Where I Went

I know, I know. I haven't been around lately. That is so unlike me. But I have been very busy. Not in the conventional sense of the word, i.e. driving around to various places in my car, working like a dog at my day job, or traveling the world. No, no. Rather, I've been off visiting places I really don't like to go and trying desperately to find my way out.

It's been almost a month since Ben and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary. (It was lovely, by the way). As the date approached, I had wanted to post something big and exuberant about how fabulous my husband is and how great this year has been. But truth be told, I wasn't really up for it. I didn't have the gusto I needed to write it. Truth be told again, this year hasn't been "awesome" per se. I'd say a more accurate description would be "challenging". And who wants to write about that?

Now before anybody gets any ideas, let me lay to rest a few concerns you may have. I can easily tell you that my husband is fabulous. I am still trying to get him to cook me dinner, but aside from that he's really just great. And I still have hopes of succeeding at the dinner thing. :)

But marriage and moving and changed routines and new jobs and new.... everything -- well, it all threw me some curve balls I wasn't expecting.

I knew to expect a few challenges with all these life changes. I expected to miss good friends. I do. I expected to have to make adjustments in sharing my home with a male. I did (although not that many). I expected Ben and I to fight like children over whose turn it is to pray at night. we do that. And I expected to have my monthly grocery bill go up. It definitely has. But some things.... well you just can't anticipate everything.

Like what, you ask? Hands down, the biggest curve ball was revisiting me as I was at 13. And by 13, I mean the "riddled with baby fat and terrible acne" kind of 13. It's been so terrible. Really, you have no idea. I was waiting for the day I woke up to discover big, thick metal braces had cropped up all over my mouth. It was THAT bad.

Allow me to elaborate: for still inexplicable reasons, my skin has wreaked havoc all over my cheeks, nose, chin, forehead and any other resting spot it could find on my little face and littler forehead. I really had no idea marriage and moving to Ohio caused acne. I still don't know if it's one, the other, or a combination of them both.

And then there was the insatiable hunger I felt all year. Where did it come from? Again, marriage and Ohio are the only culprits that I can find. Well, as I tend to do when I'm hungry, I ate. But I was hungrier than usual, so I was also eating more than usual to satiate said hunger. As you might guess, gradually I got more and more "baby fat" --- which really only looks cute on babies.

I started dubbing it "5 lbs", even though at times the number really no longer applied to, well, the number. But I couldn't really bring myself to verbally acknowledge anything more than 5 lbs.

And then it got worse. Not only did I have the chub, but I wasn't fitting into all my clothes. My CUTE clothes. Now, here is where I seriously get concerned. We all know I have a fetish for clothes. Ben looks at my closet and marvels that I claim to "need" the entirety of its contents. But I run into problems when I can't maintain my weight. I can no longer call my clothes an investment if they only fit me temporarily. And if they're not a smart long-term investment, how will I justify my wardrobe? I won't be able! And what am I going to wear if I can't wear.... all my clothes? Now, THAT is seriously a problem. I knew this needed to be nipped-ay in its bud-ay.

I totally took a proactive approach. Many days, I went to bed very, very hungry, denying my appetite that seemed to be on overdrive. And I ran... a lot. I watched everything I ate. Ok, I didn't give up ice cream, but I never give up ice cream. I did watch the ice cream I ate, (literally and figuratively. Mmm.) I also got a new prescription from a dermatologist for my acne. And I washed my face religiously both morning AND night.

Pro-active shmo-active. None of it had any effect. Puzzling. Believe it or not, previously I didn't try very hard to maintain my weight or my relatively decent complexion. I worked out 2-3 times a week and washed my face in the morning. That's it. And now? I should be looking like a goddess at this point! I was training for a marathon, washing my face twice a day, going hungry, taking meds for my skin.... but still NO SUCCESS. Confused? I was.

Decidedly riddled with acne and chub, I was BEYOND frustrated for the whole of this last year. That's a long time. Poor Ben. I would periodically go off in the car and cry about my descent into misery after having made the tragic mistake of marrying, moving to Ohio and thus, somehow, losing all cuteness I ever had. How was I to know this was what was waiting for me on the other side of the alter? I thought I was jumping into an abyss of all future happiness. In reality, I was just jumping into a replay of my adolescent misfortunes. How tragic.

My one solace has been that the husband I had picked up in all this was, in fact, still great. To Ben's credit, he never once said anything derogatory about my acne or my weight. Not a word -- as bad as it's been, I'm sure it would have been much worse had I found out my husband only loved me because I was thin or had clear skin. He apparently loves me for other reasons, and I have the entire last year as proof. As good as that is to know, however, his fabulousness didn't alleviate either of the problems at hand.

Failing in all efforts to surmount and overcome challenges might cause one to want to give up on life, one being me. Temporarily at least. And I'm not one to support deprivation or underestimate a new strategy. Giving up could totally be the way to go (at least for a little while). So I indulged myself one week and sat on the couch eating chocolate chips for dinner almost every night. You can even ask Ben. It was made more memorable when he tragically sat on two lingering chocolate chips and melted them onto his jeans (on two separate evenings with two different pairs of jeans, no less). Basically, I looked weight gain in the face and brashly taunted, "Bring it." It was fabulous.

Of course, then there's always a day of reckoning when one is reckless. For one thing, Ben banned me from eating chocolate chips on the couch (I'm glad I enjoyed it while I had the chance). And then of course there was the largess of my waist to deal with. At the end of the week I got on the scale to see what damage I had done, expecting to have to devise some heretofore undevisable plan as to how to lose the excess that had now compounded on top of the excess that was already well-established on my short, little frame.

If this entire ordeal weren't already inexplicably odd, here's where it gets even more so. When I finally hopped (I'm using the term "hop" loosely) on the scale, I found that I hadn't added any pounds at all. Quite the opposite. I had in fact lost 2 pounds. As I gazed down at the scale, I was loving my body more and more by the minute for not one reason but for two. Not only had my frame shed some undesirable chub, but a diet high in chocolate was apparently an excellent weight loss plan for me! That's the best news of the millennium, to date. Finally, a diet plan I can get along with!

Since then, things have only gotten better. My skin, again inexplicably, is now clear. And I have consistently kept off five pounds of the "5 lbs" with, basically, no effort and no hunger pangs. I'm happy to say I don't care if I ever lose the rest. Ok, maybe I care a little. But all the same, I feel like I have myself back and my visit back to age 13 has been curbed.

What was it? I have a theory. I theorize that my body was under duress, both physically and subconsciously, because of all previously mentioned life changes. Therefore, it caused my skin to go loco. I hypothesize that the move to Ohio made my body want to bulk up for the long winter ahead in this new barren land, causing my insatiable hunger. And now that a year has passed, my skin and my body are suddenly in agreement --- we're not in a strange land. We're home. And we're no longer dealing with change. We're in a routine now so we can stop freaking out.

But really, I have no freaking clue. I keep having this phrase play in my head, "after the scourges are over." What a plague. Despite the fact I don't know what all of this was about, I can still learn lessons from the experience. For example: I would not make a good military wife. Also, it's rough going back to being 13(I like me in my almost 30's much better).

So, in case you were wondering, I'm back now and I hope to entertain you all with more frequent blogging in the near future.