Beginning new endeavors

I have decided to become fit, in ways that I never have before. Not just skinny like before, but healthy, and trying to deal with my EDNOS in the meantime. But it all starts with some "before" pictures: (some of these are NSFW, btw.)
Now, that's not to say I'm unhappy with myself now-- I work out regularly, and I love my body in a lot of ways...




I would just also like a little more toning, and to get to a new place in my eating habits. For the eating side of it, my goals are to be more mindful and thereby bring a new awareness to my eating habits that will shift me away from binge-eating and more towards what makes me feel good.
my breakfast this morning: low-cal english muffin with coconut oil and sea salt, and a pumpkin protein shake/yogurt (I like to eat my shakes w/a spoon, for some reason I have an aversion to drinking my calories)




here goes nothing! <3

talk about love or talk about dishwasher tablets

[Fever Ray, 'Seven']

This is the first day I've had off in ages. Well, by off I mean I took a final exam in Organic Chemistry first. Then I met S and got to play with a puppy and see CG (all three= very cute), which was so much fun. S grounds me so much. Perfect start.

Then, I rushed back to my house to be picked up by GZ. I met GZ on Monday when I went swimming at the Y-- he's a lifeguard. As soon as I walked into the pool room I could see he was attracted to me. As I was swimming (head out of the pool, not concerned with speed) he asked me if I wanted some goggles, and then proceeded to give me a swim lesson. By the end of the time I was there I was much faster, and then he asked for my number. So today we were on a seven hour date (this seems to be a common theme. I do very long dates-- this used to happen with Ju, too.) Teavana (yum. love tea.) then Farmer's market for food (also yum) and then walking around Decatur and the graveyard (making out where J and I never did) and talking. It was pretty cool. He's awesome, but I have a few reservations already. I'm not going to judge him on them yet, though. a) He's a little young. I know, it's just a number. b) Some of the things he says seems like they are edited so I'll like him more-- this is part of the reason a) is an issue, actually, because I feel like that's more of an immature/unsure who you are-type thing to do. c) He doesn't seem like he'd be able to deal with all of the aspects of me-- I mentioned the queerness, and he seemed ok with it, but not entirely comfortable... I'll probe that a bit more. I suppose as a straight cis male hearing that from someone you want to date is a little confusing, so I give him props for handling as he did. He also handled my mentioning of my ED very well. (I don't usually spring these things on first dates, but it was 7 hours long. After a couple of hours it amounts to the second or third dates of "normal length".) We have plans to go night-swimming at a private pool he used to look after, but not definite as to when.

Speaking of plans, I have plans with S and CG for the 4th! Possibly the most exciting week in a while.

Speaking of exciting, today is the third day that I have honest-to-goodness been eating healthily-- by which I mean eating when I am hungry, and just enough. And it feels amazing. I feel like I am in a really good place. The only thing is both Monday night and tonight I had to go back and eat more dinner after I'd eaten with my family, because I felt light-headed and/or cranky and knew that I was way under 1100 kcals. [I really do not want to starve myself. No.] Tomorrow (or Friday, maybe) my brother is coming over for his birthday dinner and there will be peach cobbler, but I don't feel that worried about it. I feel so good about it. Go me!

Now all I need to do is talk to the cute guy in my program, ace semester 2 of organic chem, and ace the MCAT. Piece of cake, right? Life does seem a little more manageable today.

Woah. Major league exhaustion. Bed is a good idea.

today I...

-Goofed off
-wrote a letter to my future self
-danced around like a fool
-did a bit of studying, but not nearly enough for the final on Wednesday (or the mock tomorrow! eek.)
-resolved to do the same things I always do, but in a slightly different way, so it'll work this time (I just re-wrote that sentence so many times it's not funny, each saying something along the lines of 'I think/ am pretty sure/hope it'll work, etc. but I wanted something more definitively positive. I don't need to set my self up for failure.)
-goofed off some more. I might actually try to get more studying done, now.

I was born to laugh

[I learned to laugh through my tears-- "Born", by Over the Rhine: thanks to Mr. Sexsmith at Sugarbutch for this one]

This has been a challenging week. We started that actual hard part of Organic (memorizing amazing amounts of reactions and trying to create pathways for synthesis with very little time to process), and JB finally gathered his kahunas and told me that he doesn't reciprocate my feelings. To be honest, we'd had this discussion before via Facebook, and I could kind of instinctively sense it when I saw him, but just marked it down to British hesitance about PDA. Even Sunday, before he'd said anything, S asked me about whether he reciprocated, and I hesitated. Nonetheless, I can't pretend I was all right with it. Most of all, though, I was upset by how he pretended-- lying to me, and betraying his inner feelings-- that is what gets me more than the lack of feelings. I can completely get if feelings are not there (in fact, Sunday I 'broke up' with SJ. I didn't explain that I don't have feelings for him, though. He was taking it hard enough, and I'm not completely heartless.) But I never expecting anything to happen when I went back (hum. perhaps because we'd had that very talk before, albeit a long time ago?) Thankfully, though, I went over all this with him (I'm not sure if he understands how sad it makes me that he can't be true to himself, though.) So I've been hurting. I took off the Mickey Mouse ring I've been wearing on my thumb since I left England two years ago (I wore it upside down, since I hate Mickey Mouse, so that it looked like little monsters or even water molecules.) The skin under it is old-- so pale, and wrinkly. Vulnerable. I didn't even wear it as an emblem of whatever relationship we had, but I couldn't go on looking at it on Monday, so I pulled it off. Now, I think that I'm going to keep it off not so much because he hurt me, but more because I couldn't go on wearing a Mickey Mouse ring forever. It's time to grow up a little bit, like when I decided to stop wearing my pacifier-charm necklace.

The way I've been thinking in the last few days, though, has been surprisingly good. I've been thankful for the little things, like walking home at 9:00 from my MCAT prep class and being able to see fireflies all over my garden. Or sitting on the front porch steps in the sun, eating a peach and letting the juice slide down my wrist and under my watch, enjoying the way I twist my arm to lick the drops off. The way my arms feel in the water when I'm swimming. The neatness of my writing, and the way an organic synthesis problem comes together like a puzzle.

I've been thinking about how if I really felt all that strongly about JB if I would feel this good. It's kind of a lightness, a freedom... the thought struck me the other day: I'm done with all my Js. JF and JB are still my friends, despite hurt on either end, SJ probably won't speak to me again unless I see him or seek him out (doubtful), J is involved in his crazy life in sf, Ju never wrote back when I sent him an email explaining our break up also involved my queerness... No more Js. I'm liberated (not that I ever felt trapped, except perhaps a bit with SJ or Ju, and those issues have been dealt with.) So I got to wondering about my propensity to get infatuated with people. I've learned not to say that I love someone, since I recognize my somewhat mercurial nature. Every time I think I might possibly be starting to fall in love, something happens that lets me know that it wasn't that. Man, just today I remembered in high school saying that I thought I was in love with IR. Lord, what a fool I was. What I'm getting at is that this is not a new pattern. There's a cute guy in the new group of post-baccs, and I'm trying hard not to get too caught up and start getting obsessed with him because it might make things seem easier. He is pretty cute, though, and yesterday I saw him biking home while I was waiting at the crossroads to go to my MCAT class. (He makes me blush. Funny how sometimes I can be so flirty and out there [CM comes to mind, or AS, or AB. I really am a flirt.] and other times I can be so incredibly shy.) Achem. I'm getting side-tracked. My point is I'm very good at fooling myself. Funnily enough, though I still have every faith that one day I'll be madly in love. For a long time. We'll see.

Visual Mixtape

Things I am: A Stress Blip, and Emotionally Messed Up

What's new, right? Right.

Life these days consists of: (weekday) wake up, study, eat, go to school, study, eat, study, eat, go to MCAT prep class, eat, study, sleep. Repeat. The weekend is not that much of a deviation, actually, just more disordered eating because I'm in my house more, and less structured study.

On the subject of eating: I was doing really badly when I first got back from Europe. I'm still not doing well, but I have improved. I also found out that the supposed laxatives I was taking weren't actual laxatives, which makes me feel simultaneously relieved and disappointed. I am feeling pretty good about my body notwithstanding the way I have been treating it, possibly because I know I don't really have time to remedy the maltreatment.

Study-wise: Organic Chem would be fun if I wasn't doing in the summer, specifically this summer. MCAT prep and Orgo at the same time, all condensed like this, is not conducive to avoiding burnout. Nope. Add onto this the stress of trying to figure out what schools I want to go to, how I'm going to fulfill all of the requirements of clinical experience and shadowing before I apply, etc. and I'm pretty much at my wits end. If I have any wits about me, that is.

Emotionally, I am fucked. I am so over doing anything with SJ, I am torn by not hearing from JB, and the attention-whore part of me wants to hear from CM (I don't honestly think that anything would come from it, I just would like to clarify some things.) I miss J, but wonder how I would feel if I saw him again. I got a pretty cute admission of fancying from VE, but I don't think anything is going to come from that, and if it did it would me just messing her around more than she deserves. I do that a lot. I am done with romantic love for a good while, I think. I'll stick to some good old friend-love (and no, not the kind of friend-lovin' I know I've done in the past.) I don't have time for it anyway.

Right, break over. Time to get back to studying.

kvetch, kvetch, kvetch

is all I can seem to do today. Organic chem since 8:30 (well, actually since 7, since I got up early to work on it) until 3, then a diagnostic for the MCAT from 6-10. The only good part about my day was I went for a run.

Then I stuffed my face with trail mix and have again abused the laxatives. It seems 'recovery' is not part of the picture right this moment.