I can beat the night, I'm not afraid of thunder

The mind is a very, very tricky and sneaky little thing. It really is the biggest hurdle to overcome when wanting to make any changes. 

On the one hand, I am miserable. I hate being this big. I hate feeling this way about myself, and being disgusting when I see myself and realise how big I have become. I almost made excuses yesterday as to why I could not go and spend time with family members, because I am embarrassed about how much weight I have put on in the last couple of years since I last saw my cousin and his partner.

And yet, after adopting a better lifestyle for the last two weeks (not too rigid), I weighed myself on the weekend and I had lost 2kgs. You'd think I would be excited right? I was. And then I almost sort of panicked. That's not the right word for it, but I don't know how to describe it. Rather than, woohoo this is working and let's keep going, it was more, oh shit really, now what do I do?

I think I am scared of losing the weight and being successful. I don't know if it is because I don't feel like I don't deserve it (reaching a goal and being proud or happy with myself), or if it is just that I have been fat for so long that I don't know how to be anything else, or who I will be if I lose the weight? Or have I just been using my weight as an excuse for so long, as to why I can't do things, that it scares me to no longer have it is a crutch or a reason? I don't even know.

I spend time last week with my friend and her adorable 5 month old baby, and then with my cousin and his almost 2 year old little girl. I want kids. So much so that it almost hurts. And I know I need to lose weight to get there. And yet that is not motivation. Am I scared of being a shite mother? Or that I will have fertility issues and it would be easier to forgo that heartache? Or still, afraid of being happy and having what I want?

Getting healthy and losing weight in order to be healthy and live longer and whatnot doesn't seem to work.

Or is it just that this slow torturous form of suicide is still exactly what I want? I had thought that I was past that, since there's so many things I want to do and see. But perhaps that is overwhelming too.

Too many thoughts going on in this crazy head of mine....

I will not let myself cause my heart so much misery

So I have 28 weeks (including this week) at my current job (also known as 6 months). It is just a fixed term position and then I have to make choices again. So in order to aid this choice making situation, during this time period I aim to:

- Pay off all outstanding bills (personal loan, credit card) and save my arse off. No matter what I decide to do (travel, have babies, etc), it requires money. The more the better. I have loads of stuff I don't need so will try to sell anything that is worth more than $10, and cut down on frivolous, unnecessary spending. I might even sell my Ed Sheeran tickets for December, seeing as I already saw him this year. And its in Auckland. Maybe.... Anyway, time to update the budget and tighten things up.

- And on that note, getting rid of clutter. It is actually ok to throw stuff away (my Dad would argue against it). Or donate it (clothing/shoe bins, etc). I do not need half the stuff I have. If I say I do, I'm probably lying.

- Eat healthier. I have fallen back into shoddy eating habits. The warmer months do make it easier to eat more salads (with tasty ingredients included so I don't feel like a rabbit), and things rather than stodgy, warming foods. Breakfast, healthy snacks, and cooking proper dinners. Even meal prepping and having food in the freezer!!

- Move more. I do belong to a gym. I do like classes. I also have a beach nearby to walk on (and even job once I get a bit more mobile and less painful), and to swim in once it's warmer. Trying to find more active things to do, eg when catching up with friends. I really want to learn to kayak. Also use weights at home (I do belong to a gym filled with them but it's a bit intimidating at the moment).

- Commit to learning the guitar - get actual lessons (this will eat into savings but I have been wanting to do it for ages, and I even own a guitar). Now that I am not working shift work and nights, I don't have that excuse. I need to find a teacher. And just do it. That way, I have an instrumental skill when I'm traveling (for in the Canadian wilderness around a campfire, obviously), or I can play the guitar to my baby....

That's it actually. Doesn't seem too bad.

An ominous landscape of never-ending calamity

So I've been looking back over photos from when I was overseas, and realising that it was 10 years ago is just mind boggling. I like travel. In fact, I would go so far as to say I love it. Discovering new places and things and cultures and people. When I went I thought it was partly to find myself, as naive 20-somethings do. But I think it was more to lose myself. It makes you appreciate home and the people in your life so much more. And it's amazing to be part of something so much bigger than yourself and your problems. It gives you a different perspective on life. Especially when you see how lucky we are in NZ, compared to the problems of other countries in the world and the scale of their issues.

And it makes me want to go overseas again. I miss it. I want to discover new things and places.

But then I have the issue of which I want more. Travel, or babies. Not that I can't have both. But both require money and so need prioritising.

And I think, travel and then babies, because then I can travel selfishly and it will be cheaper, etc. But then I go shopping for clothes for my friends' kids (just turned 1 and 2) and almost cry over the baby clothes, and end up leaving without buying anything. And I think, okay so babies first. But is it just hormones talking?

Either way, I need to save up, and lose weight/get healthy. The weight and health is obvious for babies, but I also want to be able to do amazing things if I go overseas - climb mountains and hike through wildernesses (especially in Canada). And then once I'm ready for either, then I can make the decision.

So then I need to make a vision board with both options I suppose....

Still a little bit of your words I long to hear

So it's been a while since my last update. A few things have changed:

- I got sick of being treated like crap at my job and resigned. I thought it was the dream vet nursing job, but that turned out to be a big fat lie. The job itself had it's moments, but was generally really depressing and just confirmed for me that I do not want to do emergency and referral work. It can be exciting, but give me the mundanity of general practice veterinary work any day. Especially referral medicine cases. It sucks when you feel like only half of your patients walk back out the front door again. Some of the team I worked with were awesome, and some of them were really really really not awesome at all. The job is too stressful to be able to cope with shitty people as well. And I don't really need anything extra to add to the downward slope of my mental health. I think being told by my "mum" that her and my dad had had meetings to discuss me, and thoughts of interventions, might have been the critical point that made me realise it is just not worth it.

- So now I am in an admin role. It's great. It is only fixed term at this stage, while someone else goes off to have baby (and I try not to get the eye twitch of jealousy for all things baby related).  So it's until the end of March. I will try to win them over with my awesomeness so they find a way to keep me, but even if I don't, I'm determined to not freak out over the uncertainty of what I will be doing after that time.

- I have moved out of my temporary country paradise and back home to Dad's. I am a lot more comfortable about that than I have been before. I love my Dad to pieces, it's easy, cheaper, and who knows how much more time I will get with him (fingers crossed for the rest of my life, but the universe can be fickle). Plus Diesel is pretty chilled out there which is nice. Room to run around, trees to climb, rodents/birds to catch outdoors. And I have the bonus of bugger all lights at night or pollution, so the sky is beautiful and clear and full of stars to gaze at. I find that actually, despite the shittyness of his small kitchen, it's easier to cook at Dad's too. In the country I had a fancy pants big kitchen that I loved, but living on your own isn't as fun. Now I get to cook for Dad too. It's kind of nice.

- With the out-of-routine-ness of my shitty job, which involved shift work - nights, weekends, holidays, 12 hour shifts, generally crap - and people that I needed to escape from, and general excuse-making, I have loaded on even more weight. Talking to Dad last night and he mentioned how big he was at his heaviest, which turned out to only be about 100kgs. I was looking through my old photos from Ireland (wanderlust and itchy feet are making themselves very present), and thinking how big I felt then, and yet that was double digits and almost 30kgs ago. Gah. Babies and travel need to motivate me. Or I just need to motivate myself. Something. Broken record syndrome I know, but somehow I need to fix this. I need to find the fire within me to get myself going.

That about wraps up my update. Spring tomorrow - bring on longer days, and pretty flowers, and baby animals everywhere!

Bandaids don't fix bullet holes....

I'd been feeling like work was getting better. Although the last week has involved so many euths and sad cases, and it does definitely get hard.

Worst of all though is the bullying. I have never had an issue with any place I've worked before, but now I am about to have my second "performance" meeting in a few months, thanks to someone who keeps complaining about me. Since the first meeting (held in March, about "issues" from Christmas - so nice and timely), I have given 200% more so that no one has reason to have any such complaints. And yet just yesterday I received an email requesting another 'informal' meeting to discuss performance issues.

I don't feel like I do any less than anyone else regularly does - I make sure the patients are all looked after the best that they can be, as well as doing loads of cleaning, washing etc. I don't get it. I know the Christmas problems were primarily from one person, and were all pretty petty. She doesn't seem to hide the fact that she doesn't like me, or think I'm good enough as a nurse. Despite the fact that she is only in her early 20s and hasn't graduated that long ago.

I don't really know what to do. I don't love the job enough to put up with being driven to tears regularly by someone singling me out to bitch about me to my bosses. But at the same time, I don't want to let bullying drive me out of my job either.

Ugh.

Today is never too late to be brand new

Right that's it. I want babies. Time to sort this shit. Stay tuned.

What do you see when you turn out the light?

I am exhausted. Physically, mentally and emotionally.

I don't know if it is just 6 months of a demanding job and stupidly long hours catching up with me. Combined with uncertainty about whether this is even the right job for me, let alone the career, and what the heck I want to be doing with my life. I used to love vet nursing, and I thought getting back into the industry was what I wanted. But this job does not seem to be the right one for me - maybe I just can't hack the stress of emergency care, or the fact that the cases are all critical and it gets depressing with the amount we can't fix/help/etc. I never thought I was a people person (I don't like people), but I do actually miss building up relationships with clients, although mostly with their animals, and getting follow through rather than just seeing them while they are really sick, before they go back to their own referring clinic.

At the moment, I sleep badly at night. If its a day off, I tend to fall asleep halfway through the day for a nap. Or when working, fall asleep on the couch after work. And then I can't get to sleep until late, and sleep badly at night. And the cycle continues. I am just tired all of the time.

I went to a wedding last weekend. The day before I tried on the dresses I was considering wearing, only to find that none of them fit any more. I went and found on last minute (phew!). But the wedding photos came out a few days ago and made me cry - I knew I was big, and I knew I had put on weight lately, but it was quite the wake up call. I guess I generally look at myself only half a body at a time, so a full length photo didn't help. The photo had a mix of slim and bigger people, so it wasn't just that I look huge compared to the tiny people, but also compared to people I thought were a similar size to me. Horrendous.

So I am telling myself that these will great "before" photos when I get to where I want to be. But that also feels utterly hopeless. I don't have the energy to cook and eat well or exercise. I know that doing those will make me feel better and have more energy, but it's all just a vicious cycle that seems far too hard right now.

I feel stuck. I'm pretty sure, that similar to when I moved from Wellington to Auckland and back again, that moving cities/jobs/etc doesn't actually help when I am unhappy within myself. But unsatisfying surroundings are demotivating.

At the moment, I need to try to make the most of living in this lovely house/environment for the next 5 months. Although that even has its problems - Diesel hates one of the cats here, and I have had enough of their constant yowling and fighting, and him being covered in scratches :( So he will move back to Dads for the meantime. I feel mean for giving him up when I am living with other cats - it feels like I am "cheating" on him. But I also feel guilty for moving him here where he seems to both love and hate it.

However, make the most of this house and freedom and independence. Try to last out this job for the next 5 months - I can build up my skills, it will help my CV to stick in the job for longer, and in the meantime, brainstorm about what I want to be doing (primary school teaching keeps coming to the front of my mind - but then retraining AGAIN feels ridiculous.....).

When enemies are at your door I'll carry you away from war

Sometimes I lament the fact that I don't have a lot of friends. But then I realise that I have a few amazing friends, which make me so freaking lucky.

And they are friends that I believe are meant to be - they came about out of circumstances that weren't common or normal or usual for me.

First is EG. She and I met at my first time at University. We were in the same tutorial class for Psychology. As we were leaving class one day, we were at the same traffic lights waiting to cross the road. And I spoke to her. Something along the lines of "Hey I think we're in the same Psych class/tut". This is something I don't do. I am shy and terrified of new people. Especially my first time at Uni. I was shell shocked and so scared in this big new world. But something about her made me approach and establish a connection. And it has been one of the best connections ever. She has been with me through some of my very toughest times, such as losing Jeremy, and just general life crappiness, and knows me so much better than I know myself. I would do anything for her, and believe the vice versa is also true - which makes me thank my lucky stars on a very regular basis.

Second is HS. I met her cousin on a Foo Fighters noticeboard - we talked a lot about opening our own music store, which would also be a cafe and vet clinic? Somehow it was going to work. Through her I then met HS through online blogging and then we all met for a drink at a Wellington pub one day. Again, I don't like new people. And in fact, all three of us are quite similar like that, which I guess is how it worked. When I moved down to Wellington, and was stuck for a place to live, she offered me the spare room in her flat. And the rest is pretty much history. She is amazing and lovely and someone else I am very lucky to have in my life. She accepts me, and even loves me, with all my flaws and imperfections, and perhaps even because of some of them.

Last, in the timeline of meeting these lovely ladies, but definitely not least, is AB. She is my sister from another mister. I don't understand how I have not known her my whole life, but I can't imagine not having her in my life for a single minute. She moved into a flat that I was already living in. Have I mentioned yet that I am not good with new people and making the first move with people? Well maybe her second day in the flat, I got up and I don't remember which of us was in the lounge first - but I was tired, and she was hungover, and we managed to bond over the Home and Away omnibus. It was the start of something amazing. We are so similar, that it's actually surprising that we don't ever really fight. Somehow we complement each other beautifully and, without going all 'Jerry Maguire' on it, she completes me.

I sometimes think that if I won one of those competitions where you can have a private screening with 20 of your friends, that I would struggle to come up with 20. And life can get lonely once in a while. But I have a few very close friends, who are the very bestest ever, and I would not change that for all the friends in the world.

You drove me nearly out of my head while you never shed a tear

So today was my very very first time using a ride on lawnmower (other than a short tutorial in how to use it). And so you'd think I'd be forgiven for not being perfect at it first time out. Instead, I berate and belittle myself for not being amazing the first time out. Just little things like not being able to get the catcher to work properly (which I did manage to rectify), and the engine cutting out on the slightly too long grass in some areas, and then getting a flat tyre. So then I am convinced that I suck and am no good at anything.

Thanks mum.

I do recall my mum's favourite saying to me (or at least the one that stands out most) was that I was "useless as tits on a bull". Even if it was my first time doing something, if I wasn't great at it straight away, she would get frustrated and speak the above golden words. Which is why now, I hate trying new things, mostly because I'm worried that I won't be perfect at them. And nearly no one is perfect at anything the first time they try them out. But yet, I can't seem to give myself a break.

I do think about if it was someone else in the same shoes. I would tell them they are being silly for expecting to not make any mistakes the first time they do something. But we are our own worst critics, especially when you have been brought up with that same criticism by one of the people that is supposed to love and support you unconditionally.

I know that she had the shittiest upbringing with way worse parents that I have ever known, but that still doesn't make it okay. At some point, someone needs to break the cycle. I promise I will. First I just have to start with myself, and forgive myself if I make some mistakes along the way...

It'll leave you breathless or with a nasty scar

When I had a talk with Jo the other day, I realised that the thing I most want in this world - more than polar bears and travel and to work with big cats, is to have kids. I knew they were high on my list, but if I could only do one thing, it would be to be a mum. Crazy huh? Surprised me....

I have to stop thinking of wanting to lose weight as actually losing weight, or generalising getting healthier, or less specifics. At this point, even if I had a man, or a turkey baster, I don't think I could actually get pregnant. And even if I could, the extra weight could potentially kill me. And cause gestational diabetes. Etc etc.

It's not about getting fit and strong to make work easier, or to make travel more adventurous (although it will definitely help). It's so I can get pregnant, safely have a baby(ies), and be a good mum who can carry her kid(s) and run around with them and set a good example.

So maybe my vision board needs babies? Or at least motherly related things.

Currently watching One Tree Hill and the little kid on there is so cute it makes my ovaries hurt. Someone gets an ultrasound and hears their babies heart beat for the first time, and I dissolve into tears (and not for the first time). 

And here I was thinking I was content enough with fur babies.....

There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

I had this discussion with my "mum" a few years ago, about how could never commit suicide, because of the pain it would cause to those that I love, especially my Dad. After going through that with a wife, plus a parent should never have to bury a child. I saw a colleague go through that and I would never wish it on anyone.

But she did also tell me that even if I didn't blatantly commit suicide, I was still killing myself because of the fact that I do not take care of myself well - my obesity and that I do not much to combat that, at least not long term. I still eat badly, and I both punish and comfort myself with food. At the time, I got what she was saying, but I guess I didn't feel it.

At the end of 2014, I "got" it. I went to the doctors and for the first time in my life, despite years of being grossly overweight, I had high blood pressure. Admittedly it was a small cuff, so gave a higher reading than normal, but at the same time, I do not want to defend the fact that my arm is so fat that I need the bigger cuff.... I wasn't really shocked. And I didn't really care. And it was then that I realised that Jo was right - I really was slowly killing myself with food and self-neglect.

So we had another talk about it, and got to the nitty gritty. Turns out that all the stuff that I like least (or hate) about myself, are traits in myself that I associate with my mother. And not even traits that are apparently that major in me, but that I make bigger because of their association. So it turns out that, in a very simplified nutshell, I am killing myself (albeit, slowly) so that I do not turn into my mother, who also tried to kill herself (but in an abrupt hurtful instant manner, which is apparently worse). It's still a bit complicated in my tiny little head.

Ensue some tears and some light bulb moments that I am NOT my mother, and the things she said to me, that I still repeat to myself, are not actually true and I no longer have to believe them.

There are also issues with the fact that everyone has a primal need to be loved by their mother. And while my mother might very well love me in her own way, it's not really the way I need to be loved, which she is not capable of due to her own screwed up upbringing. On a conscious level, I really don't care. I have Jo and my Dad, and other people in my life to give me that love. On a subconscious level, apparently that is crap and not enough. Gah.

Anyway, over Christmas I got sad. Not only because I really do feel like the only alone person in the world - everyone is loved up and whatnot. And I only get to spend part of the day with Dad because he spends the other part with his new family... I digress. But also because it is the main time of the year when my desire for children really kicks in. I want to start fun traditions, and leave out food for Santa and his reindeer, and make Christmas fun again. So then I realised that if I do keep slowly killing myself, then I won't get that chance, and worse, that if I did, I would leave my kids motherless, or at the very least, screw them up just like I was, with harmful attitudes towards food and all that jazz.

It's all a bit confusing and hard, and frankly, it hurts my head. But I must make baby steps (excuse the pun). Small goals, slow sustainable progress.

Friends of mine are moving to Canada for six months, and I am supremely jealous. But also fortuitous as I am moving into their place for that time - to look after the house, the cats, and to live on my own but with considerably cheaper rent than usual. I am looking forward to having my own space, and my own proper kitchen so that I can take care of myself better. A 6 month project if you will. Ready, set, go. I must remember that the tortoise did beat the hare in the end.....