MAXIMUM DENSITY

 PREFACE

I am as heavy as I have ever been in my life. 250 lbs. It is insidious. The weight has crepted up and crepted up over the past 9 years until it has gotten intolerable. This is the line! No more! It stops HERE!

STORY 

In 2009, I weighed 180 lbs and was in fantastic shape. Yes, I could have lost another 20 lbs and been very close to perfect. But that 20 lbs didn't look like it was on me. I carried it very well. I was desirable at 51 yo. 

THAT was 70 lbs ago and it seems like unattainable at the moment. I'm 66, soon to be 67 in September and I look like my grandmother. She was short and chubby. My aunt, who lived with my grandparents and then with my mother and me after they passed, was very tall and chubby. Most of my relatives are chubby. That is why I'm not surprised that I look like a lot of them did while I was a child and growing up. My genetics say I should be zaftig, Rubenesque...plump. My ancestors come from Ireland, Scotland, and England. When I visited England in 2003, I saw many people who looked like my relatives! I'm HOME! I thought. I felt I fit in. 

I'm heavier now. I don't fit in to anything. Tipping the scales at 250 lbs pushes the structural strength of my bras and the comfort of wearing them. I wear maxi dresses around the house to hide the bulk of my body. It's lulled me into accepting the extra weight and the shifting of skin and fat. It lets me use the excuse (to myself) that I don't have to go out into the world, everything I need can be brought to me or picked up without "going into the store to get it." Since the pandemic made all of us more "hermits" than "gad about town social butterflies," I haven't recovered my desire to venture forth and explore. 

I have also not exercised regularly in quite a while. I get up from bed. Sit at my desk working on my laptop (or descending down the rabbit hole that is the Internet time suck!). Get up to make my smoothie (Breakfast & Lunch & supplements). Back on the computer. Get up to move to the TV room. Make dinner or order dinner & drive to pick it up. Play games on my Kindle while watching TV. Go to bed & play more games until the Kindle falls on my nose cuz I'm asleep somewhere around 3, 4, 5 am in the morning. Sleep until noon, 1, 2 pm and get up to do it all over again.  

CONCLUSION

My grandmother, Sadie Insley, (Gram or Grammy) was in better shape than I am now. She got up at 5 am (from years of living with a Merchant Marine & fisherman) and made coffee and started cooking. She cooked all day, off and on, when she wasn't washing clothes, hanging them to dry, tending the garden and harvesting, then entertaining the family that passed through her doors all day, every day. 

There's just me and my sister, and 3 cats and 2 horses that need tending. Toni hires a man to feed and clean stalls in the morning (early...earlier than she is willing to get up now that she's 75!). Feeding the cats in the morning and at night, 2 of the kittahs are still kittens so they eat whenever they are hungry and we can get them to eat something! It's not a whole lot to do. It's so hot that outside is taken at dusk and dawn, in small bites (for exercise). But I soon must take my losing weight seriously, lest I have some health problem that I can't "correct" and have to live with much less that I CAN do than I now just don't WANT to do. One step at a time!

EXISTENCE VS. LIVING

PREFACE

Existence: the fact or state of living or having objective reality. A being of entity.

Living: the pursuit of a lifestyle of the specified type.

STORY

You can exist from day to day. Satisfying the elements of daily life that continues existence. A human being on life support with minimal brain activity or in a coma, exists. But is that living? If a person is aware of their surroundings, receives the minimum to survive, but does not move forward in the pursuit of improving or changing their life, is that living?

These questions can be asked about every existing human being. Those in a war zone just trying to survive today. Those houseless on the street. Those in assisted-living facilities, prisons, loveless marriages, single people with no family or friends, etc.... We are born into existence alone. We die alone. In between, we live our lives either by choice or by chance. So much effects how our lives unfold but we, for the most part, decide to continue existing.

What happens when a person loses the will to survive? No matter how many loved ones they are surrounded by, they just don't have the passion for anything. Nothing to look forward to each day. Looking for joy and not finding it. Existing, but not living.

CONCLUSION

I have cared for others in my life to the exclusion of self-consideration. Worked hard to improve myself through education to find my place in the world. I found joy through teaching. I found joy with a soulmate (for 20 years). I brought a child into the world and dedicated myself to raising that child to be a loving, caring, giving, independent, and productive human being. (I got something wrong there. How or what did I do to be pushed away and abandoned? It's soul crushing.) 

So I exist now, one day to the next. I am alive but not really living. Not pursuing any improvement. Not practicing anything that brings me joy. 

I had not seen Dr. J for almost 2 years when I discovered she is on my present health insurance. I've seen her once now. I think maybe I need to make an appt with her, my therapist, today. Peace & Joy.