The Value of a Wasted Day

On 11 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

Yesterday was somewhat rich with errands — Mr. Mezzo has a quick trip for family business today and tomorrow, so we were trying to get a full weekend’s amount of usefulness crammed into the single day. Then in the evening, I went into the final, most intense steps for the gall bladder flush, which consist of a couple of doses of Epsom salts to help “clear out” the system (as it were), and then a grapefruit juice/olive oil cocktail to encourage the gall bladder to release any accumulated stones in there.*

I had a fair amount of discomfort during the overnight hours, and thus far, there hasn’t been much in the way of internal “movement,” if you get my drift. (I had kinda hoped this particular issue would complete itself once I finished the damn HCG shots, but oh well.) So that’s been my excuse to take it kind of easy today.

There’s certainly things I could (should) be doing. I have a retreat weekend coming up starting early morning Thursday, and supposed appointments Tuesday and Wednesday nights, so I could very well be packing and getting organized. Alternately, I could be doing some UNpacking down in the basement, since I’ve lost some momentum there with last weekend’s concert and next weekend’s out-of-townness. And then there’s always the usual rounds of grocery shopping, cleaning and decluttering, checkbook-balancing, and so on and so forth.

I dare say those laundry lists of things are remaining undone. After all, if at 7 PM the most ambitious things you’ve managed with your day is to take a shower and start a load of laundry, there’s not a whole lot else that can happen at this point.**

Make-A-Deal-Doors — http://mathfest.blogspot.com/2008/04/monty-hall-probability-problem-in-news.html

I’ve had wasted days like this before. More than I’d like to admit. But tonight, rather than sliding into my usual funk of self-flagellation, I’m trying to be more at peace with my inaction. My choices at the moment seem to be either (1) stew in guilt and self-castigation for the next few hours, making my evening pretty darn miserable and undoing whatever self-care has been accomplished by such a relaxing day; OR (2) show myself some self-acceptance, trust in the rightness of my system needing/wanting rest today, and enjoying what few hours of awake time I have remaining for my Sunday.

So, as a change of pace, I’m going to try for Door #2. Perhaps I’ll get a little bit more done. Perhaps — probably — I won’t. Either way, that’s going to be okay.

(There’s also a whole side conversation that could be had about the types of hard work I am doing these days — between the HCG journey and this gall-stones cleanse, I’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into detoxing and that level of growth. Never mind the preparations going on for this upcoming retreat weekend. Perhaps it’s okay that some more “traditional” modes of self-care are being underplayed while I put my energy towards some things that are less readily observed but nonetheless crucially important.)

* No, it wasn’t quite as disgusting as you’d imagine. Close, but not quite.

** Especially if one is a Game of Thrones watcher and needs to be ready for that come 9’o’clock.

The War of the Greasepaint

On 9 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Pop Goes the Culture, Self-Acceptance, The Voices in My Head2 Comments

Mr. Mezzo and I made an excursion tonight to see a high school production of the musical Once on This Island.* I know: this is either a completely bizarre or completely banal and suburban choice. Perhaps both.

But, one of the guys we sing in church choir with is a retired HS music teacher, so he’s still plugged into “the scene” (such as it is). He mentioned at Wednesday’s rehearsal that this was a really good production. And, setting aside the question of production quality, it’s undeniably a great show. So off we went.

(As far as I can tell,the production was a good one for a high school show. I realized partway through the first number that it’s been YEARS since I saw anything more amateurish than a cast that integrated college drama majors with professional actors. I know it’s really unfair to compare those shows with tonight’s, but I was quite aware of the contrast between then and now.)

But, more than any unfair comparisons between the quality of Philadelphia professional theater vs. Boston-area suburban high school productions, what this really got me thinking about was the fact that I like musical theater more than I like classical choral music. How much I love it, actually. How much I miss it, and all the ways it broke my heart and shattered my self-confidence.

I’ve always loved musical theater, and yet a majority of my performing arts training and experiences have been in classical music ensembles. There’s a reason for this. Lots of people love doing musicals, and even if I have some native singing and acting talent, I’m rarely talented enough to make it out of the chorus. (Or even to make it INTO the chorus, a lot of the time.) I’ve certainly never been talented enough to make up for all the ways I’m not conventionally attractive enough to get a “good” part.

Especially as I think back to my own times in high school productions, I recall how desperate my yearning was to have a role where I could really be seen and acknowledged, and how the comparison piece — uglier than this girl, less talented than that one — always kept that door closed.

I’ve even been thinking back on the only audition I ever deliberately tanked. A story I haven’t brought to mind for a long, long time.

———-

The high school drama teacher wanted me to read for Cha Cha diGregorio in Grease. She pulled me and the other auditioner aside to make sure we knew that, unlike the way that character was portrayed in the film, she wanted to have the Cha Cha in her production to be slovenly, unsexy, unattractive. “I need to know if you’re comfortable being really uglied up.”

I said I was fine with it. I didn’t have the awareness to see, or the courage to say, how soul-destroying this scenario felt — all the ways I was already seen as ugly and beneath notice on a daily basis, and then to somehow go uglier for the sake of the show. And the instinctual certainty that whatever “uglier” happened for the show would follow me into my daily traverse of the classrooms and halls.

I wasn’t entirely awake about throwing that particular callback. I just kind of left my body. Which, in passing, is a pretty effective way to make sure you don’t get a particular role.

———-

During college and grad school, I got more into the choral singing thing but kept a toe in the amateur musical theater world. Then, I let theater go entirely and stayed on the community chorus path for a while. In some ways, it was an easy choice to make: a major city like Philly has so many professional actors, theater companies, and national tours of Broadway shows that there really isn’t room for amateur musical theater to happen.

There’s also a lot of ways classical choral singing is safer. Fewer people want to do it, so there’s less competition. And in most cases, there’s no harm in adding another good, trained singer to the mix, so my odds of “making the cut” stay high. And since members of each section are all singing the same thing, there isn’t that same comparison charge around who got the lead and who didn’t.

And yet. I think I love theater more.

I’ve started doing some research about what community theater companies are in the area. Trying to feel into the idea of auditioning. Figuring out if my ego is sufficiently in-check for me to be okay even if I only get into the chorus of a show, or don’t get in at all. Wondering if I’m sufficiently aware of being “over the hill” that my aspirations might be more realistic than they used to be. Wondering if my sense of “loving theater more” is truly sincere or is just a deeper winding of that addictive desire towards being acknowledged or acclaimed.

I don’t know yet what I’m feeling. And I don’t yet know what I’m going to do.

* Shall I confess the amount of thought and research that went into the question of whether or not the “this” should be capitalized?

Dueling Detoxes

On 8 May 20148 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

I continue to make my way through the final phase of the HCG protocol and its food restrictions (1 week down, 2 to go).

I am also at the midway point of a 5-day process (Tuesday through Saturday) for a liver/gall bladder flush. And, as I mentioned in passing a few days ago, that process comes with its own list of food restrictions.

Where it gets a little interesting is when you compare the two lists.

For HCG (this final phase): Foods to prioritize: lean animal protein, eggs, nuts, dairy, fruit, and veggies. Foods emphatically to avoid: grains, legumes, carbohydrates.

For the liver/gall bladder flush: Foods to prioritize: grain, legumes, nuts, fruits and veggies. Foods emphatically to avoid: any animal product (meat, dairy, eggs).

The attentive reader will notice that, with the exception of nuts, there’s no real shared protein source between these two mirror-image exclusion lists.

So what’s a gal to do?

Well, first off, this gal is going to have a quietly self-contained freakout about it all.

I mean, the inner opera was pretty much Wagnerian in its epicness. The teenage frustration about having just crossed the finish line with my shots, having just “earned back” the chance to have full eggs and dairy and real salad dressing only to have to “give all that freedom back.” The identity who so strongly wants to do things properly, with care and attention, who feels completely undone by a structure where the self-contradictions ensure that one set of guidance is going to be disregarded and disrespected. It’s a cast of thousands in my brain, sometimes…

Okay, most of the time.

———-

This is the part of the story where it’s good to have coaches and supports for one’s detoxing movements. Which, luckily enough, I do.

Someone at my center has actually done this gall bladder flush in the midst of her own HCG cycle, so I was able to get the immediate reassurance that yes, indeed, it is possible to do both of these things together and do them “right.”

My coaches also helped me get a clearer mental context around things. The gall bladder eating suggestions are designed for people who have been eating the customary fat/oil/salt/sugar laden stuff. So, as a quick way to lessen the fat and oils you’re taking in (which is necessary for the flush to work), it makes sense to call that 5-day halt to eating animal products. For someone like me, who hasn’t actually HAD any fat or oil for the last couple months, I’m starting in a different place.

So my approach for these few days has been simply to revert to the eating guidelines I was using during the shots: lean protein, egg whites, produce — and a few cashews, just for variety’s sake.

I’m grateful to have found a solution. But I am also really looking forward to a time where I’m not wasting so much brain space thinking about the food I’m eating (or not eating). I don’t want to be asleep to how I (don’t) take care of my body, but I don’t want to be obsessed like this, either.

Not quite sure when and how I’ll pull that next transition off, but I had best to find myself a way. Because I am getting truly bored with myself for all this obsessive food talk. And if I can hardly stand listening to myself, I can only imagine how tiresome this is to my near & dear.

———-

Tonight’s soundtrack: Goldfrapp, Supernature

Fall Down Seven

On 5 May 20145 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Self-Acceptance, Stuff about Stuff, The Voices in My Head, UncategorizedLeave a comment

My 5×5 ritual fell a bit by the wayside last week. Knowing that choir rehearsal would pull focus on Wednesday, I “doubled down” on my goals last Tuesday as preliminary compensation — but somehow, that day’s interruption in routine caused a general halt in momentum. Said halt was, of course, further perpetuated by the number of hours this weekend that were devoted to matters choral.

But, as the old saying goes,

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

[Word-nerd digression.]

There’s part of me that’s always wondered about this saying. To my sometimes overly-literal way of filtering words, the scenario’s math just didn’t work out. If you’re choosing to demonstrate perseverance in a circumstance where you fall seven times, then you need to stand up only and exactly seven times: one for each time you fall.

I’d even wondered is maybe the saying got mistranslated along the way, but today’s office hours with Professor Google suggests that the common translation of the phrase is pretty accurate:

this Japanese proverb reflects an important and shared ideal: “Nana korobi ya oki” (literally: seven falls, eight getting up)

So now I’m simply telling myself that the first time one stands in this proverb is when getting out of the bed in the morning and prior to the first of fate’s knock-downs. I find linguistic comfort in that notion.*

[End digression.]

So, in yet another round of the “practice, not perfection” movement in my life, I’m re-engaging in the nightly rituals of house care.

Even though I had yet another choir rehearsal tonight, I have already met my daily quotas for folding laundry and addressing the clutter. Now it’s time for some unpacking and putting away of things.

Persistence.

* I know: none of this demands the level of thought and attention I have lavished upon it, but this is how my inner nerd operates.

———-

Image credit: http://calvin12345.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-marathon-post-failed-failed-failed.html

Papering Over My Deficiencies with Shopping Bags

On 1 May 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Self-Acceptance, Stuff about Stuff, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head2 Comments

About as close as I came to a New Year’s Resolution at the start of 2014 was to tell myself I wanted to get my spending and shopping under control.* And I think I made some progress on that front for a little while. But I’ve kinda fallen off the wagon during the last couple of weeks.**

Now, part of this is entirely justifiable: some special people have birthdays and graduations coming up, so there were presents to buy. But then there’s a lot else, and I could provide (manufacture?) justifications for those purchases, but it’s very much on thinner ice.

I mean, yes, those new books could provide useful information aiding my professional growth and knowledge base. But there’s also lots of other books I already own, and a whole other bunch I could borrow from the office library, that would also aid my professional growth and knowledge base. So why was it necessary to purchase these?

Similar critiques and questions could be asked about other recent purchases, but I don’t feel like going to that level of public self-flagellation. Besides, I want to be able to sometimes do things for joy or pure pleasure — and sometimes that might mean buying something for the pure joy the item will bring me rather than for some more rational gain. It’s just when I do too much of that, and when it’s not even particularly joyful, that I need to be cautious with myself.

———-

Often for me, the temptation to buy something else comes from an internal anxiety about being somehow lacking, insufficient, ill-equipped to face my world and my life. Perhaps I’m having some stress and failures at work, and I start thinking that maybe if I read the right book, I can fix that. Or maybe I’m feeling ugly or ashamed of my fatness, and I fall into the fantasy that the right outfit (or cosmetics, or jewelry) will make me more “acceptable” or “presentable” to the world at large.

Can I just pause for a moment to bemoan the ways that so many of my wounds boil down to that sense of being “not enough”? Notice the phrasing for this particular construct: I am looking to acquire the right thing, because I am looking for the thing that will serve as curative or antidote to my own assumed wrongness.

Anyhow, I’m sensing that there’s some inside-out connection between the successful completion of my HCG shots and this latest stretch of feeling inadequate and trying to bury my insufficiency under a pile of new things. ‘Cos this week: reaching a key finish line, completing my shots, beginning to expand my food quantities and choices — has all felt really anti-climactic.

I’ve had these sorts of moments in the past. Something really big and good has happened: new marriage, new job, new house, what-have-you. And it’s exciting and all, but there’s also a weird tinge of disappointment, because that great new thing, however big and dramatically cool it may be, doesn’t ever stop me from being me.

And when the operating fiction that rules my self-image is so tightly locked into the lie that I’m not enough? Then still being me feels very disappointing, indeed.

———-

When all is said and done, I still think I’m keeping a teeny-tiny bit ahead of this stretch of acquisitiveness: more purchases have been useful than not, and the overall pace of things has me purging more old stuff out of the house than I’ve been bringing new stuff in. And I’m hopeful that waking myself up to the ways I’ve fallen (at least temporarily) back into this old pattern will enable me to step away from this behavior. At least, until my next “relapse.”***

And maybe someday I’ll have detoxed enough where I’m no longer so susceptible to the lie of being not good enough.

Definitely something to keep praying for and working towards.

* Which, like so many New Year’s Resolutions around the world and throughout the years, is the kind of thing I’ve told myself, and failed at, before…

** See previous note re: New Year’s Resolutions and their rate of failure.

*** See both previous notes re: New Year’s Resolutions and their rate of failure.

———-

Image credit: http://thecurvyfashionista.com/2012/08/what-i-consider-before-i-make-a-purchase/

Journeying, Not Arriving

On 23 April 201423 April 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

One of the commitments I made to myself when I started planning to do the HCG protocol was that I was not going to treat my HCG detox as a completion point. My teachers and coaches have been raising my awareness to the idea that detoxing can best be considered as a lifelong practice. Obviously, there may be times — like when one does HCG, for example — when you choose a stronger detox movement than others. But the trick is that once that strong movement has been completed, not to treat it too much as an arrival point.

In other words: no need to tell myself “I’ve done this HCG thing, so now I’m all detoxed and don’t need to do anything else for a while.”

But the question of what to do next is very present with me right now. Many, many possibilities.

In addition to being nearly complete with my HCG shots, I’m almost near-completion with my first month of Blessed Herbs. That’s something you can do for 2-3 months at a time, so I’m considering that possibility. The company also makes an “Internal Cleansing Kit” that you do alongside the colon cleanse to help a whole other bunch of organs — liver, gall bladder, lungs, lymphatic system. I found one of these kits when I was unpacking over the weekend,* so I’m wondering if that’d be worth doing for the next month.

Or maybe, rather than sliding directly from one regimented program into another, it’ll feel better for me to spend some time taking advantage of the smaller, more “ad hoc” detox methodologies available to me. Epsom soaks, foot baths, castor oil packs, skin brushing, back to oil pulling (now that oils will soon be allowed to me again).

I could even do some research and find myself a colon hydrotherapist, acupuncturist, and/or massage place up here. Down in Philly, I had my go-to places for these services: after 13 months up north, it’s high time I started assembling those resources for myself again. (And hey, after my experiences in March, I might even look for someplace with an infrared sauna!)

Luckily, there’s no deadline by which I have to figure this next step out. If I have a new plan ready for the end of my shots, that’s cool. If I don’t, I can certainly follow the “ad hoc” approach while I’m deciding what my next detox phase will look like — even if that “next phase” turns out simply to be a longer commitment to the “ad hoc” approach.

But I know this much for sure: my HCG finish line is just and only that. The end of my time on HCG. Not the end of my detox journey.

* Another example of best intentions going astray.

———-

Image credit: http://theincompetentyouthworker.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/why-i-fell-out-of-love-with-two-ways-to-live-pt-4/

When Can You Call It the Home Stretch?

On 20 April 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head2 Comments

I take my last HCG shot a week from tomorrow. After that it’s two more days of the super-low-calorie food regimen while the remaining hormone works its way out of my system, and then it’s three more weeks of a different food regime — larger quantities, adding fats and oils back in, but still avoiding sugars and starches.

So by one perspective, there’s still a long way to go. And yet, it also senses like enough of an accomplishment to be nearing the end of this initial six-week stretch that I’m kind of thinking of myself as being in the home stretch. At least, on some sort of home stretch.

And at this point, I am ready to reach the first finish line. Because, however fine my physical body is doing on this regime, the emotional body is currently a little worse for wear. All these little daggers of frustration adding up.*

There was an upsetting happening yesterday afternoon, and the emotional craving to self-sooth with comfort food was as strong as it has been since this HCG journey began. (I distracted myself from the craving with a footbath and a funny movie.)
We let the food stores run very low in expectation of doing our grocery shopping today after church choir — only the last apple in the house turned out to have gone spoiled. So I didn’t have my usual apple on hand for today’s breakfast, which totally threw my morning off to a challenging start.
Mr. Mezzo and I did our grocery shopping together, and as we walked into the aisle to pick up his loaf of bread and English muffins, I couldn’t help myself from lamenting, “I miss bread.” (Bought some spring tulips instead.)
I’ve started reading up on the next phase of dietary restrictions, which are very clear in suggesting that the first week or so after HCG it is best to stay within the same limited list of allowed foods (lean proteins, plus certain veggies and fruits) and just increase one’s portions. Meanwhile, I’m obsessing over something I saw on GMA about shirataki noodles and how I could use those as a way to do “macaroni and cheese” within the new (and looser) restrictions. And I do think the shirataki mac & cheese would obey the letter of the new dietary laws, but it sure isn’t in the spirit of what’s recommended for this upcoming phase.

This is always the mental pattern that I most hated about times I would try to diet or “get myself in shape” by “eating right”: the part where my attempts to eat healthy burgeon into a full-blown food obsession. Ugh.

I was in a detox class yesterday where the teacher talked really eloquently about the ways it can sometimes be unhelpful to approach detoxing through the lens of “eating the right things” in order to prevent the ingestion of toxicity. Instead, it could be possible to acknowledge the fact that one’s system has already ingested some decades’ worth of environmental, energetic, and yes, food-borne toxins, and thus place a stronger emphasis on ridding the system from that accumulation.

I’m holding this teaching very close to my heart today as I try to imagine my remaining weeks in the current and future phases of the HCG experience. I aspire to get back to that more balanced perspective on things.

But right now, I’m feeling a bit on the edge of a precipice. Feeling the grip, the gravitational pull of that food obsession. Thinking about food all the time, maintaining routines and rituals as a way to stay on track (see: today’s upset re: the spoiled apple). Chafing against the restrictions, trying to figure out every clever trick I can to stay just a hair’s breadth within the rules (see: my shirataki noodle obsession), tempted now and again to just say “fuck it” and eat a whole package of Kraft macaroni & cheese with a microwave popcorn and Ben & Jerry’s chaser.

I’m still holding within the boundaries of the protocol. But if this is really meant to be a detox journey for me, then the way any possible other insights have been swept away by all the food obsession hits me as just a tiny bit problematic. Okay, hugely problematic.

But it’s all I got tonight.

* Phrasing inspired by Henry Rollins, Airport Hell: “That’s two minutes of time I don’t get for myself. It’s like he’s murdering me — just a little. Like he’s murdering me with a very tiny knife.”

———-

Image credit: http://bingeeatingtherapy.com/2013/11/15/friday-a-help-obsessed-food/

Going Through the Motions

On 17 April 201417 April 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Don't you want to be thin?, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

I’ve been feeling a bit of malaise during the past couple days. I’m not exactly sure the reason for it — one theory I have is PMS-type hormonal shifts. Unfortunately, as I get closer to the age of menopause, my cycle is getting more and more irregular, so I can only diagnose PMS episodes after the fact. (My bleed will start, and then I can look back on the out-of-nowhere blue mood three days ago and say “That’s what that was about!”)

Regardless of the why, this blue mood is what I’m facing right now.

As someone who’s had a few rounds of clinical depression here and there, it can be hard to hold my patience and composure when I hit my blue days. I still don’t feel as if I have a lot of tools in my arsenal for when this occurs. I try to keep moving through my days and my responsibilities as best I can, give myself some extra forgiveness around my media addictions, allow myself some extra time to rest or sleep. And ultimately, I just kind of wait it out.

Luckily, tonight’s my first evening at home since my trip — and since all the pre-trip craziness to work — so I have a chance to give myself a little TV time and maybe an early bedtime. If I’m lucky, I’ll feel better tomorrow. If I’m less lucky, it’ll be the weekend soon and I can maybe take another look at what I’m feeling and whether there’s a way to ease the sadness.

Because I am aware that this may not be PMS at all, and might instead be the old forces of sadness and trauma that I gained all the weight in order to avoid.

———-

A friend recently sent me a link to an unfamiliar author responding to that “Dear Fatty” letter some condescending fuckwad posted to Facebook in response to seeing a fat woman running. Other bloggers have appropriately eviscerated the aura of self-superiority and judgmental assumptions this letter (and other “thinsperation” pieces) is drowning in. Here’s the story from Jezebel, and I hope to have time during the weekend to go pull up some more relevant links and add them here.

This author, Alanna Fero, also points to some of those aspects in the “Dear Fatty” letter, but she also goes on to depict (with searing honesty) some of the traumas she has experienced with sexual abuse and harassment, the ways she has used being in a larger size as a mode of self-protection, and the ways that weight loss feels like an act of betrayal to her younger self.

Whenever I lose 30 or more pounds, which I have done at least a dozen times in quarter century between the ages of 22 and 46, I start to feel like I am abandoning my solidarity with my younger self, and with all the wounded kids in the world, with everyone who has ever lived in that bunker state. I feel like I am selling out the kid still inside every adult who has ever been attacked for the way they were born, or for the way they choose to make themselves feel safe in an unsafe reality. . . . Sometimes, when I lose enough weight that it feels like everyone I know is talking about it, I experience a panic not unlike when I was pushed to the ground or a wall or a couch as a young girl – and I am so fucking scared and angry, I just wish I had a German Shepherd handy.

Now, my story is not the same as Fero’s, but I have enough moments of sexual trauma and mistreatment in my own life to deeply resonate with the tone of what she’s saying here.

So, if I’m not feeling more cheerful by Saturday, I might be trying to figure out how best to face and unwind another layer of the trauma-body.

Man, I hope it’s just PMS.

———-

Image credit: http://www.rachelrussellbooks.com/2012/04/30/medieval-monday-maximilian-armor/

stick figure planting a flag on a mountaintop

Claiming the Choosing

On 11 April 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

So the guidance I’m getting is to try and push on for the full six week experience of HCG, and to meet the places of fear and programming that are arising right now, rather than to flee from them. After all, it’s precisely this old programming, these areas of emotional and energetic residue, that I’m trying to detox during this journey.

That holds a lot of truth for me, so I’ll be trying for the six weeks.

I am aware, as I make this proclamation, that I am watching myself very carefully to distinct between a tone of full maturity in choosing this path, versus the child-tone of “I’m going the full six weeks because they told me to.”

It’s delicate and nuanced ground, because I absolutely want to honor and acknowledge the fact that I am receiving guidance in this. I mean, that’s why I’m working with these folks, because I have trust for them — their wisdom, their care, their listening, their compassion, their hearts. So it feels disrespectful not to acknowledge the part of this process that is about receiving care, nurturance, support — and yes, even advice — from the people down here at the center.

But there’s also a world of difference between putting a parental projection on the center and actively, maturely choosing to follow their advice.

In the first scenario, I’ve created a positionality where, if this next phase of the HCG journey gets tougher*, then I could possibly turn towards blaming the center for that difficulty. Directing anger and resentment towards them for “making me suffer” like this. Taking a source of nurturance and pushing it so hard through my internal filters around the assumption of non-nurturance that I mangle it through a sausage-grinder.

Needless to say, that isn’t a scenario I want to enact and experience.

Instead, I’m trying to hang onto the one inside me that is actively choosing this journey. The mature one that can reassure the anxiety fragments but hold the vision and momentum for moving forward. Yes, it’s scary, and I/we can get help and support in the fear — but we’re going forward because it’s well past time to claim the energetic space to live full-out and on-mission.

I’ve got her on board, for sure. The strength and ease of my access to this inner explorer is a little more on-and-off than I’d prefer, but even if she’s a little more background some moments than others, at least she’s present.

And so on we go…

* Which I do kinda feel is possible (likely?) considering the pieces I’m beginning to hit around body size, attractiveness, and the cultural patterns around reducing women to the place of sexual object.

———-

Image credit: http://jarredh.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/time-to-change-my-goal/

Leaving on a Jet Plane

On 10 April 201410 April 2014 By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Don't you want to be thin?, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

So I’m heading back down to the detox center tomorrow morning for a mid-HCG check-in. I’ll have a chance to do some physical care & detox methods that either aren’t available to me at home (oxygen chamber, magnesium wrap), or that I just plain haven’t been taking the time to do (the perennially popular foot bath).

We’ll also consult to determine whether I’ll stay on HCG for a 4-week or a 6-week course.

Either length of time is customary for an HCG experience, so at that level, it’s a free choice. I started out assuming that I’d go the full six weeks, but now I’m not sure what I want.

Reasons to go the distance. If I set myself a task, I might as well go full out. The desire to feel as if I fully committed to the process rather than doing it half-assed. The mathematical expectation that staying longer on HCG will give my body more of a chance to burn off more old toxins. The worry that folks will be disappointed in me if I “chicken out early.”

Reasons to stop at four weeks. Part of me is getting tired of the dietary restrictions. HCG comes packaged in vials that contain four weeks’ dose and it expires, so if I go six full weeks, I’ll be letting a half a vial “go to waste,” when instead I could take a couple months off and then do four more weeks later. I’m already feeling a little weird in a smaller body, so the idea of pausing and acclimating before proceeding feels kind of tempting.

I’ll be curious to see how this all shakes out. What my advisors will hear and recommend to me, whether I’ll hear a clearer piece of guidance within myself. If nothing else, I’m glad I heard the question clearly within myself, so even if I stay with the original pan of six weeks, I’ll be doing it from a place of conscious choice and awake-ness.

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Image credit: http://robertjustinronald.edublogs.org/2013/05/17/chapter-5/justice-scales/

Self-Love: It's Just Another Lifestyle Change

Category: The Voices in My Head

The Value of a Wasted Day

The War of the Greasepaint

Dueling Detoxes

Fall Down Seven

Papering Over My Deficiencies with Shopping Bags

Journeying, Not Arriving

When Can You Call It the Home Stretch?

Going Through the Motions

Claiming the Choosing

Leaving on a Jet Plane