FullaBella's Journal, 18 Jun 13

'Well, I bet ya feel a lot better, don't ya?'

This rhetorical question is usually posed to me when people comment on my weight loss. However, pondering it on the fourth rainy day in a row during what I can only self diagnose as the hormonal hell of menopause presents a struggle to answer.

Sure, I feel lighter and more agile. I take up less room in my chair, can bend more, walk farther and stand longer.

But what exactly is 'feeling better'? I'm sure no two people would give the same answer. I still have horrid days of depression like today. I still wake in pain with numbness in my hands at night and fight every morning to stretch the spasms out of my back so that I can stand upright.

And for the fourth day in a row I've cried at the drop of a hat; more than I typically cry in an entire year.

Maybe I'm struggling with the question because it was most recently asked by an overweight person and the tone in his voice, either real or carrying my own imagined emotions, seemed to imply he wanted an assurance that it's 'worth it' if he too decided to pursue the effort. A promise that there is something better at the end of the journey.

What to say? It's been ten months of no fast food and only the rarest occasion of junk food yet yesterday I was craving sweets so badly the only thing that saved me from a 'frozen snickers bar' was there wasn't one in the freezer shelf at Walgreens as I passed by the doors. I guess some other depressed soul beat me to them.

How to explain that in the grip of this depression it's taking every gram of logic I can muster to prevent a face in the bowl binge? That yesterday the only defense I had to battle the urge to chew all day was a rotation of low calorie food and sugarless gum. Even my paintings are coming out dark, muddled and lifeless.

I take a boatload of vitamin supplements daily. Ironic I never feel or felt the need to take these when I subsided on junk food, fast food or take out pizza. I'm now beginning to wonder if they bring more harm than value. Perhaps my expectations are too high. Maybe if I stopped swallowing the alphabet I'd have a valid excuse for feeling like crap.

During his scheduled 90 day office visit to the physician yesterday my husband presented such a compromised physical condition with his struggling to breathe, sunken eyes and a weakened appearance that his doctor finally consented he would decrease the required examinations to annually. I drove him home in tears. The beginning of the end.

"Bet ya feel a lot better, don't ya'?

No, I don't. I feel sad. I feel powerless. I feel angry. I feel like loading him & the dog into the car with his oxygen tanks, medications and a shoebox of cash and heading for the shoreline. I feel like escaping so that I can stare at sunsets and drink a beer with him. I feel like having one last hurrah. I don't want to have to watch him die a slow and painful death. I don't want to sit in this blasted shop feigning 'allergy attack' as an excuse for my tears.

I'm not ungrateful. I am blessed to have been given yet another chance to improve my own health but days like today have me wondering 'why'. To live alone longer before I too finally die?

I have more than I ever imagined but today it just doesn't seem enough.

'I bet ya feel a lot better, don't ya?'

This journal was written in all candor. In polite conversation though, I just lie and say 'sure!'. It's up to the asker to figure out their own personal truth.

Disclaimer: I realize the previous was devoid of anything inspirational, motivational or even remotely entertaining. It is nothing more than my current thoughts recorded in my personal journal.