As it might have been easy to guess by my lack of posting, I've fallen off the wagon. I haven't gained weight, but my total weight loss since the beginning of January is something like a measly 4 pounds. Not great, but I am trying really hard and not giving up this time, which is what I have done at this point all the other times.
There have been a couple of issues that have derailed me. First, the more serious one. A decade ago, I was sexually assaulted by someone I thought was a friend. It was a complicated situation--definitely not a black and white, open and shut case--and as a result, I never reported it. It had a lot to do with mental illness, vulnerability, manipulation, coercion...a lot of negative things. Sort of along the lines of a person who is drunk not actually being able to consent (which, okay, I've also experienced) but somehow emotionally much worse because it was more involved...weeks and months worth of grooming and manipulating someone who clearly needed help into the position the attacker wanted me in. It's hard to explain. My point is, I moved on with my life and after a couple of years it felt like everything went back to normal (you know, plus 150 extra pounds and an aversion to having anyone outside of my family touch me or stand in my personal space).
But now, at school, there's this guy. A perfectly nice, probably totally innocent guy. Who has a tendency to stand just a little too close to me. And drops by my office just to visit. And comes over after class to comfort me if the professor has upset me. I'm sure its all perfectly innocent (though it does feel like he's flirting a bit which is pretty offensive considering I'm happily married, wear a prominent wedding ring, and talk about my husband a lot). BUT, it reminds me of the guy in college in some weird way, and that has really messed with my head. I ended up having a total breakdown over it last weekend. In the middle of a very long talk with my husband as he tried to help me, it came to light that he has always considered me as a rape victim. I've always hesitated to apply that label to myself because my experience wasn't your typical movie-style dragged-down-a-dark-alleyway violent rape. But I have thought about it. And somehow having a label for what happened--and validation that I wasn't just being overdramatic--was like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders that I've been carrying around for a decade. What happened is still on my mind a lot. But now it feels like maybe I'm beginning to integrate that experience into the happier, healthier I am now instead of trying to isolate and hide it away. I don't know. It feels like a step forward, though heaven knows what a psychologist would say about it.
The other thing is much less heavy, I promise. Grad school. It's awesome. And SO HARD. The amount of reading I have to do this semester is just insane, and its screwing with my workout schedule, my ability to cook instead of eating out, my energy levels, everything. I'm going to have to find a balance but that hasn't happened yet. It is kind of fun, though. This week I turned in an assignment that legitimately used the phrase "revenge porn" and watched a movie with a class of graduate students that included two fairly explicit phone sex scenes. The professor had talked up the movie a lot, warning us multiple times that there were a couple of really uncomfortable scenes that he wasn't even comfortable watching with his wife of 20 years. I thought it was going to be something horribly perverse or terribly violent (in fact, I was worried that I would cause a scene by having to walk out if it was a rape scene). But it turned out to be phone sex. Soft-core porny phone sex, sure. More explicit dialogue than you usually get in an R-rated movie, sure. But...just not a huge deal. Certainly not something that one wouldn't be comfortable watching with their spouse. Because, um, if you have sex on a regular basis, then why should listening to a woman describe what she's feeling, and then listening to the female orgasm bother you? It was a little uncomfortable for me because I was sitting next to a girl who is right out of undergrad and who is, I would bet, a virgin. She was uncomfortable so that made me a little uncomfortable, but the actual adult material? Just no big deal. I'm not sure how to express that to the professor when he asks what I thought tomorrow, because really...if you can't even listen to soft-core porn with your wife, then, well....you know what? Its none of my business. I'll just leave it at I was very surprised that it was considered risque between married adults, and maybe not all marriages are as sexually adventurous as mine? An interesting thought but really no polite way to go about collecting data. Also no polite way to explain to my professor why I would like to study something like that.
Ah, this is totally off track. Back to the topic at hand...weight loss. I am going to try to get back on track this weekend. If these last few weeks have shown me anything, its that the time I take to prepare food on the weekends is worth it. If I wake up in the morning without a clear idea of what I'm having for breakfast and lunch, it just all goes to hell. So, next week is another chance. Good luck to me and everyone else who is fighting the good fight!
