The Life of old (and new)

 

www.foreverdc.com

 I have a miss today.

It’s not a miss for a friend or a family member. Not for a place I love to visit or my favorite spot to get coffee and people watch.

It’s not a miss for strapping on my running shoes and spending time outside or for breaking a sweat in the gym.

It’s a miss for the old.

(And the new.)

I miss the confines of my old “prison”. The way of life that led me to weighing 270 pounds, not really caring about the food I put in my mouth and caring even less about the physical shape of my body and the stability of my emotional and mental well-being. I miss not having to think about things like how many calories does this slice of cake have after I’ve eaten a second helping of lasagna or having to ask myself “am I eating out of boredom” when clearly I’m not hungry. I miss coming home after sitting in a cubicle all day and spending the next 4-5 hours sitting on the couch watching repeat episodes of  “Law and Order” or “NCIS”. I miss waking up first thing in the morning and wondering if I can forego a shower in order to log into World of Warcraft before having to leave for work and then finding the closest fast food drive thru and ordering anything I wanted and getting it as big as possible because who is going to judge you when you eat alone in your car and can throw away the “evidence” before anyone even notices?

I miss shopping in Lane Bryant where my choices in clothing style were limited to how many xx’s came on the label. I miss not having to think about whether something looked good on me, just whether it fit. I miss waiting in my car in some parking lot hoping a spot will come open right up front because I never thought about parking farther away and walking. I miss filling my shopping cart with bags of potato chips and two liters of diet soda and never taking a moment to think about my choices when I grabbed a fistful of red licorice and returning again and again eating more than my share (and more than the shares of multiple people). I miss opening up my drawer in the office and finding my hording gone wild with hundreds of bite size chocolate bars waiting for me to eat unconsciously until my stomach hurts from all the sugar. I miss eating until my stomach was bloated and then purging because I wanted to keep eating…

I miss being lazy.

I miss not caring.

But today I do care. It is in that caring that I also miss the new. Being in limbo between here and there knowing my everything is about to change in ways I never even imagined when I first decided the life in the before (even though it is missed today) was actually no life at all. I loved my people in the old. I loved my food in the old. I loved the laziness of my life in the old but I didn’t love me in the old. I don’t live there anymore because I chose to fight to love who I am. I live in the today and that includes sharing a life with someone that understands my relationship with food. Someone that understands my relationship with my old body, my old life, my old way of thinking and encourages me to grieve and mourn so that I can gently lay that life down and leave it behind and look forward to what lies ahead of me.

I miss the new because I know what it looks like and have to wait patiently for it to open the door and invite me to walk through. I miss the long walks that will be taken after meals are cooked together. I miss the standing at the starting lines that will happen repeatedly as we both take off weaving our way in and out of runners vying for our place in the sea of finishers. I miss the mornings of having coffee and then planning what vegetables we’ll try at the farmer’s market. I miss the mornings at boot camp together looking over and seeing her sweat and pushing her body as hard as possible and feeling my heart grow with admiration and wondering if the same is happening over there. I miss the hours spent in the kitchen cooking meals that are healthy not only for our hearts but for all aspects of our being. I miss wondering what episode of “Law and Order” is on at the moment and then laughing because I haven’t watched anything on tv for over 7 months. I miss parking as far away as possible to where we are going just so I can use the excuse “we need to move more” but really its so I can hold her hand that much longer.  I miss sitting around, looking at pictures of my dogs and crying because I miss them so much and her listening as if she too loved them as much as I do. I miss the hug as I go out the door needing to take a few hours to myself either running or with peppermint patty because I miss the old and am still trying to lay it gently down and leave it behind.

It is in the new I find the strength to leave the old. What I know to be in front of me is what makes leaving what is behind me easier. I know I will never go back to weighing 270 pounds and wondering what life would be like if I just made a few changes here and there. I know what life is like now. I know that small changes lead to bigger changes and bigger changes lead to life changes…

The old leads to the new.

I know you find comfort in the ways of the old too. Not having to think about making healthy choices or whether or not you’ll break a sweat today. But we don’t deserve to live there anymore. We deserve to care about our bodies in ways we never thought possible. We deserve to push ourselves, all the while thinking we can’t only find out that it was our mind that was stopping us not our bodies. We deserve to cry in frustration because we’re trying so hard to get where we desperately want to be not because we’re stuck in a life that is doing nothing but holding us back. We deserve to run, swim, bike, zumba, yoga, walk, box, skip, hula hoop, dance, climb, and lift our way to a body that is screaming to meet us. We deserve to lay down the life of old and pick up the life of new that is so much better for us. The life of health. The life of love. The life of new and knowing we deserve everything that is laid out before us…

Only if we gently leave the life of old behind us.