Sunday, February 20, 2011

Turning Picnics into Prizefights

I'm not really sure where to begin on this one, so I'm going to just kind of write whatever comes to mind, at least at first, until some sort of cohesive narrative emerges. The reason I sat down to write this is that I have managed, in spite of a morning filled with very promising personal developments, to work myself into a full-blown mangry depressive freak out, and I figure I'm better off tossing my negative thoughts and energy to the winds of cyberspace than the alternative, which might just involve winging my empty coffee mug across the room and concussing some unsuspecting undergraduate.

What's eating me this particular morning is hard to pin down. I woke up sore and tired, but didn't let those conditions keep me from enjoying a slow, steady and invigorating eight mile jog. From there, I jumped into my car and sped to my weekly adipose reckoning, where I logged a weight of 256.6, a new personal low. After getting home and showering, I went poking around in my closet to see if maybe there wasn't a pair of pants from an earlier, slimmer time in my life that I might be able to wear again. Lo and behold, a pair of size 40 corduroy jeans slid right on and fit just fine. Now exercised, weighed, scrubbed and stylishly appointed, all that remained was to hit up the local coffee house and spend an hour or so knocking out HBO-special caliber stand-up writing. Of course, if you've read this much of the post, you realize that things didn't quite proceed according to plan.

The thing is, I can't quite seem to accept the positive feedback of my daily existence. See, that jog was fine, but I could have run much faster, if only I weren't still so damned heavy. And yeah, 256.6 is great, but it's a mere 0.6 pounds less than last week, and still over 50 pounds away from my goal. Further, the weight may come off, but the guy I see when I stare into a mirror won't ever be the right weight. Those pants fit, but just barely, and my saggy gut still hangs depressingly over the waist, hiding the button and the first inch or so of zipper. So pretty much, while you were reading the first couple paragraphs and watching a morning full of personal empowerment and great news, I was hunkered down in a category 5 hurricane of self loathing and insecurity.

It's not all doom and gloom, however, no matter how hard I try to paint it as such. These past few weeks have seen some pretty high-grade strides and breakthroughs for me, including the decision to start taking my performance schedule seriously once more, and my campaign to open and sort two full years of unopened mail (yeah, I know. Look, I'm working on it, OK?). The broader theme seems to be that I no longer wish to exist in the kind of survival mode that I seem to have adopted some time around 2005.

For the last few years, I've been ducking and covering, avoiding personal responsibility like one of those weird Moony flower peddlers who roam the restaurants and bars hawking wilted roses. For me, the pain of several losses and the traumas of my early development snowballed into a vaguely defined melange of guilt, rage, shame and bitter solitude, and after a time, became too big for me to even look at directly, let alone manage. That my inability to face down these demons only gave them more room to grow bigger and uglier is one of the sharp little ironies of this period.

It seems that after more than two years' worth of semiweekly couch time and who knows how many hours' reflection, I'm ready to pick up the shovel and start digging out. The mail is one indication, my resolve to take care of myself is another. For a man in my position, an act as seemingly mundane as daily flossing is a minor act of revolution.

But of course, before I get too carried away patting myself on the back, I should point out that I trust absolutely not one tiny bit that any of this will last. See, I've had these moments of transcendent personal motivation before. The last serious effort was around 2003, when I first decided to take a shot at the weight loss. There have been middling attempts in the interceding period, some more successful than others. There was a grand alpine adventure, lasting almost a month and encompassing 400 miles of solitary Sierra wandering.

After each moment of personal pride has come a fall, each feeling harder than the last. Build a grand temple, then set it alight and smile darkly as I watch it all burn. Panic at the thought of it being gone. Out of this anxiety, hatch a plan to make my great escape from all this, and to build a new cathedral. Repeat as necessary until my 20's have passed. After several such cycles, I'm just a bit skeptical about my odds of achieving some kind of lasting balance.

So where does that leave us in this rambling diatribe? Well, for starters, this little catharsis has caused the anxiety to subside. But there's one more thing I think I need to touch upon about all this. It's one of those "my therapist would be so proud of me" observations. I am suddenly ashamed to admit that I'm excited by the thought of my therapist even reading this, but of course I'll post it to fucking Facebook without a second thought. The voice in me that is causing these meltdowns is screaming now even as I type that each word written pushes me one more perilous step closer to the dread exposure, to the naked public display of my weirdness and unlovable freakishness. A part of my brain, and a deeply powerful one at that, is striving to protect me from being seen. As I'm moving from survival to thriving, I'm dragging this little guy along, and his heels are leaving grooves in the floor.

And that's the whammy, the one key difference between this momentous change, and all that have preceded it. Where in years past I would scarcely have noticed the anxious shift toward self-destruction and the trip around the dark side of the moon, I'm now able to see it coming, write about it, and perhaps if I'm lucky AND good enough, stave off the worst of it.

I don't feel that this post is finished, or any good for that matter. But screw it, I'm posting it anyway. Take that!

Friday, February 18, 2011