December Girl

Part 1: When she was bad

I can't say for certain what the catalyst was, but it may have been the photo. I took a photo of myself, posing with the alligator statue I was commissioned to paint. I was so excited to begin this project, painting a Gator on the Geaux was something I had wanted to do since I was a teen, and here was the opportunity. So, I took a photo of myself with the gator I had recently finished sanding and priming. I hated the photo. I could see the cellulite on my arms and legs in harsh relief, my very rounded face, and the apron I wore in an attempt to camouflage my belly and hips. I edited the photo, thinking I could make it look better. After all, the lighting in my living room is awful at night, that was the issue. The edits I added didn't help much. I still didn't like the photo, so much that I didn't want to share it on social media, and I love my social media.

I took the photo on August 26th, 2017. On September 1st, less than a week later, I started to walk.

I had been struggling for a long time. My anxiety was out of control, along with my hormones and my weight. I was unwell, but I didn't truly know it. Or maybe I just didn't understand it. For months, I had been having negative, intrusive thoughts. I would be alone in my van, driving home, and a thought would slam into my head:

I am so deeply unhappy.

I tried to just shrug the thought away, toss it to the back of my brain, and tell myself that it was silly to be unhappy- obviously, that was untrue. What did I have to be unhappy about? I have this great husband who I love AND like, and he loves and likes me back. We have this great daughter who is smart and funny and cute as a bug. We have a house to live in, beds to sleep in, food to eat, and people to love. Somehow though, knowing that didn't change how I felt. I ignored my negative thoughts as best I could, but the feelings I could not ignore. The anxiety sneaked into me. Which isn't to say I haven't always struggled with it, because I've been an anxious person for as long as I have memories, long before I had that word to describe what I felt. I was always described as "shy" as a young child by parents, teachers and myself, too. Now I realize I was never shy, I was anxious. A lot. It made me afraid to speak up, afraid of attention directed at me, afraid to stand up for myself. The anxiety never went away, but I grew up and got better at coping with it and just working through it. 

Until, that is, I had a miscarriage.

That story is on this blog too, so there's no need for me to go into it, but something changed in me after the miscarriage, and it wasn't just emotionally or mentally: there were physical changes also. Sometime after the lost pregnancy, after I had started healing emotionally, my periods began getting worse. If you're squeamish about periods, you should just skip ahead now. Basically, my periods became a lot heavier, cramps became more painful, and I just felt completely drained and rundown the week of my cycle. Other changes happened, too: the week before my period, my anxiety reached fever pitch. I had dark intrusive thoughts constantly. I worried endlessly about...basically everything. One time I had this thought that I may have done my taxes wrong (this was months after I had filed them) and had panic attack. I can't even describe properly how I felt when these attacks would happen, because they were so irrational but also totally real to me while I was experiencing them. I felt caged and trapped, like I was being hunted, but there was no physical threat ever, just...thoughts. Eventually I realized that I only felt like myself a week or two out of the month, and the rest of the time I felt anxious, frustrated, terrified, and sad.

My family started noticing that something with me was off, but I was pretty good at masking what was happening internally. Other things were wrong with me, too. I had horrible insomnia at night and slept well into the daytime when I finally managed to fall asleep. I won't even go into my awful eating habits other than to say I was drinking so much Dr Pepper that sometimes my kidneys would ache because I was so dehydrated. I gained so much weight that I had to wear Danny's shirts, because mine didn't fit anymore. I couldn't keep up with housework or artwork, and had to stop taking on commission work because I became so stressed about every project that I felt physically sick until it was finished and the client let me know they were happy with it. If I sent a client an image and didn't hear back right away my brain told me they hated the work and I was worthless. Eventually, my behavior caught up with my feelings and the anxieties started spilling out.

When I think about this now, it just breaks my heart, because my daughter noticed. My behavior became a new normal for her. I would get upset about something, have some outburst, apologize for whatever I'd said (yelled) or done, and Ruby would say to me, "It's okay mom. I know, you're just frustrated. It's okay, I love you." It broke me. My baby girl, only 5, saw me coming apart at the seams long before I realized I was unraveling. I actually wrote out a note in my phone chronicling all the crazy feelings and stresses and physical things that were wrong with me, hoping if I just wrote down how I felt I'd feel better, but I didn't. My mom noticed I was off, my brother did too. Danny knew something wasn't right. He was having to cope with my moods right along with me, but he didn't realize the extent of my unhappiness because he can't see inside my head. Until, that is, a night when I finally broke down and everything spilled out of me in a flood of tears and snot and rambling. We were lying in bed and I just curled into him sobbing and miserable and confused but also relieved to get all these feelings I'd been trying to mask out of me. It was cathartic and it was needed, but it didn't change anything.

Then I took the photo.

Then I made some changes.

Part 2: How she got better

I can't tell you when I actually made the decision to change things up, because I'm not sure I did. One night I decided to set a bedtime my phone. The next day my alarm went off at 7:30, and I got up. I went for a walk. It was only about two miles that first day, but it was something. I didn't get a Dr Pepper. I went to the grocery store and bought chicken breast and vegetables and I came home and prepared healthy meals. That night I went to bed when my alarm sounded, and I got up the next day at 7:30 again. I walked again. The first couple of weeks, my legs were sore everyday. I stuck it out, and eventually began walking 5 miles every morning. I used an app to track my steps and my meals. Then, I started walking in the evenings. Most days I walked between 8-10 miles everyday, eating healthy meals and holding myself accountable. Then I started getting up at 6, and I'd walk until about 9, bring home breakfast for Danny and Roo, and then do housework. Suddenly, keeping up with the dishes and laundry was easy. I just did a little everyday and it didn't overwhelm me anymore. Then, the weight began to drop off, fast. Within the first two weeks I dropped 5 lbs. By October, I was down 10. My clothes started fitting again, and I stopped avoiding my reflection.

For months, when I looked in the mirror I saw a stranger that looked sort of like me, but miserable and haggard. Now, I started to see me in there, which was nice. About a month into my new routine, I was driving home and a thought slammed into my head:

I am so happy.

Now, 2017 is drawing to a close. The person I was in January is very different from this December girl. I don't know what exactly was wrong with me. A combination of things, probably. I can't say for sure that I was depressed, but I can say for sure that I was broken. Now, I'm mending. The physical changes are obvious, and I'm happy to feel at home in my own skin again. Much more though, I'm glad to feel at home inside my brain- my heart feels so much lighter. And hey, so does my ass.