!@#$%%

WARNING: this is NOT a happy/funny/light hearted/positive post. I would like to think that most of the time I can manage to be happy and positive and pleasant to be around but I'm only human, and there are days like today when I'm not. If you can't handle that, then tough cos I'm not a robot. If you can, read on.....


I am NOT a happy camper. The last two weeks I have once again plateaued but that believe it or not is NOT the problem.

I am !@#%ING SICK OF FOOD.

I'm sick of smelling it. I'm sick of looking at it. I'm sick of being SICK from it. I'm sick of thinking about it. I'm sick of preparing it. I'm sick of throwing it out. I'm sick of having to rearrange it in my fridge and freezer so I can fit in MORE of it.

I AM SICK OF IT.

And the worst part is, I have no idea what to do now.

Today was my husband's birthday, and as you can imagine my eating was not fantastic. Not entirely over the top, but not fantastic. Breakfast bacon and egg on half an english muffin, lunch was biccies and nibblies with the family, dinner was chinese food. I didn't even manage dessert. I worked REALLY hard to make the day everything he wanted it to be, and he had a good day which is awesome. My in laws came over, bringing soft drink I can't drink (despite REALLY wanting to), pickles we'll throw away in a few months and about 5 cucumbers we have no way in HELL of eating because I'm the only one that eats anything remotely like that and I'd be lucky to use a few slices in a salad once in a while.

So we plough through dinner, and despite it being WAY earlier than I planned and being stinking hot I sat there in my pink cowboy hat and sweated it out in our half finished outdoor area. I ate too fast, and felt ill afterwards. I then had to wait and wait before being able to down fluids, which I am now doing like its going out of fashion because I'm dehydrated, causing me once again to feel bloated and sick but STILL thirsty.

So my weight has stalled, I feel incredibly fat and hot and sweaty, and what's my job for this evening? Cleaning out the refrigerator and throwing OUT all the food that has gone off because I cannot eat it. Gee, that sounds like fun doesn't it. (hear the sarcasm?) Yet another reminder of all the money wasted, of all the failed attempts to find some kind of balance, and all the failures I've had of late.

Why is this so hard? Where has all my resolve gone? I'm so tired all the time I barely make it to the gym once a week because every morning I wake up so so tired that I talk myself out of it, no matter how "on top" of things something always comes along to derail me, my skin is sagging in ALL the wrong places, my head hurts most of the time, and I just feel so incredibly SICK OF IT ALL. And all for what? It's not like i'm going to have a great figure at the end of this. Yes I'll be healthier, and be able to DO more things, but will anyone really care? When does this journey end and when does the fighting and struggling and scratching for every single tiny victory stop? When can I just LIVE??????!!!!!!!!

Right now I just feel like I'm failing at everything I try to do. My job SUCKS because I'm being treated like CRAP but because I swore I wouldn't gossip and bitch this year I can't exactly confide in anyone who understands. And my husband is so wonderful and so supportive but all he gets is a tired, cranky saggy old cow who is so wrapped up in her own little world that she can't give him what he wants. The friends I deeply love and who actually reciprocate I dont quite know how to talk to about all this because THEY dont understand either, and thanks to my plethora of trust issues I'm not that great at opening up to anyone who HAS.

So here I am, pathetically pouring it all out on a blog instead. Easier to talk to something that wont try to problem solve or even talk back.

For anyone who has the misfortune to have read this far, please don't pity me. I've been accused enough in recent months of having a "pity party" when I dare have a bad day. I really have a wonderful life, but right now I'm standing in a forest and all I see is the trees.

Just give me a wave from the daylight above the hole I've dug for myself and say a prayer that it will get better.

The Little Wars.....

One thing that marvels me on a regular basis is how sometimes it's not the BIG things that we war with, it's the tiniest things that we're MEANT to do but don't. I'm perplexed as to why I keep sabotaging myself along this journey - its not that I dont know what I need to do, absolutely I know....things like, drink more water (uggghhhh hate the taste of water!), take benefibre, 2 multi vitamins a day (I'm lucky to get one in!) physical exercise, take my meds....it's so simple!!!! These aren't hard things to do. It doesn't even have a negative impact on my day - in fact in a lot of cases it improves things! I make myself SICK over worrying about big things, but it's the little things that will have a drastic impact long term.

So I fight my little wars. Today I took my multivitamin (uggh) and I just went to the fridge and got my water bottle (blogging just reminded me!) and with a swig of water took my meds. This afternoon I will pack my gym bag for tomorrow morning's session, try and get some benefibre to my afternoon drinks and get to bed early. I fight every single day to try and tick all the boxes, and I dont think there's been a single day yet when I've been able to tick every box and do everything that I'm supposed to do. People say "dont be so hard on yourself, be kind to yourself"and I try - but the reality is I spent close to 10 GRAND for this surgery, and I cannot go back now.

Why is it so hard????

Oh Mother Where Art Thou?

As a married woman of nearly 11 years with no children, motherhood is something that still mystifies me a little bit. Of course, being my age and having been married a while I've long since been through the inevitable "so....when will you start a family?" "Are you thinking about it?" "if you are, what time line?" "Will you do IVF if you can't?" "What about fostering?" "Will you adopt?" - the list is endless!

A beautiful friend of mine posted something on Facebook the other day about time, and I noticed immediately someone else posted about not having any time because they have children - this got me thinking about how defensive we as women can become about motherhood and whether we have time or not. Most women who haven't had children would argue that their time is already pretty stretched, and I would definitely fall into that category - it always feels as if while I'm devoting time to one thing I'm neglecting something else. Kind of a like a juggler who has one more ball in the air then they can handle - you have to drop one, or you risk dropping them all!

Now, if you talk to women who HAVE had one or more children, they of course would argue that as a childless woman they had HEAPS more time then they do with children. And of course I have no doubt that it seems that way - though I'd argue that perhaps its more about a priority SHIFT rather than the addition of more time sucking activities! The defense of our right to choose whether we have children or not is so wrapped up in our identity of being a woman that it's really hard to comfortably sit with either choice. On the one hand you have women who have children. They talk endlessly about first words, first steps, behaviour management, stain removal, craft projects, car pools and soccer games. They wear joggers and sweats and pull their hair back in ponytails and barely manage a touch of lip gloss. They swap recipes, and have a role in society that is easily categorised and accepted. They are the pictures of love, and patience, and have some kind of innate patience that childless women cannot understand. They swirl for me in an aura of importance - in a mist of mothers instinct that somehow they got impregnated with the moment they gave birth - an instinct that I for some unknown reason have never possessed. They know true pain. They are the warriors who worry, pray, clean and cook their way through life and who have to give up certain things in order to pay attention to their children and thereby are left with the vacume of the life unlived - the balls that have to drop.....

Hobbies....plop.......self care......plop......date nights......plop......coffee with friends (dare I say especially with friends who DONT have children).....plop......sense of identity outside of being a mother....plop.....careers......plop......

Then there's the rest of us, those that for whatever reason have not shed the 'fruits of our loins' (ha ha!). We disenfranchised few who hover at the edges of womanhood...even if you're married its impossible to escape the endless questions and the pitying head nods and blanched smiles at the quiet "no, no children" that inevitably follows. Those with children envy our project rooms, our craft activities, our scrapbooking, singing, rehearsals, yoga classes, gym sessions, coffee dates and late night dinners. Our time is, in some contexts, viewed as less valuable than those with blossoming families - after all, a woman with children asking for time off to deal with a sick child, or to spend Christmas with her thriving clan has all the legitimacy in the world.....but take a woman with no children needing time off to tend to a sick friend or spend Christmas with their parents and somehow that is slightly less powerful. More than once I've been at work and have heard someone or other being nominated to go out on a late night job because they dont have children, and it always makes my blood boil just a little. Not because I necessarily disagree that tending to your children should take precedence - I don't - not even a little bit. What I do object to however is the idea of putting someone up for the job JUST because they don't have kids. After all, time is time, whether you have children or not, and we all don't have enough. And, just like women who HAVE children, we have our own balls that drop......

Playdates with friends who DO have kids.....plop.......the laughter and fulfilment that comes with children....plop.....societal expectations.......plop.......mother's groups.......plop......passing on your legacy to the next generation......plop.....preconcieved ideas of the role of a woman.....plop......the unconditional love of a child......plop

It's powerful stuff to think of a life without children. I don't see one or the other choice as better or worse than each other, just really different. Both carry their own regrets, their own sense of loss, their own pros and cons. The reality is I don't know whether I can have children or not. I may not be able to. The jury is still well and truly out - I can't even try for children for another 8+ months. I don't know what set of balls I have to drop yet, and I don't know whether I want to drop either. But inevitably I cannot keep all the balls in the air - either I'll grow too old to have children, or my body will reach a weight where I do fall pregnant, or I'll find out at some point in the future that motherhood will not happen for me.

The only thing I know for sure is that time, like many things, is relative,  and this morning while a saucepan of milk on the stove boiled over while I was trying to make coffee and I was moving my puking cat from the carpet to the tiles and then consequently clean up cat puke from my floor I was reminded yet again that even without children sometimes we just don't have the ability to keep the balls in the air.

So I cleaned up the cat puke, and the boiled over milk, I took a moment to thank God for the fact that I DON'T yet have children, and I accepted the notion that sometimes the balls have to drop. The most important thing is not whether you let things drop, but whether you pick them back up and carry on!