Life is what happens when you've made other plans...

Writing this at 3am Thursday July 29, 2010, not exactly sure when/if it will get posted...

I am always amazed by the clouds and the weather when I fly on stormy days. The grosser the rain and grey on the ground the more absolutely beautiful the tops of the clouds are when the plane finally rises above them. It always strikes me as this great contrast between misery and beauty needing each other to exist...and how different things can appear depending on your perspective.

Right now I am looking at a terribly ugly stormy view in my life, but am trying desperately to punch through the clouds and find the beauty that has to be there if you look hard enough.

For a week now I have been trying to write a blog post about a major change going on in my life. I keep writing it and deleting it. Some versions have been too sappy and sentimental, others have been too personal, others just too fake and happy. I know now the reason I couldn't write the story was because it hadn't fully played out yet, now it has.

I need to back up and do some history here, as I have only marginally included this in the blog previously. In May my trainer informed me he was looking at taking a position in Colorado, I was rocked to my knees. I couldn't imagine going this alone. In my true style I started pulling away trying to prep myself for the inevitable loss. I was ready for the pain. In June I got what I knew was only a "stay of execution" and he had decided not to take the job. I was relieved but still held back. Gui called me on it, he pushed me to let him back in and I spent a lot of hard work doing that. It would be easy now that it has all played out to say I regret that, but I am trying very hard not to regret anything in the last 8 months. Which is not easy at this moment.

This past Thursday (a week ago now) a suspicion I had had for a couple weeks was confirmed, Gui had decided to take the position in Colorado and would be leaving in November. For as much as I thought I was ready for this, that I had separated myself enough I realized very fast that I had let my heart back in and went through a myriad of emotions over the loss. The core of which was/is fear, but I'll come back to that in a minute.

Yesterday I found out Gui had decided that I should transition to another trainer now not in 3 months and that it is going to happen cold turkey immediately. Something I totally didn't expect and quite frankly something I am struggling with (cold turkey is never a good plan for me, it doesn't allow me to process a situation as it is happening and tends to lead to me making rash decisions).

I have sat up all night trying to figure out how to share this in the blog. Do I sugar coat over it and pretend I am great with it, do I dive into all the emotions I am feeling, do I not mention it at all. None of them sound exactly right, but I promised when I started this blog to be open and honest, and since I know I am far from the only one who has had to do a rapid transition to a new trainer I am going to do my best to be honest about how I feel as this chapter of my life closes.

In the 12 hours since this has happened I have run the gambit of emotions..sadness, anger (at myself), frustration, trying to figure out how to undo it, regret, bargaining but the one thing I have learned about myself this past week is that most every emotion I feel and every reaction to that emotion is just a cover for fear...and right now I am very scared. More scared than I have ever been, and I have been for a week.

I find my fear coming down to two big areas...fear over the physical and fear over the emotional/mental. But it both cases it is fear of returning to who I was 8 months ago.

Fear over the physical...I have spent a week now fighting images of returning to that 300 lb person locked in her body and waiting to die (from obesity). I know I shouldn't think that way, but it is where my brain goes any time I look at the situation. I did all the work the last 8 months I know that, but I also know that particularly with my eating, there were many times I fell apart and my trainer was there to kick me back in line. I fear not having that. And while the intent is that I will work with someone else, I fear not having that same force behind me that Gui was. I know I need to be that force for myself, but too often I lose sight of that still and worry about not seeing it in time.

I also fear that even if I can keep the weight I lost at bay that this is as far as I will get. That I will never reach the goals I have for myself physical. That I will be paralyzed at this spot for the rest of my life. While here is still a much better place than I was 100 lbs ago, it is not where I want to live. But I don't know now if I can get the rest of the way. I have watched too many friends who lost their trainers stop or go backwards, I am not sure I am any better than that.

Fear over the emotional/mental....for me this is the biggest risk of all, and a much harder one than the physical. I am not who I was 8 months ago, this week has confirmed that over and over. When I started this journey my head lead everything. I had walled my heart off from the world and people were a somewhat expendable commodity. They came they went and that was fine, I survived it. Eight months ago what went on this week would have been a business transaction and no biggie. But I have changed. I am now a much more emotional person. My heart gets much more entwined in things and situations. And because it is new to me, I don't always get it right, but I still think it is a better way to live than to be shut off and shut down.

Ironically it was this change in emotions that in some ways lead to the decision to end my time with Gui now. To the view that it would be better for to go through the transition now than to deal with 3 months of feelings over it. I can't say I agree, but who knows what I will feel looking back. It would be really easy right now to say I wish I had never said I was upset over the loss, or to say I wish I hadn't been upset over the loss. But to say either wouldn't be true to who I have become. I am glad I am feeling pain over Gui leaving, I think it is normal and a great compliment to him. We are supposed to miss people when they leave! People are more than coggs in the world and for the first time in over a decade I feel that, I cant let myself regret it.

So where does the fear fit here, the fear comes from worrying that because my emotions caused me issues that I will slowly return to that cold, analytical person I was in November. That those emotions that I found through connecting with Gui and that he reminded me over and over again were as important as the working out, will now go back to where they came from. That I will go back to who I was before. And to me that would be a much greater loss than gaining back the 100 lbs.

And it scares me because I have even seen that retreat in myself in the last week. I know this is an easy slide for me. It is my protection from the grey skies and rain.

This is another one of those posts that I feel like I need some great ending on, but I don't yet have it.  I'm scared, I'm really scared, I feel pretty alone in that fear and don't know what to do with it (something else that worries me since I know there are people around me who care but I am having a hard time feeling that right now).

I promise to blog more when I figure out what to say next.