Moving right along (*digga dum digga dum*)
I have mentioned before that I am a different person than I was growing up. Not just that I was morbidly obese and now I am a healthy weight. But that I think and act differently.
And today I am marveling a little at myself. Because for the past few days, I have been in the middle of change and discomfort. And I have been (mostly) pretty graceful.
I left New York in May to move in with my boyfriend. He travels for work. It was time to leave one job and it’s a couple of weeks before we move along to another. So I just packed up life for the second time in 3 months. And this time, got in a pickup truck and traveled on the road for 19 hours. Which I’ll do again in a couple of weeks. And then again. And again. From job to job. Forever. Or at least for a long time. We don’t have plans to settle in one place any time soon…
The idea that I would choose this is sort of fascinating to me. I am historically a person who avoids change. In some ways I still think of myself as someone with an aversion to the unknown. Markedly unadventurous.
I certainly was when I was a compulsive eating sugar addict. I never anticipated any difficulty. But was explosively furious if even the smallest problem or discomfort should arise.
But one of the things I learned when I got sober from sugar is that life happens. To everybody. To not take it personally.
Because I did! So personally. And everybody else was to blame. If I were stuck in traffic, it was the cab driver’s fault. It didn’t matter that I left the house at rush hour. Late. Or that every other person on that road was also stuck in traffic. Or that traffic is a part of life. It was a personal affront from God, the cabbie, and all of the other people in my way. It was a conspiracy against me! (I was that important. Impressive, huh?)
I threw a lot of temper tantrums over life being “not fair”. Which were really temper tantrums over life being “not easy”. Because I think life is a lot more fair than I ever gave it credit for. (And it helps that I stopped comparing my personal experience with what it looked like everybody else’s experience was. I have heard it called comparing my insides with everybody else’s outsides.)
I won’t pretend I wasn’t overwhelmed and exhausted on Friday night. The hardest part for me is point where my home around me is chaos and everything is a jumble of things to pack, things I don’t know if I want to pack, and garbage. And after spending most of the day packing, it didn’t help that I was physically exhausted too. It was certainly the most graceless I was this weekend. (Sorry, Baby. Love you.)
But I am going to be doing this. Regularly. I am bound to get better at it. And I want to get better. I am already thinking about ways to get better. How to downsize. To figure out what is the minimum I need to be happy and comfortable. And live like that. How to enjoy the adventurous life. Because life actually is an adventure. Even if I’m not looking for it to be. So I might as well embrace it. It’s what I’ve been offered as the best option.
No, I don’t have to go. I don’t have to agree to it. Getting my eating under control taught me about taking responsibility for the choices I make. And this adventurous life is the one that comes with my Love. And I choose my Love with all of the things that come with it. And I am enjoying it so far. Even the unknown.
That’s a gift of getting my eating under control. I actually enjoy life. All of it. I am not just tolerating this moving around. I am looking forward to the next adventure.
And I will tell you that there is one other gift of getting my eating under control. I had all of my food packed in the car. I ate when it was time to eat. I didn’t have to worry about where to stop. Or when. Or if I could put it off until the next time we needed gas. Or being ravenously hungry. I didn’t have to think about food. The food was taken care of. And I enjoyed the time with my boyfriend.
onceafatgirl 