It’s been a lousy 72 hours.
Some of it was great. Yesterday, I finished the confined-water portion of my open-water scuba class — three full hours in the pools at East Kentwood High School, in 4-to-15 feet of water. The open-water dives, at Baptist Lake in Newaygo County, will happen next weekend. That’s cool. And I did get the chance to spend some quality time with T-Bone on Saturday in Lansing.
But it’s been a frustrating few weeks, financially and emotionally. It feels like lately, I’ve been making one shuffle-step forward and two giant leaps back, and it’s left me a bit off-kilter.
After the pool session yesterday, I went across the street to watch Prince Caspian. It was a nice, if somewhat hollow, film, but the last five minutes really had an impact. It occurred to me, as I drove around afterward, that part of what has motivated a good amount of my attitude and behavior over the last few years has been a sense of grief — grief over the loss of youth.
I don’t mean for this to sound like a bunch of whiny existential crap. Nevertheless, I really did waste most of my 20s living a sedentary, solitary, obese existence. Once I moved on from that, I just couldn’t set aside the rage I felt at my own bad choices. I think about the experiences that most people take for granted that I’ve never shared, or about the lingering physical reminders of significant obesity, and I realize that I’ve put myself at a serious disadvantage as I try to rebuild a life from the ashes.
We tend to think of grief in terms of death, but we grieve any loss. And that process of grieving has a series of steps. I’m not at the end of this process. Perhaps I won’t be for a while.
Maybe I have a different paradigm for understanding myself. Maybe.
2 comments
I have to commend you for the journey you are on and have committed yourself to as not all could set themselves and stay on such a path. Though I would say that there are things about each and everyone of us that we wish we could change you are acting on this and you should be proud of it. Though none of us is ever done with our journey, I see you as at least moving in the direction you wish to be on…and you have done this at still an early point in life!
I know people that breezed through their 20’s with pretty faces and bodies. Their lives are somewhat unstable as they approach the years that looks begin to matter less and less. And what does matter is what you know and are capable of and have practiced. I am sorry that you had to learn self love the hard way, but believe me, having it handed to you on a silver platter only makes for weakness of character, especially when based on something that does not last. My dear, you will always have your wit, and I dare say, there is nothing more valuable.
Portland is better than Vegas, by the way.