tightrope

I can’t decide if something is creeping in, stealthily, or if something is slowly seeping out, escaping unnoticed.  All I want to do – all that I feel compelled to do – is to write it down and lose myself in the careful choosing of each perfect word, each sentence, so that later I might read it as someone else’s wisdom and understand something that only they could show me.

I've been good, really very good for what feels like a very long time, though in the context of 37 years of course it isn't.  It’s been…what? Not quite two months since I was fired in a way that my employer was kind – or lawsuit averse – enough to call “laying off”.  And really not even very good in action, but oh I have prided myself on how well I’m “handling things”. “Finish this sentence,” I said to myself three days later (after sobering up), “I got laid off and _____.” And I decided first that I wanted to say “I got laid off and got healthy” but that was simply not motivating enough, and I soon discarded it in favor of “I got laid off and lost 20 pounds,” or “I got laid off and got hot,” or “I got laid off and now I look good naked.”  I was stunned by the discovery that vanity could motivate me so thoroughly, that that particular motivation – more so than “Be at peace” or “Set a good example” or “Take responsibility for your health” – could be sustained. I was impressed by my ability to set aside years of “Don’t try and you won’t fail” and go full throttle. I congratulated myself on how sensible, how thoroughly healthy, it was to recognize that 10 hours a day at home alone would exacerbate my depression, and that I should spend three of them at the gym. And then – that I actually did! I was astonished to discover that there resided in me the capacity for follow-through.  It seemed out of character, and I was surprised that no one else found this to be so, or deigned to mention their surprise to me at least. I should have fully expected a spiral, a complete meltdown, and I felt that those who know me well would have expected as much also. Maybe a return to anti-depressants; at best more therapy, at worst a few days to rest in an institution of some sort. The idea was warmly inviting, and I succeeded in eschewing it, and that is really something.

I lay in bed somewhere around day 4 – the shape of this memory leads me to believe I had not had any wine that evening – and looked at a dress I had hung on my wall for no real reason other than there was a hook there. I had bought it a week previous at the Goodwill in Thurmont with the dim hope that I may fit into it next Halloween (fully 8 months away at this point). It’s a 70’s go-go girl type dress; halter top, white and pink and red and orange with large flowers. It comes to my knees (or will, if and when I can get it on) and ends in a ruffle I’m determined to have my mother remove, and hem to a respectably sexy mini length before October. It’s labeled a size 8 but I have my doubts. I couldn't zip it in the fitting room, and it seemed like the perfect invitation: a 6 would have been dangerously optimistic, a 10 would not have been challenge enough. God help me if I find the knee-high white patent leather lace-up platform boots I’m envisioning.

So I get fired in just the awful way sales reps do (“Surprise! You’re position has been eliminated. Give us your laptop and phone, sign this paper, no you may not forward family pics – the phone and thus the data are ours. This security guard will escort you to your car”) about 4 days previous (I should not have been surprised but I was) and had commenced quite the bender, which everyone assured me was completely acceptable and appropriate given the circumstances. And lying in bed sobering up day 4 I am looking at this dress. Thinking how some of the flower petals appear to be fingers splaying out from a fist, and how could flowers be so violent? Thinking how I secretly would've liked to wear it elsewhere but knew I only had the balls to don it on Halloween. Thinking how I had probably squandered $5 because all the Spanx in the world wouldn't get that zipper up. And something lights up in me – I catch myself as if I’m….other than me (outside of me); I think “Why? Why is your assumption failure? I know. I know why. Because then you don’t really have to try. Then you can give it a half-hearted week and throw in the towel, knowing you were never really going to pull it off anyway. You can say ‘It’s only $5.’” These doubts, this overly cautious approach, have been with me as long as I can remember.  Had the dress cost $10, I probably wouldn't have even bothered.

I thought or felt that something had changed, a barely perceptible internal shift. I am fond of believing, or at least of attesting to believe, that the moment one becomes aware of an irrational or detrimental mental habit, one becomes instantly responsible for changing one’s thinking. And I felt like I had that moment. And I promised myself – this is something I’ll do, I’ll succeed at, and when I do I will have proven to myself that I am capable, that I have beaten my age-old, sorry habit of embracing failure as a way to dodge challenge. And I’ll take that proof and I’ll extend it to all facets of my life – to my career, to my parenting, to my quest to be the perfect and deserving girlfriend, daughter, sister, friend.  I was in desperate need of quest, a purpose, and I had found one.

Immediately following this internal pep talk I dialed back. “One thing at a time,” I told myself, “not so much pressure. Do this first, and then sit with it and see if and how it can bleed into your life.” That seemed healthy, reasonable. Depression has taught me much about dialing back expectations, some of it no doubt helpful, some of it no doubt ‘Excuses 101’. Walking the tightrope between the two appears to me to be the source of…well, everything. My entire existence, really. It’s difficult to explain.

So I've embraced the gym with varying degrees of enthusiasm for two to three hours a day, five to six days a week, for the last six weeks. This routine has conceived all sorts of physical, mental and emotional benefits –I eat better because I don’t want to squander my hard work, I play more actively with the kids because I have more energy, I feel awkwardly superior about the fact that I don’t require matching neon shoelaces and spandex tank tops  to work out. Valuing the routine over the results has been helpful, which isn't to say I haven’t stood on a scale in anguish, cursing the unmovable slide weight; I have.  But inches – whole inches of my body have disappeared (somehow I don’t feel diminished, but suspect in some way I should). Better than that, new inches have made themselves at home, hard inches on my arms and my ass that astonish me. My stomach vexes me; it doesn't look at all like the motivational posters of strong women on Pinterest or hanging on the walls of my gym – it looks stretched and squishy like it’s housed two babies (it has). But my arms and my ass are banging, and that’s something. And my stomach, while squishy, is shrinking.

Most alarming and satisfying are the things my body is capable of that it wasn't previously. I am quite thoroughly in love with this part of the journey. Adding ten pounds to the bar, pedaling half a mile further than I could before – it’s new. It’s new, what my body is capable of, and I long to take credit for it – deserve to take credit for it – but I can’t because it’s too new. I don’t know this body yet, it doesn't feel like mine, which is unnerving and exciting because who knows what it will do next?

Old mental habits die hard, and it feels threateningly temporary. The last week or two I've slipped. Spent less time, allowed myself excuses for not pushing harder, pushing through. I’m “being gentle with myself”, sometimes.  I have other good reasons – I didn't get enough sleep; I dieted too much and am low on protein, or I fell from grace and stopped at Sonic for a cheeseburger and now I’m sluggish. So in spin class, I tell myself the fact I’m sweating bullets is enough, never mind that I went faster or longer or with more resistance last week. I never wanted to become obsessed, it’s not healthy. ‘Everything in moderation’, a phrase previously reserved for bad habits, now extends to good ones as well.

I’m nervous. I fear the beginning of an end, the return of excuses. All the while I have friends and family saying “take it easy – we’re worried about you. You’re taking this too far.” It’s so inviting, so tempting. And having already assigned such importance to my victory over mediocrity, the stakes seems impossibly high.

Once again I find myself wishing I could give myself an inch without taking a mile, but afraid to try. I am trying to balance balance against itself.