By Karen Rani

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music …

~ Regina Spektor, Fidelity

I can honestly say I love Daren and the kids fully. With everyone else, including myself, I do have one foot on the ground.

That is about to change.

I’ve been abusing myself for years ~ a silent string of insults in my head and sometimes coming out of my mouth:

“God, I’m so fat.”

“If I had self-discipline, I could be better at controlling the food one way or another.”

“I’m so stupid.”

“I can’t have that, I’ll only gain more weight.”

“I can’t participate in ____, I’m too fat.”

“What are you doing in the kitchen AGAIN, you dumbass.”

“I’m such a lazy ass.”

None of these things are actually true, I know, but some of us are our own worst enemies. Would you call your friends any of those things? I hope not.

Furthermore, my oldest picked up this crappy attitude towards himself and began calling himself names that didn’t fit him either.

This morning before I went to the gym to meet with my trainer, I had this whole different post planned for the Stop the Abuse campaign I wrote about last night.

As my trainer showed me new moves with free weights, made me do squats for the first time in my life (you might recall I was asked to squat once before and how well that went),and introduced me to new machines, I said some things that she finally called me on.

I called myself a fatass, made jokes about my klutziness and although I didn’t complain about the work I was doing to improve myself, I was being very negative about ME.

My trainer told me that while I was doing all this work, I was being too hard on myself and that I needed to stop talking like that, to be more positive. She was really sweet about it, but stopped me in my tracks. She said that even by joking about ourselves that way, it’s negative. Pairing that with the fact that I constantly joke about whatever pains me, I think she is right.

You see, I went through a self shit-kicking in the last year that stemmed from a huge surge of emotions coming to surface after suppressing those very emotions for years. In short, I went a little nutty. I lost friends, I pissed off family. Hell, I pissed off strangers and readers! I felt very alone. And now? I feel pretty stupid about sharing it all with the internet.

Live and learn, I suppose. I won’t delete it ~ it’s part of my growth over the last year and I’m proud I made it through all of that.

For those who weren’t here for that, basically I was drinking a lot, starving myself, acting out, and being a hot mess in terms of my emotional topography on a daily basis. It was everything short of shaving my head. It’s all here on this site somewhere if you care to dig.

This self-abuse was so destructive, that I nearly wound up in the psych ward. My doctor wanted to put me away ~ called me bi-polar ~ wanted me on Lithium. That alone was scary enough to at least warrant a huge step: opening up to Daren about everything I’ve never shared with anyone. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, and yet best possible thing I could have done.

While I’m still healing, and have come a long way since what we can call Karen Rani’s Nervous Breakdown of 2007, up until a few weeks ago, when I hired the trainer and decided to do things right for my body, I was still drinking. Every. Single. Night.

I love wine. Wine makes me tingle and numb and never makes me sick, like vodka does now. Funny thing about that Vodkarella, she hates vodka now…what will she do about her site name? Ideas?

The Self Abuse Train has stopped. It’s sitting on the tracks, always there to chug up again, but this time I’m tossing the keys in the river and walking away.

I’m walking towards daily fitness, towards the advice of my trainer, who says 5 small meals a day and lots of water, towards only drinking on the weekends, if at all, towards moderation, self control and positive thinking and speaking (and writing).

I want to love myself fully. There are some difficult habits to break, like this self-depreciating inner voice, but I’m giving it my best shot. I have a lot of personal goals, like getting fit enough to run a marathon by next spring, and learn to skate well enough to play hockey next winter, but this one goal is most definitely the most important for a lot of us, I think.

Ironically enough, tomorrow (September 27th) marks one full year of not smoking. What a way to celebrate!

So while I applaud those of you who are already at this point in your lives, and I’m anxious to join you, I suspect I’m not alone in this journey and hope that those who know they need to, will Stop the Abuse: of themselves.

xo

Also posted here.