I am SO here right now...

So, did I ever tell you I went to therapy for a while? Actually, I was in and out of therapy a few times, but could only ever find therapists that wanted to talk about how everything that is wrong with me is my mother's fault and would I like more drugs? Not that either of those is necessarily bad. I do believe that some of my problem is my mother (which is one reason that I'm so distressed about how I interact with my daughter), and drugs would be great if I didn't overreact to them.

But.

I wanted therapy that would actually help me. Help me stop the stupid behaviors. Great, thanks, now I know where they came from; can we do the things that will stop them now? Can we work on cutting the loop in my head now? But no, they just wanted to keep talking about my mother and all the men I'd been sleeping with.

Then I accidentally fell into the best therapist ever. And what he did was amazing. He told me to cut the bullshit. To stop acting like a selfish brat and eventually I'd stop feeling like a selfish brat. That, no matter HOW I was feeling at any given moment, I needed to behave in accordance with my own internal moral compass and do the right thing. Eliminating cognitive dissonance would help.
So, for a year or two I:
quit smoking
had sex with my husband even when I didn't want to
didn't yell at my child (mostly)
talked to people I didn't know or like
wrote

I lived in the moment. I appreciated what I was doing. I....think I mostly may have just been in a repressive fugue.

I WANTED to do it. I did. I DO. But I think now there might have been a teensy tiny need for me to be spewing some "look what my mother did to me" crap.

So now I'm back to the spewing. Can I spew and be living in the moment and appreciating life and doing the right thing, no matter how depressed I am?

I'm going to give that one more week.

Then I'm going to work on how messed up I am when it comes to time, deadlines and scheduling.

(But I did lose enough weight in the last 3 weeks to fit into my skinny jeans that a month ago I couldn't pull over my thunder thighs, and I haven't had a cigarette...until today, and that was only because I was drinking with my BFF and just wanted one. Or four. But I'm good; patch back on now!)

Here Comes Week 3

Wow. Well, that was certainly depressing to read, isn't it? After rereading my post from yesterday, I felt like I'd been kicked in the gut, seeing my sick perspective all laid out like that. I've decided I need to at least try. I do love my daughter, I do. And I do think she's a cool kid; she's funny and has a great memory for odd little bits of information (like her mom), looks at every angle of every situation (like her dad), is really athletic and pretty. I can accept her for whom she is (who she is? I know the who/whom rule, but then I overthink it and get all bolloxed up on it) and cheer her on for everything she does.

But I really probably ought to figure out why so many of the things she does irritate me so much.

Come to think of it, everything irritates me lately. I feel like George Costanza on that episode where he was trying to get out of doing anything by walking around at work acting all pissed off all the time. What is that? I'm just so....pissy.

I get pissy when the wiener dog want to jump up on the sofa and sit on my lap, even thought I love snuggling with him.

I get pissy when the husband leaves a glass on the counter that has a puddle of milk in the bottom, even though the rest of the counter is covered in all my detritus from the day.

I get pissy when the phone rings; I don't want to talk to anyone, that's just too much effort, even though I'm lonely. Conversely, I get pissy when I call someone and they don't answer, even though I very rarely answer my own phone, even when it's someone I really want to talk to. Just too much effort.

I get pissy when I try to find something in the laundry room, which is a certifiable disaster area. MY disaster.

etc...
etc...
etc...

Am I a bitch? Maybe. I think it's just pissiness. Or PissiNess. Hormones? Probably. My face is looking like the astrological map lately, my boobs feel bruised all the time (sorry for the TMI), so the annoying woman-issues could be doing it. Depression? Yeah, pretty sure.

I'm good at reading. I'm good at reading self-help books and getting all excited and doing the whole "Yes I CAN!!!" cheer...for a few days or weeks or months. It's the doing of the needed behaviours that is hard for me. But I try. Then...meh...things start to get all dim and dreary and pissy again. It's just so hard to be a good person sometimes. I have maintenance issues. Meds don't work on me, they make me worse and/or ill.

Okay. So, here's my little plan. I'm going to keep up with the exercise thing. I'm going to increase it to four days a week this week. Exercise helps; it's that whole endorphin release stuff. New research has also shown that smoking makes PMS worse and makes depression worse (My GOD, are they EVER going to find something GOOD about smoking, please? Just one little thing, maybe, to make me feel better about being absolutely besotted with cigarettes and nicotine?), so being off of those might help with the cheerfulness.

I don't like being pissy. It's easy, it's convenient, it gives me a sick sense of power. I don't like it. I don't want to be pissy; I grew up with a pissy mum (I know, she's all cheery now, but she's had some revelations of her own over the last 20 years) and hated how that felt. I don't want that for G, and I'm pretty sure I'm much worse than my mom ever was. So I will be present; that's it. Just present. I will enjoy--no, I will experience just this one moment. I will do my best not to knee-jerk react.
Here comes week 3. Every little moment of it.

Day 10--Week 2, The Gym.

Okay. Went to the gym today, for the third time this week. Feeling very smug. This is IT! I'm DOING IT! I'm kicking some ASS! Yes! I think tomorrow I'll get up an hour early and go jogging and then come home and make G a three course breakfast and do all the laundry and clean the laundry room and do all the ironing and then go to the gym and then---

Wait. Stop. Stop me right there.

This is my problem. I tend to do the "all or nothing" thing, especially when it comes to improving myself. All I usually end up improving is how tired I am, how overwhelmed I feel and how many bags of Cheetos and cigarettes I can consume in one day. Then I get all pissy with myself and revert to the rut. (Click on the word rut to see exactly what that entails). It doesn't help, at least on the 'not going to over-do it at the gym' front that I only have six weeks in which to lose 20 lbs. so that I can stand next to Tina and Becky in Tahoe and not feel like the token fat chick.

So....calmly.....non-excitedly....not spastic at all...I went to the gym today. It was swimming day, which is my reward on Thursday if I've managed to make it through at least two cardio-and-weights sessions in the week. I love swimming day; I sit in the jacuzzi for a while, I swim some laps and reset my brain by blowing bubbles, I sit in the jacuzzi, I move to the sauna, I shower and put on comfy pants. It's a nice gym day. At least, it was today. Last Thursday, not so much.

See, Wednesday is legs day. Last Wednesday was the first time I've done legs in months. And me, being me, went whole hog on the quads, hams and glutes. Curling, lunging, doing some bizarre side leg-lift off a bench thing I saw a trainer showing some chick, calf raises, all of it. Ok, so I only did one set of each, knowing the mushy consistency of my muscles at present, but still. It was a good 45 minutes of grunting and quivering and trying not to pee. Then a half hour on the elliptical. I figured I was easing in, that if I only did one set I wouldn't be sore the next day.

Buzz! Wrong! I was not just sore the next day; I was jell-o girl. My legs hurt so much, I hobbled and waddled when I had to get somewhere. Any style of locomotion that didn't cause any muscles in my legs to have to contract was my preferred method. I figured I was well due that time in the jacuzzi.

So I hobbled to the car, wincing as I lifted each dead limb into the vehicle. I hobbled into the gym, trying to take actual strides so as not to look like an ass. Hobbled to the locker room to put on my swimsuit without bending my legs, hobbled to the jacuzzi, and melted into the perfectly hot water. Did not want to get out of the hot water, even when my internal temperature gauge started to whistle and yell at me that I was too warm. Finally dragged my now overheated ass out of the jacuzzi and hobbled to the pool, trying to do a cool jump into it but mostly just falling in when my legs gave out. Bobbed up to the surface, cursing and wheezing at the cold water. Did twelve whole laps. Mostly with my arms. Yep, you heard me. 12. Almost a third of a mile. I am destined for greatness.

Today I am not sore, which tells me I can move up to doing two sets of legs. I added three laps, making it an even half-mile (almost. It's a metric-standard conversion that I refuse to try to do in my head. Or a feet-yard-mile conversion. I dunno. I suck at math. I just round it off to 30 laps in a mile and call it good).

It felt good. Am now NOT going to reward self with the rest of the daughter's Halloween candy (I know I know, I need to just throw it out already) or a cigarette. Am now going to go write at least 500 words of what I hope is non-crap.