Category: Uncategorized

I became a Christian when I was around 21 years old. I started attending church when I was 19. I had just come home from living in Scottsdale, AZ for nearly a year while I attended culinary school. During that time in Arizona, my social anxiety kept me from making friends and going out, which led to self-isolation and loneliness, in turn fueling my always lurking depression.

I can look back and give these things names but at the time I had did not have words or awareness let alone diagnoses or treatment plans. I just knew I was sad and lonely.

And fat. Always fat.

I moved home after my Grandma died. She was 92 and the first person I ever really knew to pass away. This gave me a sense of mortality for the first time in my life and I decided it made no sense to live so far from my family. Also, I missed my dog. Completely true. If I were to give percentages to reason for me to quit culinary school and move home, it would be as follows:

20% my grandma dying
20% finding value in family
20% I was running out of money
3,000% I missed my dog

I remember sleeping a lot when I returned home. Like, A LOT alot. I had no job and no college classes. So I slept until noon most days. When I awoke I watched TV. I knew what was on every channel from noon to midnight. That was my schedule.

12pm – 12am: Watch TV
12am – 12pm: Sleep

There were bathroom breaks, an occasional shower and meals but I don’t remember leaving the house. I don’t remember seeing friends. I didn’t go for walks. I stopped responding to the calls and texts from the few friends I had made while out in Arizona.

To this day I can’t remember what got me off the couch other than an intrinsic understanding that how I was living was not ‘normal’ and kind of embarrassing. I had to breakup with the couch. Was it comfortable? Yes. Did it support me through a dark time? Absolutely. But it wasn’t a healthy relationship. We were seeing too much of each other and frankly, I had become way too co-dependent on it.

I enrolled in courses at the community college which would start after the New Year. It was the same New Year that I started my New Year’s Resolution diet.

I was uneducated and unwell.

When I met my husband I was real skinny. What he and the rest of the world didn’t know was that I was also real hungry.

Jason and I met when I was 21 or 22, I can’t remember and don’t care enough to figure it out. Maybe I should have just stated early 20’s but it’s too late, the thought process has been typed out. A few bits before we met I started my 10th-ish diet at the age of 19 on New Year’s Day. Yep. A weight loss resolution. I started counting calories, focused on eating fruits and veggies, doing some walking etc etc. I was 191 Lbs.

Always a planner, I tracked out how thin I would be and when if I lost 1 Lb a week. By physician standards, a healthy goal. And it was good. I steadily lost weight and as I did, I increased my exercise and found new interest in nutrition. When I got to 150 Lbs the weight loss started to slow. So I pushed harder. More time on the treadmill, fewer calories. Still I was struggling to lose more weight.

I’m 5’4″ and according to the BMI chart, I was still overweight. So I went harder still and with an unwavering devotion to get my time on the treadmill in, which kept me from engaging in social activities. If you want to achieve, you have to put the time in, right? I found ways to fill my tummy with as few calories as possible. I managed to get down to 145 Lbs but that was barely even a healthy weight. I wanted to get in a ‘safe’ zone since weight can fluctuate, I wanted a cushion of error that was safely within my healthy weight range.

So I started making sure that everyday I was burning as many calories as I was consuming. If I ate 1,200 calories, I had to burn 1,200 calories. I’m a treadmill warrior so that meant 2 hours on the treadmill everyday. And I did that. Everyday.

I got down to 131 Lbs. Which is still only a ‘healthy’ weight for my height, according to the BMI chart. I was never able to get under 131 Lbs. And I would know because I weighed myself around 10 times a day. First thing in the morning, after I went to the bathroom, Before I exercised, after I exercised, after I ate, before bed, if I looked at a brownie, etc etc.

I felt great. I was starving but it felt so good. There was a wonderful high that the hunger would bring. How baggy my clothes felt. How boney my hip bones were. How loud my stomach would gurgle, begging for food.

Since I am old and when Jason and I met, Facebook was just becoming a thing, I didn’t have the luxury of lying about my looks online. I did it in real life.

Catfishing is a term used to describe a situation when someone falsely attracts another person online by creating a fake persona. An example would be if I posted a picture of myself from my early 20’s leading people to believe that is how I currently look (I do not). So I like to joke that I catfished him (I looked like a thin person when I am actually a fat person). However, the hard truth is that it’s not actually funny. It’s called an eating disorder and when Jason and I met I was deep in the throws of my first experience with an extended/long-term episode of binge eating.

There is a lot more to be said on the subject but for today I just wanted to make it official and say that I am a fat person. I am not someone who has let herself go or someone who is lazy or someone who can’t get rid of the the baby weight. No. I am a fat person. I have a fat body. And I am sorry to my fat-self for spending so much of my brainspace and precious time trying to hide it.

Life is here to live now and I deserve to live it now. So do you. Come as you are.

As I sat in the NICU for the 3rd week with my baby who I thought would be home quickly after birth, I had the pleasure of listening to the family next door being discharged. I have no idea what their baby was “in for” and I have no idea who these people were other than surmising from their conversations that they were likely in their early 30’s with some amount of professional education. I did however know, without a doubt, know that this was their first baby.

I listened all afternoon as they asked every question under the sun about the care of their baby. Good grief. “Do the straps on the car seat look ok?, “How do we bathe her?”, “So I’m feeding her every 3 hours, IS THAT ENOUGH?”, “How do I know when she is full?”, “Can you go through bathing her once more?”, “WILL THE CAT ACCEPT HER?!”. Just a tiny TINY glimpse of the questions asked that day with the exception of the cat. For closure, I am all but positive the cat will never accept that baby. No fault to the baby of course but for the poor assignment of being born to these helicopter bafoons.

I was annoyed and perplexed why you would choose to have a baby if you were so uncertain about your own ability to keep it alive. I was also, wildly bitter that they were so happy. Because I, was not. I was the person who was worse off than them.

There is always someone who has it worse than you. So true.
But comparing our visceral responses to someone else’s difficult situation is like comparing apples and oranges. Such a good point.

Unfortunately for me, in this difficult season I’m finding very little relief from these platitudes.

(In fact, they are kind of pissing me off.)

I sat in my infant daughter’s room reminding myself that there were other parents who had it worse than me in the NICU right then. Scarier circumstances. Less support. Fewer resources.

You can’t compare your emotions to other people’s circumstances; I believe that’s true. But there is also something powerful about perspective that can pull you out of a funk and helpful you feel just a tiny ray of gratitude for what is going right.

So which is it? Are we allowed to feel what we feel or do we need to bid farewell to our beloved pity parties and find perspective?

At this moment. Where I sit right now in my plush purple chair, writing with my college education, in the den of my architecturally acclaimed home, in my white suburban neighborhood, in a country founded on freedom, I can tell you with some delight that the cry of my heart is that THIS ISN’T FAIR and I DON’T LIKE IT. And I do not care who has it worse because I am edging towards such despair that I cannot fathom a world where the hurt in my heart is absent.

Tomorrow I will probably feel bad about it and find immeasurable shame in my privilege. I will remind myself that ‘gratitude is an attitude’ and to ‘pull myself up by my bootstraps’ and to ‘put my big girl pants on’.

So there you have it. The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end.

Little girl continues to be full of surprises. We have made it to 34 weeks and passed our latest non-stress test with flying colors. Next week we have what we expect to be our last Fetal Echo and Ultrasound at the Chicago Institute for Fetal Health.

How am I doing? Well…..

I’m sweaty. All the time. I bought special cream deodorant that I can put basically all over my body. And I do. Shout out to Lume for keeping me freshish. Because there is nothing on God’s green earth that could actually keep me fresh at this point.

I’m also sick to my stomach. I have been. SINCE FEBRUARY. Nothing sounds good to eat. AND I LOVE TO EAT. When I do eat, I feel bad after. And guess what? When I puke. I sweat extra.

I’m as short and stout as a teapot. And I swear to God, if you tip me over I’m gonna smack yo momma cuz at this point getting up from being tipped over would be the end of my day. And also, it would make me break a sweat.

In my early 20s I used to laugh at the thought of what I would look like being pregnant. I knew in my head it would not be a cute look on me. I was sure I would look like the Kool-Aid man except with a waddle and in no way refreshing. Turns out. This girl knows her body type because that is exactly what I look like. I’m 34 weeks pregnant and people who don’t see me often can’t even really tell.

So physically, I feel like some blob of a being who is just invisibly existing. I’m too sweaty to wear my hair down and too sweaty to put makeup on and resigned myself to only buying a total of 4 outfits to make it through this summer pregnant. And 3 weeks ago I split a pair of shorts. In front of my 9 year old son who really had the time of his life laughing at my expense.

And then there is my mental health. And since it is late at night and I don’t feel like crying, I’ll stick to the cliff notes.

1. I’m increasingly anxious about handling “all of this”.
2. I feel inadequate in pretty much everyway.
3. I’m lonely
4. Filled with regret
5. Wrestling with guilt and shame
6. I’m angry
7. Questioning God. Is that even the right way to put it? Struggling with faith? Generally pissed off?
8. And 100% burnt out parenting. Ha. HAHAHAHA, Isn’t that some shit? HAHAHAHA. Oh the irony. What a joke. But you know, “Gods got this”. Lol. K.

It’s fine. I’m fine. Definitely cried while typing that list. Damnit.

Public Disclaimer: I hope my general public complaining does not put anyone off from reaching out. Or especially from trying to encourage me. I’ve yet to be offended by anything anyone has said to me in an attempt to comfort. There are no perfect words. Heck, I don’t even know what to say to me. I’m thankful for the check-ins and for everyone letting me (mostly) wear my heart on my sleeve.