I really need to write more. And meditate more. Most of all just be more. In the now type 'be' not 'I'm insufficient'. Let's rephrase. I'd love to make more time to write! I'd also like to write a guide on loving yourself. But I guess I have to learn that first.
Our friends Kate & Gaurav are here to stay from Goa, India and it's so incredible to have them. They own and run a yoga studio in Goa and James and I are going next year to do their course which is very exciting. We had a wonderful night drinking wine & eating cheese and talking about all sorts of things, including loving yourself. Gaurav told this story about how he once saw a celebrity wearing a certain type of shoes so he thought 'I must have them'. He goes to buy them but they don't have his size, only a size smaller. But he buys them anyway because he had to have those shoes. His feet were sore and cramped but he wore them anyway until one day he realised he didn't like having sore feet trying to fit into these celebrity shoes. So he bought shoes that fit him, still wonderful shoes that looked good, but ones that fit him and he was much more comfortable. I laughed at the thought of how many shoes I've bought that were too small just because I had to have those ones. And now I have bursitis and arthritis in my toe and I'm 27! I still own a pair of shorts I bought in Holland. I remember dieting and exercising for over 2 hours a day. I was so insecure about James cheating on me with this girl, Donne, or another girl Lauren, that I thought I should lose weight because he'd never leave me then (the irony of this came only just this weekend). Anyway I shrunk enormously, so I fit into these teeny tiny shorts for about a week until James came over. One of the things we have always loved to do together is eat.. so we did... and I ended up putting the weight back on. I've never fit into those shorts since.. but ridiculously still hold onto them. Waiting for the day they'll fit. Omg that was in 2007!! I have been holding onto them for 8 years!!!!!! For 8 years I have tried to fit into those shorts and yet I haven't again.. and instead of giving up on the shorts and the diets I've scolded myself and thought I need to work harder and be more persistent. Fuck. Trying to lose weight for 8 years.. if that's not persistent I don't know what is!!!
Anyway I've digressed. As usual. So the irony of this notion that James would never leave me if I lost weight.. is that over the weekend we had a wedding & I was hanging around this guy all night, dancing and having a good time, but of course incredibly immature and disrespectful to James... and he and I almost broke up yesterday. So the irony of wanting to look good to save my relationship, is that my need to impress others and have external validation for my looks is that it actually almost lost my relationship, and all this focus on my appearance has meant I have lost focus on the values that are important to me. The person I want to be. It's like Gaurav said, when you focus so much on trying to be something that you're not, you lose focus on who you really are, and that side of you becomes unconscious. It's like the other day when I realised how much I used to love to write and draw. Every holidays, every weekend, I would be drawing or writing, or doing both in these great books I used to write for my dad. And then I became a teenager, and became focused on boys and how I looked, and I lost that creative side of me. It served no purpose (or so I thought). And then I became an adult and everything I did became about earning money and trying to be the best at something that would earn me money, like fitness for example. And I never drew and I never wrote because they were pointless, they weren't going to earn me money, unless i did a journalism course which I considered for a while.. but decided against because there's no money in it and I want to write creatively.. so I just never wrote at all. So I am very excited because today is the first day of nearly 2 weeks off and I want to write and read and draw every day.
I am also very excited because Kate and Gaurav told us we could buy a house in Goa for $30,000 and live off about $2000 a month (lavishly). If we sold our house and James's business we could literally just put our money in a savings or term deposit and live. Just live. Not work. Just live. And it would give us the space to meditate, and be creative and live the life we've always wanted. We have to leave every 6 months for our visa, but that is okay because we could travel! And come back to Australia to see family. It makes me so excited because I see photos of Kate on Facebook living this incredible life and I watch her journey longingly and thinking how I wish I could have that life.. and now I find out that James would be keen on it! So we will go in November (11 months away, too long!) and we will not sell our house until we have done that. We will also not have a baby (which I am fine with) because moving with a kid would be too hard, although I guess not really but taking mum's first grandchild overseas might make life difficult. I would miss mum so much though, and my family.. and our friends, but I think it would be okay. Mum could come to visit and I would go home to visit her.. I am just so excited!
So I also had my psych yesterday and she said my eating looks more relaxed (which it is) and my weight is stable (which is great because I thought I'd gain) despite eating and drinking like a Queen the last week! So I am learning that I will not gain weight if I just eat normally. And I am learning to love myself and not try to lose weight. She's also helping me see that you can be healthy and focus on health by including more exercise and more fruit and vegetables and less processed food, but not excluding whole things like sugar or carbs or fat or counting calories. And I'm happy with that. We also had a big chat about the weekend and what happens when you drink and she drew a circle and said normally we have boundaries set by our values and morals but when we drink these become blurry and we do something outside of those boundaries because the alcohol affects the front part of our brain that is responsible, and makes decisions and problem solves. It is a depressant so it slows this ability to make decisions down, and delays our decision making so sometimes we act first, or it completely interferes with our decision making so we don't think at all ( like the boy who climbed on the crane and fell to his death one new years eve). So we did a balance of pros and cons of drinking and I realised the two things that draw me to drink are the confidence and relaxation it gives me (which I can find in other ways and will increase the more I do positive things) and also the social aspect. But there's no reason I can't go to things and see friends and enjoy myself without drinking. Also, like last night when I drank a bottle of wine, I can still have nights like that with friends.. just maybe not the massive benders out with lots of people.. perhaps it's better to go easy on those nights. And so through all this analysing we found a middle way for me. And that's what I'm finding more and more, is that there's a middle way. I can have my cake and eat it after all!
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