5.31.2006

It's quite hot here - well, ok, not so hot. But, unlike the California dry heat I grew up in, where one could run around and play and climb trees in 102 degree weather, here, 80 degrees with a high humidity just zaps the energy right out of you. I alternately feel like a delicate swooning Victorian blossom, or an old, overweight woman. And I guess that's where the rub is. Last year at this time, I had started exercising five days a week and doing something quite radical - eating regular meals. I used to forget to eat, usually having just one meal a day, which made me keep weight on because my body thought it was starving to death. But, last May, I decided I didn't want to die - not that I had any indication, it was just becoming aware that not exercising regularly and being overweight made me more at risk for heart disease - the number one killer of women. By doing yoga, riding that damned exercise bike and lifting weights along with eating 1200 calories a day, I dropped 28 pounds in 4 months and was feeling pretty damned good. I dropped two jean sizes! But, I also suspected I was getting sick again, so when I could no longer ignore that I was starting to hemorrhage again, I found the best doctor around and she immediately confirmed that the tumor had grown back again, quite large. Between the side effects of the three months of medication I had to take to shrink the tumor so they could operate and continuing to hemorrhage, I had to stop exercising. And, for the first time in my life, a debilitating, severe depression set in. After the surgery, I was forbidden to exercise for two months, and the severe depression I experienced kept me from exercising or eating for another several months, so now, I am right back where I started last year. I hate the $#@&ing bike, I don't want to exercise, even though I know I will feel better, and I could care less about eating most days. I just, well, it's very hard - I am so accustomed to keeping things to myself, to sucking it up and forging on, not letting anyone know that anything negative is going on or that I am in any way weak - that this is just hard, letting it out, admitting that I am not as strong as I want to be. And, there's that shame that all those years, when my MIL, or a girlfriend complained about being depressed when she had what appeared to be a perfect life, and I nodded and was sympathetic, but inside thought "Just suck it up. Stop whining and live your life. Can't you be happy that you are alive?" and here is the ultimate irony - I get whumped upside the head and knocked down real good. I guess there's justice in the universe - each of us smug fucks get smacked down into the mud where we belong - it matters not that nobody knew we were smug fucks.