This Human of Worth - Brittany Herself

I read a lot of blogs, probably less than other bloggers do, but none the less I have a list of my favourites.  I found Brittany maybe 18 months or so and I not only love the way she writes but also the topics that she choses to write about.  She is a much better blogger than I will ever be.  Her blog Brittany Herself can be found here.

Today I read Brittany's post and was so very touched by it.  Everything she said in it hit a nerve and it was like she was reading my mind.  She has written a blog post that should go viral because of it's importance and because it has the capacity to help others undertsand how overweight people feel.

This topic has always been important to be me because my weight has yo-yo'ed for years.  I have been super thin (though could not see that at the time - numpty), thin, overweight, and obese.  Now I would be categorised as morbidly obese.  I am the biggest I have ever been and I hate myself for it and yet I continue to eat.

Half of the problem is that I seem to be an all or nothing person when it comes to weight loss.  When I lose a lot it is because I have flipped a switch, a switch that determines that I will succeed at weight loss.  The first time I lost a lot of weight was after divorcing my first husband; I went from 14 stone 6 to 9 stone 2 and now I can look at the few photos I have and think that I looked amazing; such a pity I did not see it at the time.  I put that weight back on....and more.

I lost weight again and met my second husband but my weight ballooned again during our marriage; he controlled what he ate and drank and I used to sneak food and hide Coca Cola in the wardrobes as a way of defying him.

I lost weight again during the divorce and met my now husband.  He met me thin, he saw me thinner, he saw me gain weight and eventually I reached 16 stone 8 and I hated myself.  Hubby told me every day he loved me (and he still does) but I couldn't see why.  I flipped that switch and dropped 79 lbs and I felt amazing!  I knew I would look great for our wedding.  Yet by the time our wedding arrived i weighed near to 13 stone.  Now you can add over 5 stone on top of that; I hate myself and yet I still eat.

So yes, Brittany's post is important.  Because people only see the exterior and yet they form their opinion of that person on that exterior and they comment to others and make jokes and they do not see that an overweight person may well already hate themselves.  More jokes and comments hurt more and so we eat more and so the everlasting circle continues.

I urge any one reading this blog - please visit Brittany Herself!  I commented because I felt compelled to; in the hope that one person who has formed opinions on an overweight person without getting to know them should at least be able to read how it makes people feel.

One extreme to another....

You know you are in trouble when you go from this at 8.30 at night:

.....when the world and his wife in the remainder of the organisation go home at 7pm (at the lastest) - notice how dark it is everywhere else but my little domain? Yeah you should have seen me wandering down the corridor in the dark trying to find an unlocked door which to escape from.

and to being told that you are going to burn yourself out within weeks because when you get home at stupid oclock you start on the sports and social football club accounts until 1am in the morning because you thought that would be a good volunteer type thing to do in which to keep your finger in all sorts of actual techy type accounting things to do....

to deciding Hubby might be right and deciding to organise some recreational activities after work to prevent the call of treasurer roles when you suddenly realise that the rest of your week looks like this....

Tuesday: work until 5pm, get home in time for the electrician who will look at the bathroom light switch which whose cable inexplicably came off in Hubbys hand before going round to M & Ks with birthday cards and presents.  Return home at 11pm and consider whether you some start some cleaning;

Wednesday: work until 3.30, take Hubby's mum shopping, rush home and unpack shopping, go to fat fighters then rush half way across town to pick up hubby from snooker;

Thursday: Work until 7.30 pm, rush to pick Angel up, go to pictures to see Friends with Benefits and get home at midnight;

Friday: Work from home in the morning while the Sky man rewires the cabling to the new phone line, go into work from lunch until 7.30 pm, rush to pick Hubby up, go round to spend an evening with friends who should have been caught up on eons ago and get home at midnight (earliest);

Saturday: clean, do some treasury accounts despite it being my birthday, quick trip to be tortured at the beauticians as it is apparently relaxing to have hair torn out at roots, hop on train with Beautiful B, see Alan Carr live, return home at half past midnight;

Sunday: clean, because lord no time to do much of it before now, round to Hubby's mums for a joint birthday lunch with Hubby's brother, home, out to pictures with Beautiful B to see Fright Night and return at midnight.

Does anyone else get the idea that I am swapping one kind of crazy for another.

If only returning to work on Monday would be a rest.....  

What's this feeling again?.....oh yes, pressure

You know when you have just had enough, of well.....everything?  yeah, well right now me too.

Why?  Well I could list them but then it would be a pity party and I don't like them.  It's not really what I am about, I like being laid back. Yes I worry, not incessently, but not enough to let it bother me on a normal day.

Yet, lately, that pressure has been mounting both at work and at home and today I blew.  Now folks, it takes a lot, it really really does - some have commented that I am that laid back I am horizontal most of the time and that I ask very little, if nothing, for myself.  I lead what I consider to be a charmed life - I adore my daughter, I adore my hubby, yes we have the normal run of the mill issues but nothing that I consider anything major stress wise to write home about. So I am very very lucky to have what I have and I feel content and loved up 99.99% of the time and very very few folks have that.

Yet, if I actually laid it on the table, some would say, and have in the past that it is a lot, a huge amount and yet I carry on as though nothing is happening.  Now that I will admit.....

I have a habit of compartmentalizing - will worrying about it change anything?  No, well put it in a box and ignore it then.  Will I still be worrying about it in 3 months?  No, well put it in another box and ignore it then.  I am good at that - I learnt to do that around the time that I realised my first ex-husband had to realise for himself that I wasn't taking his daughter away from him (oh at around the same time that the second husband who was very good at mental control told me he didn't love me, but refused to move out and quit his job so I could keep him in a means he was accustomed to) and then again when Beautiful B started to come out of what was, for all of us, a very dark hole about 2 years ago.

Except....every now and again, somethings get too big to stuff in a box and leave to get musty.  Invariably, those things tend to be family related things - you know, those things that affect your most loved and cherished ones! 

Surfice to say, Beautiful B is struggling - we are at the stage where I cannot shield Beautiful B from the hurtful things that her dad struggles with iin his life and it her and it affects her day after day because I have worked hard to ensure she maintains a relationship with her dad.  I can't change his life, his choices for his partners and so I watch my baby get hurt day after day by the person he is currently with and she struggles more and more each day but is unable to detach her feelings about them the way I can (or the way I put it in a box)/

Then Hubby is struggling.  Hubby lost his dad 7 years ago on the 28th of May and he struggles every time this year.  Well okay, he struggles the whole year but more so at this time of year.  He has never grieved for his dad and feels that counsellors or therapy would not help.  To compound that I found out about another issue he has tried to keep from me to protect me and to stop me worrying.  Pity then, that he didn't realise I was already worrying about it because when you are so intune with someone you know when something is wrong even if you don't know what it is.  

.....and so, you ask where has this wonderful communication disappeared to - well, that disappeared under the "we must protect our loved ones at all cost" cloud apparently - which, whilst I understand the need to do that, has driven me insane today. 

Because....truly when you are so in tune with those you love they become like books - books that you can read very easily and books you want to delve into - but they have become books that purposely don't want to be read - you know a bit like accountancy text books written by the unnamed company I cannot mention......

Little do they know (or if they do they really don't get the extent of it), that I worry every day about them and that I bottle that up and that I feel responsible for their happiness and as much as my brain tells me that I cannot help them and make them completely happy and that I am not responsible for the reason they feel as they do...I am a mum and a wife and I do feel responsible....and so today, I am sad, today I am lost and today I feel like the box lids are flapping about in my brain and the tiny aliens are busy trying to stuff the contents back in the box to no avail.

Oh....and the publication of the accounts is full throttle and I have been stressing that much about getting a document ready for the finance director general when I am not wholly comfortable that I know what I am talking about and only when I clicked the send button on that email did the heaviness in my chest subside.....

Is it just me, by the way, that gets that feeling - like your heart suddenly weighs a stone and has doubled in size and is sat pressed right against the back of your rib cage......

Maybe it is a good job I don't get that feeling very often then....