Who Loves You?

How are those New Years’ resolutions going? Mine went out the window in less than 24 hours. Life has been different and exciting and I haven’t really thought about why I can never stick to resolutions. Except every morning when I stepped on the scale I thought about that holiday weight loss one. And then I fixed that. I stopped stepping on the scale. Problem solved!

Those holiday pounds, despite my admittedly slapdash efforts, have stubbornly refused to move. I lost a few of them but they came back overnight. Then at the doctor’s office I weighed five pounds less than I did that morning at home. And I had clothes on! Winter clothes! So that lulled me into a false sense of security. Also, my new smaller sized wardrobe still fits. One pair of jeans pinch a little bit in the middle. That made me get on the scale again and then pull out my journals from October, when I bought the new wardrobe. I calculated my weight gains and losses from then until now.

I didn’t like those numbers. I knew I had to do more to change them. I have back-to-back vacations coming up and that means restaurant food and airport cocktails to calm the nerves and less yoga. Although today I tried “Happy Baby” pose and think Owen might like it! Then I mentioned to Al that I would dust the basement if he would vacuum with his man vacuum. (It intimidates me.) We never got around to it last weekend. So it was yoga and back to the Lisa Plan for food.

But Seattle is on the horizon and I need to walk. It’s too cold here and there’s ice and snow and things. After great trepidation, I steadied my nerves and went down into the pit of hell, um, basement, and set my treadmill to incline. That worked out okay yesterday except it wanted me to run instead of walk. Like the mind of the machine thinks the more you incline the faster you should go. No. That’s not how I like it. I want Ballard neighborhood sidewalks! They don’t have that setting on the treadmill.

You know the treadmill was invented as a medieval torture devise for prisoners, right? True story.

This entry has a shadow component to it … I am an emotional eater. I eat to fill a hole in my heart. Also, I am lazy. I would rather exercise my mind with a mystery novel than my body with certain kinds of physical exertion. I had to admit these things but doing work with one’s shadow self goes a bit deeper. I always thought that hole inside was because Al didn’t love me enough. He put everything before me: work, gym, sports, friends…there’s more, but you get the idea. He doesn’t put those things before me anymore, but when I began gaining weight, that was the reality of our world. He was a bachelor adjusting to a wife and two instant kids. I was doing everything I could to stay married this time and didn’t complain about his always doing stuff without me. I just ate. Especially after he talked me into giving up cigarettes.

So anyway, all Al’s fault, right? Wrong. It is not Al’s job to fill that hole inside. It is MY job. I need to love myself enough; nobody else can do it for me. Lazy was hard to admit because I am very busy on the inside. Anything but lazy intellectually. Except, in shadow-speak, everyone has both sides of the coin. So I am full of plans and active and busy but my shadow side is lazy. What people do with the shadow is they avoid it, ignore it, or deny it. I did that for a really long time. Until yesterday when I said, yeah, okay, I’m lazy about exercise. I like yoga and destination walking. In Ballard you walk everywhere, but there’s a reason, a place you want to get to. That is not true of the treadmill. I don’t even like walking aimlessly around my neighborhood. And below zero temps plus ice, well, no, I just won’t do it. Walk to the cafe. Walk to the grocery store. Walk up the hill to the ancient ruins. (That would be Delos, not Ballard.) But walk just to move?

Well, yeah. Just to move my body so it can get the exercise it needs to feel good and maintain health. When put that way, it sounds like a loving thing to do. It sounds like I’m giving my body something it’s been needing. It sounds like I’m filling a hole. Listen, I’m not beating myself up when I call myself lazy. I just like looking at things all the way through to the other side. There’s always something interesting going on over there in the shadows.