hard over the 3 years that I kept "Trouble with the Curvy" but the things that made it hard to stick to a healthy routine of good habits were left completely unaddressed. With the luxury of almost 7 years of hindsight it is completely clear to me that the addiction to food that I mentioned in that last entry was a pattern of numbing things I didn't know how to fix. Food still brings me happiness and is a way I like to bring happiness to others and has been a dominant coping skill for everything I have experienced since posting that last entry. 

All those years ago I was about to get married and thought that Skowhegan, Maine would always be my home. I loved my house, my fiance, and was excited for the life that was ahead of me. Today I write this as a divorcee from my condo in Connecticut. Back then I literally could not have imagined the life I am leading right now. Even then though, I said words that turned out to be the key to finding a path forward. "I don't know how to make a good decision," is a phrase that I needed to explore in a huge and transcendent way.  

I have explored it throughly now as I sit here writing this and I wish I could tell you that I got it all figured out and that this entry is a time machine to indicate that all that work to lose 47lbs was sustained and that I kept it off and I am one insightful blogger. If that were the case though, this would just be a blog I used to write and would still be gathering digital dust in the techoverse. 

So much happens in 7 years and I think in the revival of this blog I will tell you about many of them, but the dominant topic of today's reentry into this story is that I have gained back 43 of the 47lbs I lost all those years ago. 

I also learned a lot and I think that where I sit today I finally have a clear path to make some lifelong changes. In a previous entry I talked about fad diets and how they were bullshit, but what is also bullshit is doing work where you achieve a goal and think it will stick without addressing the root cause of what makes you want to turn to food to feel better. Not unlike an alcoholic, giving up the vice isn't the whole solution to the problem. Giving it up creates the pathway to see that there is another way to live. Even when you know better though, you still have to practice doing better to actually make any headway that has the potential to last a lifetime. 

Even in the entry titled "The End," I knew this would be a lifelong story because I am self-aware enough to know that real life doesn't have a tidy beginning, middle, and end until I meet a deathbed that will hold me for eternity. I've lived my beginning and the rest of my life before that bedtime is the messy middle... And boy oh boy has it been especially messy in the nearly 7 years since I have written on a regular basis... 

What I know for sure is that this blog was a tool of accountability for me in my weight loss journey before.  It is a valuable tool and I abandoned it. I also know for sure that the work I have done in the hiatus of writing was hard, vulnerable, and put me face to face with all of the things that I couldn't confront in the 3 years I was writing this blog the first time. I got knocked down, ripped apart, continued to make really bad decisions, and the consequences of all of that settled down onto my bones like ash from the dumpster fire my life became. All that work did address the root cause of what made me turn to food though... and that work isn't done. It likely never will be and that is the point. 

It did clean the slate for me to give this weight loss thing a shot again and make some differences that I think have the potential to actually last a lifetime this time. I expect there will be ups and downs for all of the days ahead of me, but I think that I am truly at a point in my life where I can finally establish some habits that will stick. Not because I want to lose weight, but because I don't want to live the way I have lived anymore. I want to live a life that is meaningful, healthy, and joyful despite the fact that I am certain tragedy, unhappiness, discomfort, and stress will be built into a lot of the days ahead. The elimination of those things isn't the key to happiness and satisfaction. Understanding how to live happily ever after despite the existence of those things is, and not only do I think I have a good idea what to do to achieve that, I am ready to practice what it will take even when it's hard and I am not on top of my game. 

Practice is the key word here because I have no doubt there will be days that I don't rock this. There will be days when I cave to bad habits and decisions because I am a human living in a world ripe with chaos and disorder. I am making a new commitment to practicing though so that I can meet that chaos and disorder with the tools and insight that make me finally feel like I do know how to make a good decision and proving that is the real work. 

Here is to the new era of meeting hard things where they are and sorting them out so that I can coexist healthfully amid the trouble.   

 <3 Katie
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