It started around lunchtime yesterday: the swooping nervous feeling in my stomach, the I-can’t-stand-this fluttering in my chest, the racing thoughts. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe deeply, I just knew on a visceral level that I had to get away. The sickening sense of panic had been building all morning, or perhaps all month: I was so uncomfortable and fearful that all I wanted was to escape myself. I felt like some demented little sausage that was about to burst its casings, physically and mentally ill at easy at almost every moment. I knew I had a social event (admittedly unusual for me these days) planned for after work, and that heightened the seemingly inexplicable tension.
I would like to blame my jeans, because wearing them for the first time in ages yesterday brought home to me just how uncomfortable something incredibly ordinary had become—the stiff sturdiness of the denim pressing unrelentingly into my stomach and reminding me of my increasing girth. I felt like a bloated balloon with an increasingly distorted silhouette. The thought of going through a night of trying to act normal and sociable with a group of people while dealing with this sensation completely overwhelmed me.
This was really just the tip of the iceberg: a culmination of the embarrassment and pain I’ve been feeling over the failure of my boot-camp experiment in late March and various other issues that have cropped up along the way. A reminder of how unlikeable and alien I feel so much of the time: like an insecure, prickly porcupine of a person who judges other people when she should be working on her own issues.
So anyway: instead of going to happy hour yesterday, I spent hours feeling completely deranged, sobbing my guts out, and ultimately arrived at the firm realization that living this way is completely, so very completely, unacceptable to me. This is no way to live. Moments after coming to that determination, I decided to return to Weight Watchers the very next day. Which brings us to today. . . . [CLICK HERE FOR REST OF POST]
