Every Friday, without fail, I go to the gym. I don’t think it is an ED thing so much as it is a time slot that fits well with my schedule and it became a habit to go then. That and I enjoy it.
With my one-on-one counselling we decided to change my workout plan a bit because after some delving in to shit in my head we discovered that while my weight workouts are enjoyable and don’t seem to feed my ED the cardio part of my workout does feed my ED. So as a challenge I shortened my cardio.
It sucked. I hated it. I felt like I was cheating on my workout. But I did it. I didn’t die or get instantly fatter and well, maybe it was a thing I could do again.
Thing is, the past 2 Fridays I go to the gym, I work out, then the next day or two I am sick. I mean, I am sick already, I’ve been battling a bug (or possibly two) for a couple weeks now and it seems that every time I work out after work it flattens me for a couple days. I work weekends and can’t afford to keep missing work because I am kicking my immune system in it’s ass with my workouts. I was toying with not working out tonight after work, in an attempt to be self-caring and all that crap, ya know, baby the body in the hopes it finally gets healthy again…well, as healthy as it can get considering how I eat I suppose. 😉
I was leaning on the side of still working out, because I didn’t want to miss my Friday evening workout – the gym is nice and quiet, it’s the best workout of the week!
And then shit went down.
There is a swinging door at work with the tiniest window and massive blind spots on either side. I was just about to push the door open, so my left foot was up mid-step, when another staff member pushed the door from the other side, really really hard. It smashed in to my foot, pushed my toes back really far, and as a bonus spilled the just made cup of tea I was holding so I burned my forearm.
Just. Fucking. Great.
Do you know how much paperwork is involved when a staff member gets injured? I do because I’m usually the person handing it over to the other staff members when they get hurt and threatening them with me in their face at every moment of their next shift if they don’t fill it in asap and get it back to me.
I’m not worried about the burn, I sometimes self-harm (real winner of mental health over here!) and my chosen method is burning, so I know how to handle that just fine.
My foot though is another story. The more I walked on it at work the more it hurt. Even when I sat and rested it, it hurt. By the time I got home my limp was pretty impressive. I had a shower, propped my foot up, and have been babying it all night. It still hurts though, which sucks balls.
The bigger problem for me though is…I didn’t go to the gym.
Now, ok, part of me, a teeny tiny I think rational part of me, is saying it is fine I didn’t go. In fact it is probably good I didn’t go because I would have definitely made the foot worse.
The larger part of me is saying I am a failure for not going. If I was really dedicated, if I really wanted to get to my goal, if I really cared about my fitness levels, if I really wasn’t a loser, or lazy, or pathetic, I would have pushed through and gone to the gym. Now I might as well give up. I will be a lame ass next week and find a reason to not go then too I bet, because that is what I am, a lazy, disgusting, fat, weak, loser who was just waiting for an excuse to not work out that they can then use for weeks and weeks until it was like they never went to the gym. This is the beginning of the end. May as well give up now.
I couldn’t get my brain to shut up. It was circling with these thoughts, I couldn’t make them go away, I couldn’t fight them, all I did was believe in them. Whole heartedly, 100%, believe them.
So I ate.
I ate my feelings away. I squashed them down under ice cream and cookies. I ate and I ate and I ate and for a little while my brain was quiet. All the insults, all the stressing, all the fear, it all went away. Then after a brief, too brief, quiet moment in my head, it was all replaced by guilt over what I ate, shame over letting myself go, horror at how much I ate, disgust at how much of a pig I am, hatred over my actions, realization that I am not dedicated, I am not strong, I am not a fit or on the way to being a fit person.
I am nothing.
I am a slob of a person who literally ate their feelings in to submission, only to be swamped by new, worse, feelings. Feelings that I earned, that I deserved, because our actions show what we truly want. Our words can say anything, our actions are what we should pay attention to. And my actions showed who I really am. All the horrible things I am.
I say I don’t want to be those things, but if I truly didn’t want to be them I would have sat with the first batch of uncomfie feelings rather than indulge myself, eat all that food, and now have to deal with the consequences.
I am glad I got injured tonight, I deserve the pain. I deserve every pound of weight I gain. I deserve every stomach ache I get. I deserve every single drop of guilt I feel. I did this to myself, I deserve punishment.
And trust me, tomorrow, it will be meted out.