saying good-bye

Me, Key West Thanksgiving 2002

so, as i previously blogged about...moving forward is where i am in my simultaneous emotional health journey.   a lot of the need to move forward surfaced to the top when i had my cards read in key west.  

that night, and for the rest of our time in key west, i tapped into my new found ownership of meditating and would sit outside and meditate in my thoughts.   sitting on the dock, i would imagine the 150 pounds that i had lost at that point drifting out to the bay in the current.   i had images in my mind of placing pictures of my former self in the water and watching them disappear. 

when i returned from my trip, i told my therapist about the reading.  i did not mention my visual meditations.   telling her about the reading, i got very choked up.   and, i am pretty sure i am not imagining this, but i think she did too.   she told me that a few months ago she did not think i was ready, but perhaps i would like to consider writing a good-bye letter to my former self and we could go out to the intracoastal outside her office and i could read it out loud and then destroy the letter and let it find its way down the waterway and into the ocean.   that is when i told her about my visual meditations in the keys.   we agreed that i would think about doing this exercise and that there was no rush.

the thing is, ever since i left that session on august 23rd all i can think about is writing the letter.   i compose parts and think of the letter's structure all the time.   when i told my therapist that this past week she hit her forehead with her hand and said she KNEW i would be making an outline...lol.   whatevah.  it takes nerdy anal people to make this world of ours go round....lol... i do know i want it to have 3 distinct parts... 1. an acknowledgement of all the great aspects of my former self.   the parts of my personality and being that, while at times may have been overcompensation for my physical appearance, were special and exceptionally heidi.  2. a good-bye to whatever emotional baggage i am holding onto and is holding me back.   good-bye to the girl in the picture above.  3. a thank you to myself for making the decision to have surgery and for committing to healing my body, mind and heart.   i have not sat down and written the letter yet, but have set a goal of having it complete by september 13.  i will turn 38 on september 14. 

i am ready.  i am ready to close this chapter of my life.   i am ready to release my former 373 pound self and move forward.    of course, this is going to be a situation of mind over matter --- because the physical scars of my 373 pound self remain... the excess skin issues, most notably.   but i am at peace with myself and letting go and i know i can, probably for the first time in my life, focus my mind and not sweat the matter.   which brings me to the other emotional growth issue i am facing.

early on in therapy, my therapist pointed out that like many addicts and narcissists (and i happen to be both!) i don't like to be with myself.   as introspective as i may come across here, what she saw was someone who likes to find stimulation and validation on the outside of herself.   i wasn't sure i was buying it when she brought it up, but i swallowed it for future digestion.    one example she used was -- what do you do at a red light?  i check my blackberry or read or play number games in my head with the gas prices listed on the street corner.   i have been doing the number game since i was a child.   she told me that was a perfect example of me not wanting to be alone with myself or my thoughts.  and that it probably started in my childhood in the back of my parents station wagon as a form of self-soothing...which is all food was to me as well.  she pointed out that even my constant reading of books was going outside myself.

so...what became very clear to me after our week at the rental house in the keys was that i could really learn to love being in quietness and alone.  i would sit out on that dock and just think and think and think.   an avid reader, i got through only ONE book in the ten days of my keys vacation.    when i came back home and got into the swing of things i found that social obligations (including my own birthday party) and requests for attention from my staff were really "bothersome" (for lack of a better word) to me.    i.just.wanted.to.be.left.alone.   sure, there was a lot going on with kindergarten and work drama -- but what i came to realize in this is that i don't want to be that person out there all the time organizing, leading and in charge.  and that is a huge change from who i have been the last 20 years and more specifically the last 5 years.   and through recollection of my therapist's suggestion about my unwillingness to be alone in myself and following up with a conversation with her this week...i finally "get it".   i was always The Boss™.  because if i was telling other people what to do, i did not have time to deal with myself.   if it was my role to critique people, i did not have to critique myself.  if i had to make myself available to other people, i did not have to be available to myself.   maybe common sense to your emotionally healthy people out there.  not so much to me.

so where does that leave me?   well...i started out my professional career working in archives.   that is where my interest was.   sixteen long years later i have been on a journey that took me away from what i wanted to be when i grew up.   but i still haven't grown up and i still want to work in a library, museum or something like that.   when i close my eyes and meditate lately about my career path -- that is where i see myself.   to be true to myself, and perhaps find another facet of happiness in me, it means a lot of things will need to happen.   the one word all of these things have in common is: change.   change in employer.  change in salary (major decrease).   maybe change in location.   change in lifestyle.   i am ready for this change.  not today.  not next week.  but my goals now as far as work goes is not to aggressively advance myself into the next level of management (which would be top executive) but to find happiness.  elsewhere. 

it is time to say good-bye to who i thought i was and embrace who i am really meant to be.  i no longer have to prove my abilities to overcompensate for my physical appearance.  i am no longer avoiding being just me and just alone with me.  i don't have to be anyone else except me.  heidi.  mom.  healthy.

just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.