I wanted to say a few things unrelated to working out. after my post about my experiences with weigh-ins growing up I got some flack and some interesting comments from friends (since at this moment they are really the only ones reading my blog)
I don't want anyone to think that I am posting these experiences looking for sympathy, or to serve as judge and jury against either of my parents. I forgave both of them a long time ago for things that happened in my childhood, but forgiveness doesn't change things that happened. Everyone is human, and no one is perfect. By understanding this, it doesn't make excuses for anything that happened, but it does help better to empathize with situations and motivations for doing things. I need to discuss them because they need to be let out into the open to be examined and let go. Any experience that I talk about is simply that... my experience, my perceptions, my understandings, my feelings. They don't need to be excused, discussed, debated, changed, or attempted to change, because they are mine and mine alone.
Swimming especially is very reflective for me, because I am alone with my thoughts for an hour. The slap- splash of the water is very hypnose inducing, and takes my mind all sorts of places. The best thing for me to do is to blog about what emotions came up while exercising, examine them, find out the where's, why's, how's etc, and move on from it. I easily have 20 years of repressed emotions that I was always afraid to say or feel because I put everyone elses feelings ahead of my own. I didn't want to rock the boat, I didn't want to start an argument, I wanted to make everything calm, I just wanted to be liked, I just wanted friends, whatever the motivation was at the time, I spent a very long time afraid to be.
My intense fear of confrontation has hurt me both personally and professionally, and I keep telling myself that I don't care that those types of people, the ones who seek to destroy you, aren't worth my time, that I don't care about them. I repeat the phrase over and over again to myself almost on a daily basis, when something upsets or bothers me, that "I don't care"
But, obviously I do care, or else I wouldn't be allowing it to bother me. I think I am over-full of repressed emotion, and it's time to deal with it...piece by pieces. A wall is built brick by brick, over years and years... I'm hoping to dismantle that wall in pieces. So this journey is not only a physical journey to achieving a goal, but an emotional one as well.
Essentially, I think everything started going downhill in 7th grade for me. There was other stuff before that, but it's not important in the grand scheme of things. New school, full of people that had known eachother since kindergarten, the only one in the entire jr high with divorcing parents. (At that time I guess divorce wasn't as common as it is now...plus it was a Catholic school) I was teased mercilessly day in and day out for 2 years in that school.
My knees had started getting bad in 7th grade, so I had to miss gym class... then I was teased for always missing gym class so I would just miss school all together thinking that would solve the problem which only increased the fodder. Teachers, students, they all joined in on the fun. My 8th grade year book has a "where will they be in 20 years" at the back of it... mine says "She will finally have come to school enough days to graduate". Couple this with the war zone I came home to every day and you have a 2 year stretch that was a never ending battle zone. My older sibling was in high school, could see the expanse of a life free from drama ahead of her once she went to college. She had a drivers license, friends, a job, and was gone from the house most of the time. My younger sibling was little, 7 1/2.
I was the one that took the verbal barrages, as the younger sibling was too young to understand or be affected by what either parent was saying...and I tried to protect her from most of it, taking the brunt myself instead. Always trying to keep the boat stable never wanting it to rock, both parents felt and still do to this day that my loyalty lies with the other. Both have told me that I am an untrustworthy tattle tale time after time after time even now, twenty effing years later, I still have to fight against an unfair stereotype. Which is why I found myself navigating the trecherous land mines of my adolecsent years totally and completely alone. When you are 11,12, 13 and into your teens, life is hard enough to navigate, throw in a hardened, afraid of confrontation, self dependant into the mix and it is an emotional cocktail of destructive disaster. Imagine having to battle the "mean girls" when you have been trained to emotionally ball into a fetal position and surrender instead of standing your ground... what happens when a bully realizes you are an easy target that isn'tgoing to fight back and isnt going to tell on them.
Usually, a person like that would have perceptive parents that would realize things were amiss with their child...and why did she want to stay home from school so much...why was it that she spent the hour and half until you got home from work crying in her room instead of doing her homework. Usually parents would march into the principals office and demand something be done, ask questions, wonder why teachers were accessories, why no one ever put an end to it.
But, when you have parents who are focusing all of their energies on battling eachother....
The cheese really does stand alone.
I had no friends, - the ones from my grade school had all moved on and the few people in the new school that I did hang out with were more acquaintences than friends. When we would spend weekends at my dads house, he would always ask me why I didn't have people spend thenight like my sister did...didn't I have any friends. And the answer was, no I didn't. I would actually frantically go through the halls on Fridays and ask everyone and anyone if they wanted to have a sleepover. Which is probably why people thought I was weird, but I was so desperate to show my family that I was "normal", that it didn't matter how many people I had to ask.
Once I graduated from that school and moved on to my high school I thought everthing would be different, it would all change now that I was in a new school getting a fresh start with dozens of other girls also getting a fresh start in a new school. Unfortunately I was battle weary and really had a hard time trusting anyone...and not everytime but there were enough times even in high school where I had put my trust in someone only to have it shredded and passed around a very small school like a toy.
The rest will need to wait for another day. It's almost 11:00 and I have lots to do. I took the week off to organize the house and get rid of all this junk. Apparently I have an affinity for collecting junk, both emotional junk and physical junk. So it's time to purge it all. Off to make another deposit at the Salvation Army!
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