Who I am

I know it's a totally cliché thing to say, but I'm at a crossroads.  Or a fork in the road.  Something like that.  I've hit my low by hitting my high.  I've never been heavier than I am right now.  That's a lie.  I was heavier a month ago when I decided I needed to do something.  But things are all relative, and relative to my weight?  I'm not much lighter than I was a month ago.  Every little bit counts and all that bullshit, but I'm not completely satisfied with my trajectory.

Sure, I've made some changes.  I'm eating better, moving a little bit more.  I don't know that it's enough.  The moving part is difficult.  My back aches, my knees fucking kill (Dear Fitness DVD Experts, Fat people can't do lunges without terrorizing their knees.) and I have the endurance of a chicken in flight.  I want to do more, but at the moment, there are too many things that I can't do.

I want.  I want to be thinner, I want to be healthier, I want to be successful.  You gotta want it!  That's what they say, right?  Hmph.  I agree with the sentiment, but it's an incomplete thought.  Wanting it is a start, but I've wanted it for the past 10+ years, yet here I am.  You have to put in effort.  Have I done that in the past?  Eh.  Sometimes.  But not nearly enough or I wouldn't be at the bottom of this canyon, struggling to climb up with very little to grasp.

How did I get down here, anyway?  It's simple, really.  I'm an avoider.  Before a month ago, I hadn't really looked at myself in years.  I am a master at selected sight.  I can look at my face in the mirror and see only the parts rather than the whole.  I can look in a full-length mirror and only see my eyes.  If I don't look at the rest, it doesn't exist.  If I don't wear jeans, I don't have to know what size I need.  If I don't step on a scale, I don't have to know how much I weigh.  If I don't lose the weight, I don't have to find out if I would still be living the same unenviable life in a different body.

That's the crux of it.  Abject fear of failure with a heaping side of inferiority complex and almost no self-esteem.  If I don't try, I can't suffer the humiliation of failure.  And so the irony, of course, is that my fear of failure has caused me to become a failure.  37 years old, overweight, unemployed, alone.  Not completely alone.  I have great friends and a wonderful family.  But until yesterday when I gained custody of a cat in my friends' divorce, I didn't even come home to a plant.

Whatever.

So here I am, steering my way toward the right path, but with a precarious grasp on the wheel.  Is it enough?  What if I hit a pothole?  Fall down?  Encounter too steep a hill?  Will I fail again?  Will I be able to pick myself up if I do?  What about this fork I've reached?  Will I choose the right prong?

I have a decision to make.  I'm not good at making decisions.  At all.  I couldn't even make a decision on what was the better night to go out last weekend, how the fuck can I decide on something so crucial?  What if I choose wrong?  Ugh.  I am a mental case.  I need to do more thinking, some research.  Then I really need to make a decision.

Right now, I choose to go to sleep.