I think in the future this weekly rant will make me actually look forward to Mondays. Weird, I know.
It was hard for me to feel grateful yesterday when I was lying in a hotel room after a miserable rainy day feeling like I did nothing but sit in a car, eat, and bicker with my mom. I felt bad starting the week out that way, because aside from the rain and cold an extra-long car ride, it wasn't all a bad day. After all, I'm in St. Louis, the city where I'm going to be living and going to school for the next two and a half years. We went to Mass at the BEAUTIFUL St. Louis Cathedral Basilica, likely where I will go to Mass every Sunday. And oh my goodness the singer and the acoustics…. I loved it! When I really think about it, I am beyond excited.
So, a mini Sunday post before I continue to my Monday rant: I'm grateful for my mom putting up with me and taking me on this trip. I'm very grateful for my dad's hefty donation to my apartment fund. I got to see friends over the weekend, I got to march around the quad, and my mom, dad, and stepmom actually managed to get along long enough for me to finish the graduation ceremony. Thinking positive: I walked a lot (in heels - ouch!) around campus and during the ceremonies, so the weekend's not a total loss.
AND NOW... the promised rant, in a slightly different format. Hey, I work with what I can.
You've seen my "top-10" list, of the reasons why I want to lose weight. I tried to make it a positive thing, not a list of things I want to get rid of. However, most of those things are in the future, and harder to imagine. Hindsight is 20/20. It's not good to dwell in the past, but while I can I'm going to spell out clearly many of the reasons I don't want to be fat anymore. Basically this is a section for the rant "how much it sucks to be overweight." As much as I want to think positively, there are some negative experiences that are bad enough to motivate me never to let them happen again.
Experiences like the 'walk of shame' at Six Flags or Worlds of Fun roller coasters because I discovered too late that I couldn't fit in the seats. I walked slowly, in front of a group of friends, trying to smile and wave them off, laughing at how "my boobs got in the way." The second they rounded the corner, the tears started.
Or the flight attendant coming down the aisle, checking that we've all fastened our seatbelts. The feeling of terror and shame when one asks "Do you need a seatbelt extension, Miss?" and the other passengers looking at me. Or the other times I spent struggling for 10 minutes praying just to hear the 'click.' Or the time I just couldn't fasten it at all, so I held the end of it by my side, trying to fool the flight attendants and hoping the turbulence didn't get any worse.
And then there's having to climb over people in movie theater or airline seats, my butt in their faces. The entire time afterward they avoid looking at you. Why don't they just get up and let me in? I can't obey the normal laws of "suck in, you'll fit." I can't help right now how far my butt sticks out. Sometimes I feel like my very presence inconveniences or annoys others. If I'm going to annoy people, I want it to be because of something I did or said, not because of what I look like.
Then there's the general inability to do anything at a normal or fast pace. Even walking. I hate having to take an inhaler just to go walking across campus. It probably took a month to convince my (skinny, very tall) roommate that I legitimately could not walk any faster, that I really could have an asthma attack at the drop of a hat. And I proved it by having an asthma attack - NOT FUN. She did eventually understand and was great, but it's hard to get people to understand that I'm not slow on purpose.
I go through a lot of jeans. My thighs rub together and cause the fabric to wear (and eventually, tear) in the most awkward places. And patches only last so long. Also, my clothes are huge. They take up space. I don't have the closet or drawer space to accommodate a typical supply of clothing. I stuff my backpack full to bursting just to fit in a couple days' worth of clothes, and my friend has the same size bag and a week's worth.
I swear it…. we all look alike! You put 300 pounds on any white, 5'4'' brunette about the same age and she'll be mistaken for me. There's just no room for identifying facial features under all that flub. There was a girl at my last high school named Katie, and she now works at Hy Vee. I've never worked at Hy Vee, and Katie is two years younger than I am and doesn't have glasses or a similar voice. But wherever I go in a 30-mile radius, I always get "Haven't I seen you before? Oh yeah, you're Katie, right? I know you from Hy Vee I think" And I have to explain for the sixtieth time that I'm not her, and I've never met you before.
My health, and fears. I've been told by doctors that I need to lose weight. My asthma alone is enough to threaten my life, and losing weigh is one of the first lines of defense. I've seen my grandfather have a heart attack in my bedroom (and later die). My grandmother has diabetes. Half my extended family has some form of cancer. My grandfather and one uncle had/has sleep apnea. Another uncle has emphysema. My dad has high blood pressure and bad joints. I've had a few phantom chest pains, been on the high side of normal bp, and even moderate amounts of caffeine (or my allergy medicine, pseudoephedrine; or my asthma medicine, albuterol) can give me heart palpitations and make me dizzy. You look up the connections and risks of high blood pressure and heart disease. Yeah, that's right. I have a loaded gun pointed at me from every direction, and who knows when the trigger will get released. It's like in Firefly - "Everybody dies, Tracey. Someone's carryin' a bullet for you right now, doesn't even know it. The trick is, die of old age before it finds you." That's the plan, figuratively.
Then there's this crippling anxiety that eats at my self-esteem. I'm trying to deal with it. My best friend Lena is just about the only one who can break me out of the shell, and then not always for very long. I don't dance or like being in front of people. No, I really quite hate being in the spotlight. I nearly started crying (indeed, was hyperventilating) the time a friend blackmailed me onto a dance floor. She made the DJ call attention to me not dancing and threatened to tell him my name! Some days it's bad enough that I dislike leaving the house because my neighbors will watch me. (I'm not paranoid - they're extremely nosy. They watch everything and stare and judge, and then tell you what they think later). It's a constant battle within me, part of my mind always saying that I don't belong, that I stick out, that everyone is staring at me or secretly making fun of me. And of course, there are the people who do make fun of me. But those memories are a bit too painful, and rather than a purposeful list of things I want to avoid, this would become a pity party).
Here's to never having to be ashamed. Here's to skinny jeans. Here’s to catching up with my little cousins when they run. Here’s to my doctor one day saying "good job." Here's to punching my anxiety in the face and strutting proudly, because I deserve to have fun and live life just as much as any of the others out there. Here's to me and to the person I am becoming.
After a long and slow fight against Dementia and almost a year in hospice care, my grandmother passed away this morning. I'm sad, very sad, but also relieved. She'd been practically lost to us for so long, and now she's no longer in pain. I've missed her stubborn, loving, and laughing personality. She always made sure we treated people right, always cared for others more than herself, and could beat anyone in an argument out of sheer stubbornness. She taught me a silly song about a snake in Silver lake (sing-song cancha-cancha kymee home!) and would embarrass my brother and me by standing on the porch in her neon pink bathrobe and wave goodbye as we got on the school bus. 
