Caves into Tunnels

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Last week was a hard week.  It’s not something I ever pictured myself saying right after I got married.  I never thought the week after would send me sobbing into the arms of my wife and mother-in-law over panic inducing situations more times than I would like to admit.  I felt like my brain hit the reset button on all the progress I’ve been working on and wiped me clean of any cognitive processing techniques I have been able to self-apply in the past to maintain levels of anxiety.  I felt, quite frankly, far from my age of 26 and closer to the age of 6.  I showed up to work daily and was presented with mental challenges that my brain was not in the mood to overcome, which left me in tears at my desk a multitude of times.  I survived the taxation at work to go home and be greeted by homeowner problems and issues that money can fix but a lack of money can leave one feeling disheartened.  I paid the bills and watched all our hard-earned money go into other people’s pockets leaving me frustrated.  It just felt like mini-deaths over and over and over again last week.  I would get enough air in my lungs to make it to the next hour without another breakdown – an hour between breakdowns seemed to be my only success.

And so, it was like this, EVERY. DAY. FOR. A. WEEK.  The physical exhaustion from the mental energy drain was palpable.  About mid-week, I was conducting a home visit with one of my families, a routine part of my daily job.  I was driving in the middle of the county I work for, which if you are familiar with, is full of farm fields, forest, and numerous small churches…EVERYWHERE.  As I was driving by one of the plethora of churches, I saw a sign that caught my attention.  I don’t know why I chose to read that particular sign out of the many I had already passed and not paid mind to.  But I did.  All it stated was that “Hope turns caves into tunnels.”  If I’m being honest, I read it, made a small “hmm” noise and rolled past it.  I was too in my head to process what I had read as a message of application to my current situation.  I couldn’t find any hope in my situation that turned my cave, nay, CAVES into tunnels.  Shortly after driving by the sign, another panic attack found me and I remained cognitively exhausted the rest of the evening, letting the sign’s message slip into the far recesses of my mind. 

Thursday night, we had a meeting with a few individuals regarding future decisions to be made.  A meeting like the one we had would normally enthuse me and revive me from my macabre mood.  But I came into the meeting feeling like a 3-year-old who had just broken their Mom’s favorite vase.  I was holding a bunch of shattered pieces and was embarrassed by my presentation of what I had.  I felt the familiar feeling of shame creep in.  It wasn’t until one of the individuals stated that there was a lot of hope in our situation that the church sign rushed to the front of my mind.  The knot of dread, shame and anxiety sitting entangled in my stomach slowly released it’s hold.  I felt like a window had been opened on a crisp fall morning and fresh air swirled around my overheated soul.  For a minute, I saw my caves as tunnels.  They were still dark, they were still messy, but there was an exit.  There was an end in sight.  We weren’t as trapped as we thought we were. 

So, my epiphany that came over the past week was not one of prodigious turning points in which I was able to solve undue problems in my life.  In fact, it was a small church sign and one word, uttered by someone other than myself, that slowly moved the negative tides into one of a more cautiously positive outlook. 

I used to rely on the phrase “you could have it worse” whenever I got down about situations in life.  I chose to see rough circumstances as menial in comparison to how others have it.  I was raised to see it like that.  I used this phrase to punish myself over my valid frustrations and robbing myself of tangible emotions.  My wife finally looked at me one day and told me all that thinking did was downplay my emotions and write them off as if my feelings don’t matter.  She called me out on being the worst gaslighter to myself, and believe me, I needed that.  The abusive language I had subconsciously trained myself to accept had worked its way so deeply into my core that I had chosen to see every situation as “not as bad as it could be”, when in all reality, the situation really did suck.  I believe that’s why the church sign stuck with me throughout the rest of last week.  It didn’t say that hope makes for sunny skies and good times.  It stated that it turns a dark cave into a tunnel.  It stated that hope allows for an exit point, a light at the end, if you will.  It’s still damp, dark and scary.  It doesn’t make the journey easy; it just provides an out eventually. 

I don’t know what your caves are.  I don’t know if this is even a relatable post to you.  But if a small church sign can move me to a more positive outlook, regardless of how shitty the situation, then it may be something you need to hear this week also. 

PVC Problems

My life feels a little cracked right now…errrrr….maybe a lot of cracked.  I started seeing the hairline fractures in certain elements of my daily productivity about four months ago when I started my new job, but since then, my hairline fractures turned into cracks that are working their way into canyons.  The shocking factor is, while my job may have made the fractures apparent, other life events have made them shoddier.  I have done the math in my head.  I have a lot of successes going for me right now.  I work in a position that respects boundaries, mental health, and personal time.  I am marrying someone who unaffectedly loves me and accepts me just as I am and does not expect faultlessness or ask for the impossible.  I have kindred friends who appreciate life situations and do not allow ebbs and flows to affect their loyalty.  But even in all of these accomplishments, I find myself apologizing to people more than celebrating with them.  I am in a peculiar transitional period of my life where I feel as though I could either have a massive break through or an explosive break down.  As someone who revers emotional intelligence and awareness, but has a fearful respect for the fall out of such intense emotions, it is a precarious place to be in.  So, I am in limbo.  Stuck between what could be and what is not.  The most recent low moment was this past Saturday when I was standing around our exposed plumbing system and watching sewage drain into the ditch that we had spent hours hand digging.  I felt that it was a comedic metaphor for life at the moment.  It is a hard pill to swallow when you knowingly bought a house that would have things to fix up, but a failing plumbing system was never projected.  A deteriorating plumbing system that the previous owners knew how to hide and not disclose.  As I stood over the trench, I cried.  I work for the government not Jeffrey Bezos, so I knew that my fragile wallet could not take another hit.  All of a sudden vulnerability hit me in tenfold.  My father, mother, father-in-law, fiancé, and I worked arduously in 90-degree weather to lay brand new plumbing.  While I am gratified of the skills cultured, I am humiliated that I had to rely on good people to do revolting work. 

Is there too much talk of shit and flaws in this to publish on a blog?  Yeah, I would imagine it is.  My major struggle in life right now seems to come back to vulnerability and sincerity about successes and failures.  I remember when the tears and sweat were mingling on my face and the air was filled with putrid odors this past weekend and thinking that I was the only one who had ever had to deal with this.  I know in reality I am not, but it feels so lonely and cold when you realize that income does not match cost to survive.  It was not until a conversation with my father enlightened me to the fact that I am only 25.  If my life was perfectly together right now, I would be in the tiniest category of minorities.  He more or less reviewed the things in my life I was doing right and how it was going to work out in the long haul. 

This is a short post because I do not have a solution.  I guess I should have led with that.  If you came here for a pick-me-up, solution ridden post about how to fix finances, plumbing, or life stressors this is not it.  I can link you to TED talks or podcasts, but that is about it.  I am posting as a vulnerable, broke, 25-year-old that wants others to know they are not alone in the sewer that can be life at times, and you should not have to feel alone.  So if you want to come over for some Hamburger Helper and water as a cheap dinner of succor, I got you. 

My Genesis

How do you begin to deal with the fact that you have been driven back into a Doctor’s waiting room because your mental state is frayed and fragile again?  How do you grasp a diagnosis you were scared to face but has been determined to be a root of the mental battlefield?  How do you function?  How do you move through the mental sludge of self-hatred and pain?  How do you tell people that you love that you feel significantly out of control of your spiral and not be afraid that they will leave you?  If you are waiting for me to give the solution, you and I can join forces and search together.  I have talked about mental health before. I have alluded to a battle I have been fighting from the age of 15.  I have disclosed to my closest people that I am not always okay.  I have worked towards acceptance of childhood trauma stemming from people I thought loved me unconditionally.  I have a physical checklist in my daily routine for trigger check-ins.  I keep telling myself I am doing what I can, but it never feels quite adequate enough.  I am my own worse critique and enemy at any given moment.  I crave social acceptance and normalcy that I feel floats just beyond my reach and taunts me.  I burden myself beyond an acceptable amount of stress.  I take work too seriously and personal time too casually. 

I keep telling myself that writing has been my therapy in the past.  I remember being told as a kid, when I had first started my writing journey, that what I was writing was too dark for someone my age, so I scarred journal pages instead of exposing readers to what I was going through.  I started writing about the things people wanted to hear about instead of using my perspective on mental health and battles to challenge their thinking.  I only hurt myself.  I was writing about things I did not believe and topics that appeased the appetite of readers who were not ready to face Beth’s struggles.  I catered to a crowd I feared would rebuke me with the slightest difference in opinions. 

I have found acceptance in the fact that this post may be the one straw that breaks the camel’s back.  I spent too much time mulling over pushing “publish” on a post like this, to let myself allow it to go unaddressed much longer. This may chase my current following away.  It may bring in new followers.  Yet it may keep the loyal followers and bring in new ones.  So, if you have made it this far and have not been scared off yet, I have some truths that are well overdue.

I am dealing with a new diagnosis of bipolar disorder with unpredictable weeks of depression that quickly turn to mania.  My medicine is still working to regulate me, and I have not figured out how to work with instead of against my moods. 

I am a member of the LGBTQ+ community and am getting married to my best friend this year.  I came out slowly over the past two years and have experienced some of the greatest pain from people I love and thought loved me and some of the purest love and acceptance from people who I have come to call family.  This is still a very real and sensitive wound and I do not know if I will ever fully heal from some of the comments, conversations and interactions that I have had since coming out, but I take everything one day at a time. 

I am working on reconstructing my faith after deconstructing from childhood trauma and training stemming from abuse and manipulation from the Church.  I have found solace and acceptance within a group of believers who take Jesus’ command to love far deeper than most.  I have learned that the Church can hurt you deeply, but there are still some believers out there following what Christ asks, ignoring the politics of Church culture and that can admit to the hypocrisy within the walls of the Church.

I am working through workplace abuse that occurred to me as a police officer.  I am accepting that people who knew what was occurring and have done nothing to change those environments are no longer in control of me and that I can work through what happened. 

I am learning to be okay with my appearances and body for the way it is at any given moment. I am coming out of a period of my life where my size and look dictated how I felt daily.  I have apologized to my body and spirit for the hell and strain I put it through with injurious workouts and abusive dieting/starvation. 

So welcome.  Welcome to my mind and life.  It is not pretty, it is a mess, there is a lot of chaos and little peace.  I invite you to embark with me on the rest of this self-discovery, self-acceptance, and self-love.  It will not be neat.  It will be painful.  It will continually challenge your thinking.  But this is my mind and a place I am learning to settle into as a part of me.  For those of you who have known about some or all of the aforementioned disclosures and have stuck by me, I cannot even begin to express what your loyalty, love and kindness has meant to me.  For those who have decidedly allowed my personality technicalities to dictate their affection for me, I am sorry that our relationships had terms and conditions, I feel a fool and was unaware. 

I am done rearranging my furniture to appease everyone else.  This is a deconstruction of everything that once was and a rebuilding to make everything new.  The structure of my house has been compromised and is not set to stand against much if it is not overhauled.  I am extending you a hard hat and tools to get dirty in the rebuilding with me.  Maybe “Beth under construction” will hearten anyone else who feels they are in need for a renovation.  This is my home.  Writing is my therapy.  This is my story.  This is my evolution.  This is my genesis. 

Pass the Needle

I believe this year’s election has been counted down more closely than any Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve presentation…may he rest in peace. Although I may be jinxing myself as I have been counting down to 2021 since March when hysteria and madness began in the United States. A lot has happened this year in my personal life, in the United State’s and internationally. If you and I would have spoken ten years ago, first, I would have been inadequately prepared to discuss politics, and second, I would have tried my damnedest to convince you I knew what I was talking about. I never knew why the idea of debating someone sparked a white hot flame in me that, looking back now, led to extensive immaturity and disregard for personal opinion. For years, I spent far too much time, working on ways to prove to others I was right, and not enough time accepting individuality and concern for others. I found myself parroting phrases and fear-mongering words that I had heard others around me use as common speech because I lacked exposure and experience. Frankly, I was sitting on the cusp of ignorance and irrational thoughts.

When I began college, I was jokingly warned that college would open my mind to things I had never seen, felt, heard, or experienced before.  As a homeschooled individual, this meant complete and utter exposure to the elements of a decrepit and decaying world.  I entered college with conservative bubble wrap surrounding my virgin soul.  I am forever grateful to the people who guided and protected me growing up.  This, in no way, is a pitiable reflection of my upbringing or experiences I had.  This is simply an acknowledgement of the development that has happened since starting college when I began seeing things differently.   

After college, I realized just how harsh the world really is.  I chose one of the darker paths by becoming a law enforcement officer which inevitably meant consistent exposure to dissoluteness.  But that exposure, while at times rubbed me so raw I did not know how I was able to mentally stay together, also showed me the vulnerability and uniqueness in people from all walks of life.  I learned to show kindness to the drunken homeless man who I had to beg to stop pan-handling because he was offending the eyes of the country club members.  I learned how to talk to a hysterical prostitute because she had lost the $50 she had just worked for that was going to pay for her next meal.  I administered NARCAN into the lifeless drug addict’s nose to give him another chance at life, without knowing if he would straighten up.  I lost my virgin soul quite quickly in all of that.   

So I’ve struggled vastly throughout this election process.  I have seen people I thought I knew, post horrifically regrettable things about groups of people that are different than them – race, gender, sexual identification, and career choices alike.  Some of their attacks are aimed at communities I am a part of. These comments are made both ways.  I see conservative and liberal friend’s alike taking poisonous aims at each other’s spirits in attempt to prove who is better, who is right, and who the winner is.  I have tried time and time again to find the words to reply back to people who make comments in an effort to bring another viewpoint to their egotistical barrage of hatred, but I have had to step back and take into account if I would be extinguishing the flames or fanning the wildfire they started.  So most times I say nothing, continue scrolling, and remind myself they are keyboard warriors using their fast fingers to spread division and misinformation.   

I meticulously debated if I was going to vote this year or not. I feel as if neither candidate even begins to amount to the qualities and abilities we need in leadership right now. I voted, so before I get a stream of comments arguing about how its vital to vote, I did. But when I was piecing the words together to write this post, I am thankful I did. I am grateful I live in a country that allows me to sit behind my keyboard and type vastly intimate thought processes I have about the election of the next leader of this free country. I am not being hunted for my words, I am not being tortured for my decisions and I am not enslaved.

Whoever wins tomorrow, consider graciousness and kindness, instead of bitterness and rage. Whether “your” candidate wins or loses, we all live in the same country and have experienced seismic divides in society this year that have left near fatal, and sometimes fatal, emotional, physical and mental traumas. Take tomorrow’s outcome – whatever it may be – as a chance to move forward towards unity and love instead of separation and hatred. This side of Heaven we will never experience a perfect world, but we can work together to love others, accept and encourage individuality and expressions, and cherish our unique qualities that make us Americans. I truly believe that Wednesday morning, when we wake up, we can pick up understanding and peace, instead of pitchforks and torches. The candidates for this election hold no power over us in our reactions and expression of the results. We can control the violence, hatred and anger if only we take time to acknowledge that. Choose that over the divide.

Wednesday morning, I will be holding my metaphorical sewing needle to begin the process of sewing together the tattered pieces of society that 2020 has left us holding. I know there is work to be done in repairing, and I for one, am more than happy to pass out sewing needles to anyone else willing to work towards healing with me.

I Love This Job, But…

I can not count the amount of times I have started writing this post just to wipe the typed words off the page because this topic is all too real and all too close to home. Years ago I wrote a blog post about how to help someone you know dealing with depression. I was depressed when I wrote it, pleading with the reader to have active conversations with people in their lives who fight depression. On the post I was imploring the reader, but in reality I was quietly begging for someone in my own life to step up and help me take my own burdens to help me shuffle and process through the tidal wave of anxiety, depression and self-loathing I was dealing with. When relief did not come from outside sources I turned to binge-eating and copious amounts of alcohol until my bad habit behaviors tricked my brain into thinking I had everything under control again.

Fast forward to now and the bouts of depression I fought through in college look like the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World, to the “Tower of Terror” ride I’m sitting on right now.

I have been a police officer for two years now. I love this job. I do. I wake up everyday with the intention to help others, create relationships in the community I serve and to make God and my Country proud. I am addicted to the adrenaline, the brotherhood and the unforeseeable calls I will handle daily. At least that is what I have to tell myself everyday as I throw my 20+ pound belt around my injured back and strap the constricting vest to my chest that is intended to block out objects more deadly than societies natural inclination of hatred towards us.

I love this job. That’s what I tell myself when I get a phone call from a friend asking if I know the medical status of a neighboring agencies’ deputy who was shot trying to help free a woman from her abusive and deadly ex-husband.

I love this job. That’s what I tell myself when I hear a “Medic Down” code over the radio and witness the most brutal and horrific injury to a fellow first responder I have ever seen. I love this job. I tell myself as I am running into the store to find the monster that intentional struck the first responder all because of the uniform she was wearing. I love this job. That’s what I tell myself as I sit at the hospital for hours with the same monster that hurt one of us, napping away peacefully while the injured paramedic is miles away having her leg amputated.

I love this job. That’s what I tell myself when I get spit on by a man who calls me every derogatory name in the book and explicitly describes what he would do to me if he had ten minutes alone with me.

I love this job. That’s what I tell myself when I watch another excellent officer leave my department because their voice was lost in the shuffle. They tried to speak up about issues, but their needs were not met nor prioritized.

I love this job. That’s what I tell myself when I wake up screaming from night terrors of calls I have responded to. I love this job. That’s what I tell myself when I drunkenly call my best friend and beg her for help because I am too close to a deadly edge that I cannot step away from. I love this job. That’s what I tell myself when I am sitting in my doctor’s office begging for medication to silence my ever-growing posse of demons that make it a daily point to interfere with my life. I love this job. That’s what I tell myself when horrific flashbacks of unforgettable calls I have seen cause me to sit through a green light cycle causing the cars behind me to honk angrily.

I love this job. That’s what I tell myself while I sit quietly in briefing wondering, hoping and praying that each one of my teammates makes it out of the shift alive. I use to pray for us to make it out of the shift whole and in tact, but that prayer is not just about our physical existence anymore, but a cry for our mental survival.

I love this job. That’s what I tell myself at 24 years old, unable to move out of my parent’s house because I live in fear of what I am capable of doing to myself, alone with my demons, without an immediate support system living around me.

I am a police officer. I put on my uniform, badge and gun everyday knowing that I am a solider in an ongoing battle. I fight for justice and humanity. But I also know that the real battle is not confined to 12.5 hour shifts on the streets, behind the wheel of my patrol car. The real warfare begins when I turn my radio off, unstrap my vest, and put my gun in a safe. I am internally fighting when I hang out with my civilian friends and family. I constantly suppress irritation, anger and disappointment on extreme levels. I struggle to darken the doors of my family’s church because the overwhelming thoughts and emotions make me feel inadequate and too much of a burden to handle. I isolate myself because I am too terrified that my coping will end up damaging my loved ones.

I can not speak for every officer who has ever put on a badge and gun but I know a lot us love this job, but are left wondering if it or our departments will ever love us back in the capacity we need it/them to.

Permission to be a Sunset

It took less time than Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” to watch Mother Nature turn the evening sky into her own dressing room.  Donning different colored celestial gowns to usher in the Moon.  Awe inspired I stood there, watching the Sun use her waning photoshpheric presence to paint mastery across the darkening horizon.  

I found myself deeply envious of the Sunset.  How She is allowed to change multiple times in a crumbling window of time and command nothing but indubitable veneration.  I crave approbation to emulate a Sunset; to change my continuance without question or concern; to fully become an avant-garde entity as often as I crave.  Transient moments like this when I yearn to be all I want to be without apprehension of the condemnatory verbiage of other’s view of my outcome.  I seek nothing nothing but permission to be a Sunset; to be fully undisputed in my feminity however I manifest myself.  

In losing 100 pounds I almost lost it all…

I stepped on the scale this morning and felt fear grip my insides. +3 pounds from what I was two weeks ago. I closed my eyes, inhaled sharply, stepped off the scale and re-calibrated my mindset. I walked back to my room fighting through waves of panic and defeat. I was getting ready to step in front of my full-length mirror hanging from my closet door to evaluate where I had gained the 3 pounds when I reminded myself what a dark and twisty road that leads down.

Not evaluating myself in the mirror this morning might not seem like a big step, but for me it was a momentous victory. Another step in my recovery and healing. You see, I’ve lost 100 pounds, but in doing so lost sight of my reason for weight loss and found myself making alliances with eating disorders. I say plural with eating disorders because it was not one specific one, it was a nasty cocktail of whatever I felt would get rid of my caloric intake for the day.

If you’re reading this you’ve probably known me long enough to have seen me lose the weight or if your new, my consistent posting about fitness on Instagram is enough to clue you in that I’ve made some incredible milestones in fitness and health. I won’t bore you with the backstory of how I came to that weight loss.

This time last year, I was spending a significant amount of time starving, purging, taking “skinny pills” and sweating away calories. In January 2018, I reached, what I thought at the time, the pinnacle moment of my weight loss when I started to no longer lose weight, but rather maintain it. I found myself continually frustrated that my hour workouts, copious amounts of water, clean eating and uptick in active lifestyle were no longer dropping the needle on the scale but rather staying neutral.

I made the sad mistake of hopping my way over to the nearest supplement store and asking the clerk what kind of legal products they had to get me skinny. I started taking water pills to get rid of excess hydration, a form of hydroxycut to give me caffeine and metabolic burner boosts, cinnamon supplements and a plethora of other lame attempts at losing the excess weight. I pushed all of this and more for several months, watching the pounds come off again and I found myself satiated. I had put my happiness in the sight of the scale going down, all while preaching to others that the scale is a poor determining factor in weight loss and should not be relied upon solely.

By April, my body had found itself adapting to the weight loss regimen I was putting it through and plateaued again and I found myself panicky with the shadows of summer and swimsuit season looming over my head. So along with the supplements I was already pushing I added laxatives to my capsule diet. I’ll spare you the obvious and gory details, and as much as I hate to admit they worked, I found myself so depleted of hydration, energy and motivation that I increased my take of caffeine pills to help contrast the lack of everything else.

There were a ton of other factors at this point edging my weight loss spiral to the chaotic mayhem it became. I was still in training at work, which is arguably one of the hardest things I have ever had to go through. For four months I found myself scared to go to work, stressed, holding on to the mindset that everything I did was wrong, and had no desire to continue on. I lost sleep (several hours a night) and lost all desires to eat. I found myself wearing uniforms that were too loose and I enjoyed the feeling of my ribcage against my body armor at the end of a shift because I was in control of nothing else at the time (at least that’s what it felt like) and it gave me a misplaced sense of comfort that I could control my weight the way I did.

May came around and while the work stress continued, the training was over and I found myself putting less pressure on the weight loss. I chugged along in the gym, drank my gallon of water everyday, consumed my capsule diet, ate some food, and got enough sleep every night to help me survive the next day.

One morning in June, I was in the shower rinsing my hair, when a big clump of it came free from my scalp. I stood there staring at it for a second, absolutely in fear that I inherited my Dad’s baldness. Dude’s can totally pull off any balding look, but girl’s…haha…that’s a definite no go. These were all the red flags I should have paid attention too, but I didn’t because weight loss had become an addiction, and I’ve been doing my job long enough now to know how fast and easily addiction sneaks in and takes hold of someone’s life.

Later that month, I was invited to go on a cross-country driving trip to California to help a friend of mine re-locate. As excited as I was about it, I found myself buckling down again to cut any excess weight before the big trip. I had sights to see and wanted to document this epic journey, but refused to look like I did at the time. So from the month of June to August I spent time after any sort of meal with my finger or toothbrush at the back of my throat, excavating calories from my body, at home, at work, and one time even after a date. Every time it got to be too much, I reminded myself that I had California to look forward to.

At this point, I had replaced sound and healthy logic with misguided ideals of skinny versions of me that I would do anything to achieve. Wearing a size 14 in pants was not satisfactory and I would not rest until I saw single digits. I was getting compliments left and right on my weight loss and while they seemed to fill up my hollow, decaying spirit, they lasted in my system about as long as I would let food take up residency – not long. I was being flattered by guys and I found myself enjoying the new found attention. Apparently my personality that was completely amazing before any weight loss was better emphasized with a slimmer version of me. I began to see myself as only acceptable to guys now because they wanted this slender Beth over what I used to look like. All of the attention and the desire to not let people who had been encouraging me and supporting me this whole time fueled me to push harder towards the wrong goals.

After I returned from California I found myself slowly losing a grip on things. I found myself getting injured easier, taking longer to recover from strained muscles and constantly achy. I was struggling to maintain an appetite for any sort of food at this point and finally decided to talk to my doctor. On top of an entire gamut of other issues, my unhealthy choices had led to hormonal imbalances that were fueling my physical ailments. The doctor gave me my options, and like a fool, I decided to wait on them and just see if everything righted on their own. In November, after a particularly rough day, I caved and decided to start prioritizing my health again.

Why share this now? Why post something so personal for anyone to read? Last week was National Eating Disorder Awareness Week and I clapped silently for several friends that were open about their own struggles on social media. I admired their strength in admitting they had a problem and were actively engaging methods of recovery to reestablish their own health. I didn’t post because I struggled with the shame and embarrassment of what I allowed me to do to my own self all while encouraging others to pursue the right ways to lose weight. While I have been working towards my own personal goals of recovery since late November, I have still refused to admit there was ever a problem. Because when the fat girl gets skinny, it’s celebrated, no matter their methods.

I stumbled across a poet, Blythe Baird several months ago in which she wrote a poem called “When the Fat Girl Gets Skinny”. In her poem one line sticks out more than the others:

“If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin to begin with, you go to the hospital.
If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin to begin with, you are a success story.” – Blythe Baird “When the Fat Girl Gets Skinny”

For Full Poem Click Here – (Worth the Listen)

So back to my question, why share this now? I have a couple of reasons, but one that I hope will challenge your own perspective. There are people all around us pining for a change in their weight. Whether or not it’s 100 pounds or 15 pounds, people embark on their own health journeys regularly. When you see someone working towards their own goals, I hope you staple the question “How are you losing the weight to make sure you keep yourself healthy?” along to the compliment of “You look strong/healthy/fit.” I had one person reach out to me when I was fighting my own battle with eating disorders who called me straight out on how I was doing it. They had been fighting their own eating disorder for years, and knew exactly what I was going through. While I didn’t listen to the individual immediately, I found myself reconsidering every-time I purged knowing that there was someone out there aware of how I was hurting myself and actively engaging me in conversation about it. Their awareness of my problem was enough to make me pause and try to find an alternative, eventually leading me to seek out the help I needed.

My second reason for sharing, is to serve as a warning for people out there who are trying to lose weight. Whether that’s you or someone you know, it can get out of control very easily. Losing 100 pounds has been one of the best things I have ever done for myself, I have removed stress on my heart, improved my cholesterol levels, minimized knee pain from carrying too much weight, have fewer weight-related back problems, and have given myself months if not years of my life back because of healthy choices. But I can speak from experience that all those healthy choices can become clouded in the desire to lose more, faster.

Since November, I have put on 15 pounds, but I’ve done it in a way that my body has been able to utilize in a healthy manner – HELLO bigger Biceps and Quads! My fears of gaining weight are slowly but surely withering as I put on healthy muscle mass. I’m also choosing to accept the fact that the stretch marks and loose skin are a part of my success story and survival. I still have big goals and dreams in fitness and I’m just getting started, but I’m choosing to let my body do what it does naturally.

“I used to be proud when I was cold in a warm room.
Now, I am proud. I have stopped seeking revenge on this body.
This was the year of eating when I was hungry without punishing myself and I know it sound ridiculous, but that shit is hard.”

– Blythe Baird “When the Fat Girl Gets Skinny”

Losing the Weight Between Your Ears

“If it lives in your mind, it lives in your life.” – T.D. Jakes

I remember the first time I decided I needed to lose weight. I was eleven years old, 150-ish pounds, 5′ 6″, walking through the Harris Teeter grocery aisles seeking anything that looked bland, miserable, and healthy – because at that time, eating healthy meant finding bland and miserable items. At the age of twelve I decided I was not correctly sized to fit within the parameters society had dictated I should be in. At the age of thirteen, I was told by someone very close to me, that they would “hate to see me gain more weight and become unhealthy.” That gut punch delivered by a loved one was followed by a doctor’s appointment in which I was told I had high cholesterol and was headed down a dangerous health path and that I needed to lose weight. I grew up hearing stories about how I had been called the Michelin baby because I had been so fat (when it’s cute and acceptable to be fat). It had been ingrained in my brain from when I was young, that I was predisposed to fight weight, even down to a nickname put on a six month old.

At the age of twelve I had just moved to North Carolina. I was struggling with immense grief and depression over moving and while I was processing through all of this, I entered my teen years. If “Teen Years” was a book, the sub-title would be “An onset slew of aggressive pursuits in ideal body image, unattainable by anyone sane” – at least for my teen years. I repeatedly sought out anything and everything that would make me look like the Abercrombie and Fitch models that were slapped all over 2007’s billboards. I remember laying in bed at night sucking in my stomach as far as it could go until my belly would sink lower than my hipbones. I would blow my stomach back out and measure the distance I had to go until hip bone projection was the final result.

And so I struggled with weight for YEARS. From the age of eleven to the age of eighteen I woke up, ostracized what I saw in the mirror, ate unhealthy foods, beat myself up over consumed items, punished myself with exercise, skipped a few meals, drove myself straight into a brick wall of anxiety and depression, woke up and did it all over the next day. For seven years, I battled my own self daily. Everything I did was wrong, and I was an absolute embarrassment to myself. I utilized my hatred of self to keep me from setting goals. I became my own enemy, on top of the billboards, America’s Next Top Model re-runs, and shopping trips where I couldn’t buy clothes in Hollister because I didn’t fit the CEO’s definition of attractive.

When I turned eighteen, I embarked on the revolutionary college years where I found myself taking advantage of the opportunity to reinvent myself. But throughout my experimentation with reinvention, I found myself becoming dangerously complacent towards my health. I went from one end of the eating disorder spectrum to the opposite. I found myself worried about not fitting into my clothes and turning to food to comfort those emotions. A temporary solution to a permanent disability. All the while, I would continually blame situations and emotions I experienced on the way I looked and appeared. A total sense of hopelessness all the time. I was deeply aware that my use of food for comforting emotions was only pouring gasoline onto the already blazing fire, so I turned to alcohol and copious amounts of work and school to erase the hatred of myself from my mind.

I tried repeatedly throughout college to make health a priority. I would go for two weeks and eat a salad at every meal, workout until I couldn’t breathe and walk to all my classes, but I would break it all and binge eat Sonic, Domino’s or whatever unreasonably greasy food item I could, finish a bottle of wine, and cry myself to sleep. I abused my existence because I hated my existence. I poured everything I had into maintaining a 3.6 GPA and working three jobs, and participating in multiple extra curricular to keep my mind off the mirror and scale. Seemingly, the more I did, the louder those demons and fears screamed at me.

So what changed? All those failed attempts at fitness were just a build up for the one time I picked up weights in 2017 and haven’t put them down since? Nope. I found something that drove me. I discovered something that spoke to me a little louder than the old demons. It was just enough extra momentum to projectile push me into a totally different mindset. Then I found myself surrounded by like minded individuals who had the same drive and determination. You know that super ridiculous statement “Your vibe attracts your tribe”? It’s not as light weight as some would think. Those individuals sharpened a competitive, driven edge in me unlike any others. Eventually the passion for what I was working towards began to outweigh the negative mindset I had been carrying around since I was eleven.

Mind you, those old mindsets left deep scars and gouge marks in my soul and brain and there are days, most recently, today, when those scars and gouges get nicked by some comment and reopen old wounds. The pivotal shift in my mentality came when I decided to let my passion steer the ship instead of the negativity. When you let passion direct your life, you tend to let negativity take the backseat. It’s definitely still there trying to reinforce it’s presence but your goals and desires megaphone drown out the voice of distain and despair. You have to lose the weight of negativity that lives between your ears, before you can ever expect to lose the physical weight. If you don’t you’ll find yourself in constant push and pull – two steps forward, three steps back. Your mindset guides your physical results.

“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” – Alexander Den Heijer

I am a cop…

It’s not what a hard call does to you on scene, but what it does to you after that is so haunting. It’s not the dispatcher relaying traumatizing information over the radio that gets your adrenaline going, it’s the quick files your brain ruffles through to wrap your mind around what the scenario really may be. Is this a false alarm or is this the real deal? It’s not the fact that you are hyper aware of your duty weapon in its secured position on your hip that alarms you, but rather the realization that had things not become controlled, you might have to play judge and jury with a single squeeze of your trigger finger someday. No, it’s not an “in the moment” reaction that keeps you up at night, it’s the brutal reality of the fragility of life that will scream through your sleep deprived mind.

I’m a cop. A police officer. A peace keeper. A sheepdog. A mediator. A crisis counselor. An enforcer of the law. A pig. You choose the adjective based on your perception of my job description. I hold a position in which the general population and local community determine my job description on a minute by minute basis. Actually…I hold a position that has no precise description of the deployment of my duties. I answer calls for service. Anything from a stray kitten running at large to a beaten down woman who vexed her husband for asking too many questions. How do you put that into a 150 word job description? I’m still trying to find a way to sell that.

You don’t see commercials during “Bachelors in Paradise” breaks that playfully endorse a career path in law enforcement. It’s not sold to the digital consumer like an online degree to DeVry University. I guarantee that if a commercial was made with the same selling points of an online degree program, local police departments would have people lined up outside their key padded doors seeking employment to “explore their potential.” You can’t sell sacrifice to a digital consumer, because any sane person would understand that sacrifice does not guarantee security.

I’m a rookie still at this point in my career. I work for a medium-sized police department. Double digits of sworn officers feels like a gift compared to PD’s that have only 3 sworn, yet a curse to the vastness of NYPD – but as business runs, supply and demand. Perhaps the true reason I have finally decided to put my thoughts, emotions and feelings about this job in a post is because it’s January 15 and we have already had 6 line of duty deaths and countless other attempts. 2 weeks into 2019 and 6 cops dead.

So instead of emptying a bottle of Jack or sucking on Newport’s like they’re going out of style, I write. I’m up at 11:55 p.m. at night with alarms set for 5:00 a.m. with things to do, writing because sleep plays an elusive thief again. I chase thieves for a living so I guess I can add sleep’s name to the list of others on warrants I need to swear out.

It’s little things, like my sister, who is out late with her friends. She’s 21 and unencumbered by quite a few vexing realities I store in my sack of shitty realizations I tote around. I’ll call her two more times before I attempt sleep because the first time she told me she was “fine” and that she will “be home soon” isn’t clarifying enough. “Fine” is too vague and “be home soon” determines no timeline for me. I’m still up because a few months ago around this time at night I was listening to a twenty something year old man scream for his mother while he bled from a compound fracture of his femur. His head grotesquely laying over the console of his car is an image seared in my brain. The woman that hit him pacing like a caged tiger looking for an escape, using her two still functioning legs to walk around.

My sister is 21 and I know that could have been her screaming for help while strangers struggle to stabilize traumatic injuries. It wasn’t her, but as I’ve already come to realize, cruelty knows not one certain type of victim. Cruelty plays roulette with life, except that it will never know the chambered bullet itself.

That call was the first time I felt haunted. Blood, screaming, moaning – all things that only belong in the most grotesque imaginations of twisted Hollywood directors. I can only be thankful for the primal backslide of brain function that robotically performed my job duties in that moment the way I was trained. Render aid, gather statements, assist other officers, standby while roadway was cleared. Moving through a muddle of human emotion from bystanders and witnesses I did what I was trained to do. I stand firm in pride that even in the most horrific incidences I have yet to prove that I cannot resort to training mode.

It was after I left the scene that my training mode switched off and I resurfaced. “What the hell!?” I screamed and hit my steering wheel. I drove around the rest of the shift lost in my complete inability to process through what I had seen. Humans aren’t meant to see shit like that. We aren’t meant to watch others suffer and walk away unaffected. That’s what the Japanese are designing robots to do. A few hours later I walked up the stairs, put on a fake exhausted face to skate by the rest of my team with little interrogation about the nights events, clocked out and drove home. My fake exhaustion a sorry excuse to hide a haunted awareness of life’s fragility.

I woke up panicked four times the first night after that wreck. Three more days dragged by with little sleep and vivid nightmares. But it wasn’t the fact of what had occurred the night of the wreck that was hunting me down so intensely. It was the fact that the wreck could have been the reality for someone I love. A few more restless nights went by and I stopped losing sleep. I was fine. It sucked, but I got through it.

Then you get a phone call from your buddy. When they call you upset and you panic because you have no idea the context of their pain. They just had to drag a child out of a pool. The child didn’t make it. So you listen to their living nightmare they just experienced and you both console each other because that’s what you do. That’s the thin blue line. That balance beam you walk single file on until you have to turn and embrace the person behind you as they process their hard call. You both fail to understand why bad things happen to good people and you find yourself questioning much larger things beyond your earthly scope. And then they dry their tears, you tell them to call you if they need to talk and you move on.

Repetitive trauma to a part of the body can result in chronic pain or permanent disability. I’ve begun to wonder if that is the gaping jaws of a mental beast all officers are looking down. Will those calls, far between each other, but horrific enough to cause angst for several days after, eventually lead to a complete disability? The strangest part about playing with this mental fire is that something inside me tells me to push through. God doesn’t give burdens larger than you can handle.

I love this job. The adrenaline, the “select few” mentality – all keep me in it. I’ve found a work family of like-minded, determined individuals who want to put the bad ones away and bring the good ones justice. We have each others’ backs, and I know what it feels like to be a part of something much bigger than myself, truly. I’m driven and hopeful that I can be a lifeline for someone someday. My passion motivates me to get up early in the mornings, work exhausting swing shifts and spend holidays in front of a magistrate, because I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.

So I go back to posing the earlier proposition, how do you sell sacrifice to digital consumers? Oh hey Kaepernick, I guess I’ll let you handle that one.

The Harm in Setting Resolutions Without Reinforcing Goals

If you have not experienced it already, chances are, the New Year’s Resolution bug will begin to nip at your internal subconscious.  You will begin to feel a magnetic draw towards the enticing and endless possibilities of the “New Year, New Me” ideology.  My realization of the proximity of 2019 hit me the other day when I was working and had to utilize a January date to schedule something.  Other than the despairing thought of having to learn to write dates with a new number at the end, the new year can be full of fresh elation and potential.  

I have always had a disgruntled and negatively skeptical posture towards New Year’s resolutions.  My lack of desire to create personal resolutions is because of my appalling failures in past endeavors to “better” myself.  I have had “lose weight” on the top of my resolution list for at least eight years, but it was not until a very humid July of 2017 – over halfway through that year – that I finally put a pair of workout sneakers on and lamely attempted to change my situation.  The worst part of it all, starting the weight loss was not because of a New Year’s resolution more than a panicked reality of what I needed to do to get the job I wanted.  The disheartening part is that I sing the song of most, who have, like me, attempted to drive themselves full speed into a New Year with the best intentions and directives for their lives.  Narrowed tunnel vision towards a positive upturn in one’s life, that goes horribly wrong.  So why are resolutions so hard to keep?

Resolutions initiate a precept towards things that need to change.  They give us a strong sense of what needs to happen but fail to set up “bowling lane bumpers” to guide the trajectory of our actions.  So instead of swearing off all progressive means of changing with each new year, I have come up with a self-taught alternative that has instigated change throughout the year, while holding myself accurately accountable.  

I have organized advances I desire to see each year into four categories: Professional, Financial, Academic, and Personal.  Within each of those categories I list my resolutions.  Ultimately, resolutions are solutions to problems.  I assess what I see in my current lifestyle that are problems, and create a resolution to them.  But here is where things differentiate in my planning.  I give myself attainable goals within the resolutions.  

So you want to lose weight this year?  Great!  But generally saying you want to lose weight is useless without a mental “blueprint” guiding your steps.  Contractors do not get to job sites and say “Let’s build a house.” without having already laid out the steps necessary to produce the final results.  

Do I sound crazy yet?  Hang with me.  Within each generalized resolution comes the importance of breaking it down.  What steps are you going to take to achieve that goal?  As much as I despise cliches I will give nod to one.  “How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.”  How do you resolve a problem?  One goal at a time.  I break goals into daily, weekly, monthly.  So if we are using the example of weight loss, the daily goal could be as simple as drinking 64 ounces of water, taking the stairs instead of an elevator, going to the gym and working out for 30 minutes.  The weekly goal builds on that with a little more muscle (pun intended) behind it.  Weekly goals towards weight loss become: meal prepping instead of drive through, getting six workouts in, losing 1 pound.  Monthly continues on with: losing one pant size, and/or running 3 miles without stopping.  What a lot of people tend to forget is that the daily goals, add up to meet the weekly goals, which build on the monthly goals, which launch you straight into your yearly goals.  Being consistent in your daily goals produce the results in your yearly goals. 

Resolutions overall, as much as I have historically avoided them, are not without good intentions.  They become harmful when one fails to reinforce them with attainable goals and objectives.  Goals create a healthy mentality of persistence in adversity.  They create relatable and encouraging methods in which one can guide themselves.  They create mile markers on your “journey” to the resolution.