- Lost my job. Again.
- Ran out of Unemployment Insurance
- Moved back to St. Louis where I am sponging off friends who are in even worse financial shape than I.
- Was unemployed until November 2015.
- That contract ended and I am now in my second low pay, high stress job.
In short, I've been pretty miserable. I grew up in St. Louis and for many reasons, not all of them logical, I hate the stinking pit of a town, a place I like to call "Lil' Detroit".
Sponging off my friends isn't good, the fact that they are doing this out of the kindness of their poverty stricken hearts while I bitch about their beloved home town makes me a huge heel.
Because I'm living out of a small room, I really can't have much of a love life. In fact, I've tried and just really can't come up with one. The fact that I left all of my lovers in Seattle makes this even more painful.
In fact, I pretty much feel like a lost teenager. I live out of a small room, I have a crappy job to keep the payments on my car, I have to obey the rules of the house and I don't have a love life. I'm 17 all over again, except fatter and with less hair.
To make me feel even more immature, I vented to Facebook and my own mother told me to grow up. Apparently having feelings AND showing them, not to mention being disgusted with the bigots I'm surrounded by is immature. I will now commence to bottle up my feelings and become a frigid prude like just about everyone else in this town. It's the mature, grown up thing to do!
Having said all of this, the last time I got on a scale, I weighed about 430. Today, in an effort to find that happy sex life (ever the closet optimist!) I went for an STD test. I try to go every six months, but I haven't in two years. Anyway, they got me on a scale:
398
I asked repeatedly if the scale was accurate and was assured it was.
398
I have been trying for nearly a decade to get under 400 pounds. I was so close several times. I have tried every diet I could think of to get past that 400 pound mark. I've tried positive thinking and meditation and anger and, well, it turns out misery was the answer.
It's not even good misery. I mean, I have a roof over my head and a full belly. A very full belly. Food is, as my readers know, my drug of choice. I have been eating a ton of fast food and candy and full sugar soda - so, food, indeed. My needs, for the most part, are being met. I am surviving. It's not like I'm starving or in a war zone or some place I can wear my misery as a badge of honor. No, I feel guilty about feeling this bad because so many others have it so much worse.
I also figured I'd have a huge sense of accomplishment when I crossed that line. But, I didn't do anything. I'm eating crap, I have a membership to the Y that I don't use. I just lived and ate and masturbated. Ta-dah! Thirty pounds gone. A part of me says, yes! Use this! Diet. Exercise. Work it. But, another part of me (an admittedly stupid but none the less convincing part) says, don't do that! You got the weight off by being miserable, don't worry that you've probably lost thirty pounds of muscle and bone mass, worry that the weight might come back! Worry!!!
For the moment, I'm just marking the milestone. I went to Arby's and got two big sandwiches, I went to QT and got a large Iced Tea with Splenda. I went to the grocery store and bought quinoa and cheese puffs. Confused? Yup. I'm working three twelve hour shifts the rest of this week. Maybe I'll go to the gym Saturday.
