Loving Yourself

What If You Could Start Over?

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 7 Comments

 

I am at my favorite place in the world. As I look out my window I see the marine layer starting to retreat back to its place on the horizon. A deer is outside nibbling on the tender shoots of wild grasses that dot the yard while the sun illuminates the tall pine trees producing a golden glow. I hear my grandkids their voices filled with excitement and wonder playing on the deck while my  daughter tries in vain to keep the sound down to a dull roar, “Shhh…It’s Grandma’s birthday and all she wants for her birthday is to sleep in.” All this beauty and new life before me and I have only been awake for five minutes. Sometimes life is just perfect. I think today is one of those days.

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But what if I could start over? Wave a wand and magically start again. Be someone different, live somewhere different, and do something different. Would I do it? Yes. Most definitely.

I would laugh more. A throw-your-head-back-full-throttle-other-people-be-damned laugh with a few snorts and tears thrown in for good measure. This new person would worry less, have the patience of a saint, criticize others less and help others see all they did have instead of the few things that they didn’t. I would let others make their own mistakes instead of trying to control the outcomes that they were meant to experience for themselves. And I would have started consciously living in the present moment while stopping the negative self-talk much earlier in life. Yes, this would be the someone different that I would be.

If I could start over again I would live on an island slapping mosquitos at dusk while waving at everyone who passed by because I knew them all. Where I lived would have a strong sense of community and respect for the earth with magnificent sun rises to start your day with equally spectacular sun sets to settle your soul from the business of the day. A place that makes its own rum…lots of it.

If I could start over again I would do work that was meaningful to me. Work that provided my soul with a sense of purpose. An advocate of some sort perhaps. A researcher studying dolphins or an archeologist digging up the island’s past. Or maybe the person everyone came to talk with and share their troubles because I was seen as a wise old crone.

Yes, I would love to try this life on. See how it fits. Does is feel warm and inviting like a baby cooing on a snuggly blanket? Or does it itch because the seams are supposed to fit someone else’s ideal life?

And as I contemplate all of the “what if’s” the phone rings and my husband and children yell out “Happy Birthday!” and that “other life” drifts away like the fog outside my window and everything suddenly becomes clear. I feel joy deep joy and satisfaction. I have people who love me and I am beginning to truly love and appreciate who I am at this stage in my life. I have all that really matters to me… all things precious that feed my soul and renew my life on a daily basis. I am completely and utterly blessed.

Happy Birthday to me!

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Weight’s Burden

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 6 Comments

*This has been an incredibly hard piece for me to write because it puts a lot of my own faults and flaws out there but I believe in being honest in my writings and telling my story through my lens whether it be right or wrong*

 

My weight has always been a sore subject with me. When I was a child I was average, not overweight nor underweight.I was just right.Yet, it was never enough. I wanted to look like the popular skinny girls. The ones with legs up to their elbows. The ones you could almost see through because they were so paper thin.

In my early 20’s I was underweight weighing in at 111 while being over 5’7″ tall. Of course, everyone thought I looked fabulous, myself included, with my bones sticking out the way the media says that women are suppose to look; when in reality my health was suffering. But I had a lot of attention paid to me by the opposite sex so it appeared to be a fair tradeoff as far as I was concerned. Like=skinny. Love=skinny. Sex=skinny, so that is what I would be. Only it didn’t last.

Then several years later, I became pregnant and gained 60 pounds and B told me that he didn’t really find me attractive. He made it clear that overweight women did nothing for him. I remember thinking even then how fucked up this was. I remember thinking whatever happened to loving a person for who they were and not what they looked like. I remember feeling that I had to look like some centerfold to be loved by him. I felt resentful and angry which lead to over eating which lead to being over weight which lead to a fucked up thoughts of him having to prove he loved me because I was heavy.Do you love me now? became the challenge. Do you accept me now? became my battle cry. And no matter how much he tried to prove his love/acceptance I wouldn’t believe it because I knew how he felt about fat women and, well, I didn’t love and accept myself either…so how could he?

For years I dieted “for him” and for years I was in a never ending cycle of gain/lost. And when I lost I was mad at B because he paid more attention to me than when I was heavier and I was wounded because of it.  How screwed up is that! Yes, I know… pretty screwed up! Why can’t you just love me for who I am? Yet, he did but I couldn’t believe it because with those few words said years ago about not finding me attractive created a pit from which I chose not to climb out of. A pit that I gave up and into. Wrapping my body around it like a blanket to keep me warm. Anger and resentment piled up and so did the pounds. I was miserable. So was he. Making love in the day light soon changed to making love with the curtains drawn so no light could enter the room.

Finally, I decided that I was tired of looking the way I did. Feeling the way I felt. Joints aching due to the excess poundage, surgery too. I had admired women who felt good about themselves no matter what their size and wished I had confidence in my body and myself. I wished that was like that too. But I was not no matter how I tried. So I slowly began to lose weight but I still wasn’t very serious about it. Until I saw this scan:

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A scan of a 250 woman vs a 120 pound woman. And I could see how the bones of the leg were being impacted. The white fat around the heart, intestines, and in the brain. And that was all it took…with one look at that picture I realized that being overweight was no longer an option. And this time I have lost weight ONLY for me, myself, and I.

In the past 8 months I have lost 30 pounds. And over several years prior to that I had lost 30 pounds. I now set little realistic goals for myself and today I reached the one I had set to reach before I turned 56. Yeah for me!

In retrospect, it is sad to me that I wasted all those years being unhappy with my weight and not doing enough about it. It is one thing if you are accepting of yourself it is another if you flog yourself because acceptance is not in your vocabulary. I wish that society just celebrated all women for who they are instead of what they look like, perhaps, I would have internalized that and loved myself despite of my weight. But I will never know. What I do know is that being miserable about my weight made me miserable about many parts of my life in general. That it is not B’s fault that I chose to overeat and that punishing him and myself for words spoken so long ago was harsh and unnecessary. And that something that was solely under my control was put back on him many times over our 30 years history. And if I am totally honest I am not sure that I would find my obese spouse sexually attractive either.

This unwanted “I might want a divorce” journey has forced me to examine all areas of my life. This work to discover the authentic me has proved humbling, exhausting, painful and eye opening. I have discovered some things that I really didn’t like and needed to change and some things that are pretty terrific about me. And I am still journeying…to where…I am unsure. But one thing I know is that I feel better about myself in all areas of my life because I have finally internalized the fact that the only person I have to impress or lose weight for is ME. It’s all for ME. ME. ME. ME. Finding my own importance has somehow flipped the switch and finally allowed me to reach my goals both in regards to my weight and in other parts of my life.