We all have walls to conquer. Whether it is painful shyness, a learning disability, or an enormous amount of weight to lose we all have them. Walls are pretty prevalent in life. We live inside of them, use them to block out noise, to keep us safe and to hide behind. Lately, I have been facing some of the toughest walls I have ever faced!
Losing weight isn't all happy dances on the scale at weigh-in folks. There are a lot of ups and downs. Most of the downs are too painful to talk about and I have been keeping them pretty private. The month of December was one of these times. I was struggling to feel happy with my weightless results. You may think, "Is she nuts? She's lost almost 100 pounds!!! How can she not be satisfied?" Well...here's the thing. I know what I look like without clothes on. The extra skin is starting to show and it is making me feel less secure with my physical appearance than when I weighed 100 pounds more. At least then everything was packed in tight and didn't wiggle all over the place! It may be one of the cruelest things about losing a significant amount of weight. Just when I hit "regular" sizes in clothes I am also hit with extra flappy skin that jiggles and hangs in strange ways. I am still working through this, researching what exercise to do to help it go away and taking deep breaths to help remind me that time will also help with all of this. It just really sucks in the moment!!!!
The other major wall I have been climbing is my fear of falling. Now, I can't explain it with any kind of logic or rationality but I am terrified of falling. I'm not afraid of heights...I can be up super high and be just fine as long as I don't feel like I'm going to fall to my death. It's when I feel like I have to rely on my body to keep me safe from falling that things start to go awry. I panic, start to cry, scream at people for trying to help me and am paralyzed with fear. It's a horrible feeling. To add insult to injury I love hiking and I want to hike up Half-Dome as one of my benchmark activities in this whole weight loss journey...but have you seen the top of that hike? Bare rock, wind, two little cables that are supposed to be a safety net and nothing but sky and gravity. Just looking at the pictures makes me feel like throwing up. Knowing that this fear of falling was going to totally ruin an otherwise amazing experience I figured that it was time I took it on. So I signed up for rock climbing classes! I've made it through two classes and two practice sessions! And last night I had a MAJOR victory!!!!! I MADE IT TO THE TOP OF THE WALL!!!! For the first time!!!!! I took a couple breathers along the way, reminded myself that my friend had me and trusted that my body and the equipment would see me through.
I may not become a world class rock climber but I am facing my fear and literally conquering walls in order to make my life what I want! It is thrilling to get your hand in the final handhold and know that you did it. You made it! You actually faced down the demons inside of you and told them who was boss!!!
