I was reading Heathers blog http://whatshappeningwithheather.blogspot.com/ a day or so ago about how she hit a milestone and wanted to celebrate but would not allow herself to really own her success at that point. Like it didn’t really count. I have been thinking about this a lot the last couple of days; about why it is so hard for me/us to own our successes…to acknowledge it, to really celebrate it. This leads me to one of my curious issues…
We all have our curious issues. We C & P girls have our hang-ups and despite any sort of discernable logic we stick with them, these hang-ups of ours. I have quite a number of them myself; many of them center around progress and success and what defines them.
I have a scale. It was an expensive scale. It is a large scale. I bought this scale before I had surgery…it was expensive because most scales would not accept and compute the weight that I was at. They stopped at a weight that was well short of where I fell…so I paid throught the nose for this scale that promised to not only tell me what I weighed but also guaranteed that weight within .04 lbs…so this scale has been with me for quite some time…now this scale has a quirk of it’s own…it weighs me between 2 and 3 lbs heavier than every other scale I step onto…whether it is the scale at the doctors office, the surgeons office, the scale at a friends, at the store…wherever. Always 2 to 3 lbs heavier. Now in most instances I am a fairly logical person and the odds are that if EVERY other scale I weigh on weighs me 2 to 3 lbs less…odds are I weigh 2 or 3 lbs less…I know this. I know that my scale is wrong. I know it. I absolutely, without a doubt know that my scale is wrong…in my head. The problem is: this scale is the scale I live with. This scale has charted and documented all of my weightloss ups and downs…my emotions, despite my brain telling it that it is not so, will not believe it if I don’t see it on this scale…my scale. Which brings me to my dilemma…
I have achieved many successes since I began this WLS journey. So many at this point I have really lost track of many of them along the way…for awhile now my goal has been to hit 178 lbs…this would be 200 pounds lost. A huge number…HUGE! Now I also know that it is just a number…200 lbs lost will neither look nor feel any different than 199 lbs lost or 198…in many ways it is just a number…but it is the number I feel I must hit to have really achieved success…there are other numbers along the way that I felt this way about…you hit that number, you are elated and you move on to your next success…I have not weighed on another scale for some time now…I have stuck, mostly due to circumstance to weighing on MY scale…but this weekend I was house-sitting for a friend…she is a super healthy, fitness minded individual. She has a scale. A good scale, an expensive scale. I did not want to weigh myself on her scale but at the same time, I wanted to see the number…even if I didn’t fully believe it, I wanted to see it. I wanted to see 178. I wanted it so badly that I stepped on this scale that would ultimately tell me a truth that I would not be able to believe…and do you know what it said…it said 177.2, I stepped on it about 17 times and each time it said 177.2…as if I could believe a number like that. As if I could have actually lost 201 lbs. That isn’t possible…losing that much weight just isn’t possible. 198 pounds I can believe…that sounds reasonable but 201 sounds rediculous, flighty and downright impossible…and yet a part of my brain know it’s true…sigh…but I can’t believe it until my scale says it…you know the one…the one that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is wrong…I want to celebrate it…I want to tell people, guess what? I lost 200 friggin’ lbs…I did it…I lost it! But I can’t…it isn’t really yet. I went home Sunday night and I weighed myself…180.2 which is in itself a success…it took like two months to lose two lbs and reach 180.2 and my scale for a week has consistently told me that I weigh some variation of 180 lbs…I was thrilled last Tuesday when it said I weighed 180 lbs, thrilled…and yet now, a mere week later, it feels hollow. 180 now seems pointless because I have seen 177 but I can’t believe in 177 because it was on the wrong scale…why? Why do we torture ourselves this way? Why can we not allow ourselves our hard earned victories? Why can we celebrate others successes but not our own? Are we not good enough? Are we so tied into the diet game that we have all been playing for the last 20 or 30 years that we cannot accept that we have actually done it? That we are worth the hard work and effort that we put into making this tool work for us, that we are worthy of success….that we should not only be okay with our success but that we should own it, celebrate it?
We are GOOD enough! We are WORTH it! We Worked hard for this…
I can say it…now if I could just make myself believe it then we would have a real story here…
Damn scale…
sigh…JustJil…sort of kind of 177.2 lb girl…
Mother nature decided to help with the unpacking process by flooding the night after I moved in so that I lost about half of my stuff because it was in boxes on the garage floor. Good bye books, journals, photo’s…stuff…it was difficult to let things go even though they were ruined…but such is life. The water receded and we were able to salvage the carpet in our house…many in our neighborhood were not so fortunate…I am counting my blessings…a friend of ours had just bought a new car and had only made one car payment on it…his car was totalled out in the flood…parked where mine normally would have been. I am counting my blessings…daily. Life goes on. It feels good to only be living in one place, no overnight bags…no rent + mortgage…just a mortgage now…Happier…still making it work, still fitting things in….still turning HIS house into OUR home…it’s a process…it takes its toll at times but we are finding our way…it feels good. It is good, this joining of lives. Sometime next spring there will be jitters, a white dress and “I do’s” but until thenI am just happy to love and be loved.
