When life gives you lemons...

How many people have heard that phrase? Probably everyone. My ending to that sentence is "When life gives you lemons, squeeze them dry!"

It's meant to be a message to myself that even if things seem dreary and dark, you have an opportunity to change it and can find a way out of it. Perhaps the sentence should read "Grab life by the lemons and squeeze them dry!" Haha...

Once again I tend to fluctuate between feelings of being okay with things and feelings of depression. I decided to stay home last weekend instead of going to my EA meeting so I could get a handle on cleaning my place, and start figuring out what to do with all that stuff in my second room, or office. Well, it's not so much an office anymore as I have a laptop and don't use it for that. It's a storage room mostly of stuff I never use or need. Why do I keep them? I don't know. Once a year I try to go through things and clear them out. Then I repeat it again next year. Yet nothing in that room are things I use at all. Some things are things I just can't bear to part with, like cherished toys I had as a kid. They just fill a couple of small boxes. But a lot of it is stuff I really have no use for anymore. 2 printers with scanners built in, that I can't use for the laptop because wiring stuff have changed and they want you to buy wireless stuff now. Plus I never print anything at home.

I know I have to get that room done and over with. I have to pack up half the house before June, as I will be having new carpets installed. I asked for them as these carpets are as old as the house and have seen their day. Very lumpy and gross with missing patches in areas. But all the preparation for this is stressing me out. I almost feel like I'm moving again. I know it's temporary and I know there are still less than 2 months from now, but the longer I put it off, the more I am afraid it will never get accomplished.

Hence the aforementioned decision to stay home last weekend. The intention was to get a handle on it. Guess what I did instead? I sat on my ass on the couch all weekend long, and slept in until the afternoon on both days. It made me feel mixed emotions. I felt I let myself down again and just put it off, but at the same time I felt maybe my body needed a rest. I've been super busy at work lately. That and the stress of preparing for the carpet installation, has given me a huge amount of anxiety, which makes me avoid it. Yet the avoiding it only makes the anxiety worse and worse each day. Maybe I just needed last weekend to breathe and have a mini vacation. Maybe I should see my lazy days as self-care days instead.

I always find that when I finally venture up off my ass to actually do the things I procrastinate, it doesn't take nearly as much time as I convince myself it will take. One thing at a time, I guess.

Yet, while I am busy avoiding the stress of my life with the job and the home stuff, I decided to start up my own meet-up group for a local healthy living group. I have joined various meet-up groups in the past year or two in the hopes I can find someone to hold myself accountable to, someone to coach me through the tough days, someone to cheer my victories, someone to just call up and say "You want to go for a walk?" Yet the groups I have joined all seem to have ulterior motives behind them, like trying to sell you an expensive supplement regiment or gym memberships, but with no real help. I may be alone in this belief, but I always thought the purpose of the meet-up website was so people could meet each other and share experiences.

As I was getting more and more disappointed about what was available, I decided to form my own group. Now I'm stressing out about the first meet-up, which will occur this Saturday. On one level, I think I must enjoy living on the edge of Stressville or something because I have all these other things to do, but nope, this takes priority. More things to stress out about. Social anxiety issues are beginning to creep up. I'm trying to figure out what this new group will look like. What materials should I bring to the meet-up? I mean, I know what to do. I've done so many plans for weight loss, healthy eating, exercise, etc. that I could almost write a book on it.

Knowing what to do and doing it are two different stories altogether. I know what to do. I know how to do it. I just give up after awhile because that depression beast lurks in the shadows and grabs on to me, sometimes only a pinch as I don't realize it when it's here, while other times it basically rips me to shreds and I can definitely tell it's here. That loneliness I always feel is usually what winds up calling it out from the shadows and into my path.

So while it is absolutely crazy I am adding to my stress load, it is something I feel is very necessary. I am still attempting to use the Dr. Phil's Weight Loss Solution keys to unlock the secret to weight loss. One big key that is always missing is that 7th key: the support group. It isn't enough to share my successes and failures on my Facebook page with some supportive friends. I need in-person human interaction. Even though it scares the Hell out of me, it is also something I desperately need. Working on the EA steps is a good way for me to control my emotional eating (key 2), but if I am constantly alone, even the EA group and meetings aren't enough to pull me out of it. So finding that in-person support system, where we contact each other and ask each other if we want to go for walks, or whatever, that is something I feel will help keep that depression monster at bay.

Last Sunday while I was sitting on the couch literally doing nothing (like that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine said she "literally did nothing. I sat in a chair and stared at the wall."), I heard my landlords' teenage daughter come home with some friend of her's. She was mentioning that behind that locked door is their tenant. The friend asked her what "she's" like. She said in a nice sweet voice, "Oh, she's really nice, but..." The tone changes to mean girl trying to impress her friend "...she's also really fat." BIG emphasis on the "really". I almost felt like saying "Really?" back, but didn't. I know she's a teenage girl around 15 and they are usually cruel beasts, but I could also see that girl do that to other girls at school. And that's just wrong.

It definitely brought up some painful memories of being bullied as a kid. What is a little interesting is she said I was fat, but not ugly. My whole life I was called ugly. So maybe the weight is more of a protective shield I put up to keep people out. It's my excuse why I don't hang around people often. I figure no one wants to hang around a fat chick. It gives me an excuse to stay in my Fortress of Solitude. Maybe that "really fat" comment should be seen as a turning point.

As I have been fighting the depression beast off and on for about a year, sometimes I really get into the losing weight effort, and other times I fall off and binge to my heart's content. Only it isn't making my heart content anymore. I have actually started to make a correlation between how often I get into a Pepsi drinking binge versus when I get really depressed. The more I binge, if I have 1 a day every day for a couple of weeks, I wind up feeling very low energy and a dark cloud around my eye area in the brain forms. Almost like the Antithesis, pictured below.

For those wondering, the Antithesis was a monster imprisoned in the Justice League of America's computer mainframe, and it wound up taking over the minds of the Justice League members to commit crimes, which is what brought the Teen Titans together in the first place. (It is also the origin of that Batman smacking Robin meme that circulates social media frequently.)

So maybe this new meet-up group I started will prove to be better. I really need to interact with people on a face-to-face level, and who knows, I might even find people who want to go to the Pitch 'N' Putt with me as well.

Support is key 7. If I try to unlock all the doors except that one, I will inevitably fail.

Anyways, I feel like I am now repeating myself so I will wind up this blog. As always, thanks for reading, for those who do.