Weekender

I had the best weekend ever.

Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration considering that I spent it moving large rocks from one side of my yard to another. But the thing is, I spent it moving. I don’t think it’s reaching to estimate that I moved over 1,000 pounds of rocks and I lived to tell the tale. I’m not even sore today, just a little stiff. Maybe tomorrow the soreness will kick in, but usually it’s hit me by now if it’s going to.

So why was it such a good weekend? For the last year I’ve been living the sedentary life of the depressed and slothful internet whores. Part of that has been fueled by chronic pain, part of it has been because other events in my life have been kind of tough to deal with and tougher to get over. I’ve used food and mindless internet surfing to smooth out the unpleasantness, and I’ve paid a huge price for that.

This weekend reminded me how good it feels to be productive, to use my body to move large and heavy things, and to revel in the satisfaction of a hard job well done. I did that! I moved all those rocks! Look how nice the pond is going to look! It’s an infinitely better feeling than I should get up off this couch and do laundry but I have no energy. I really should go do the grocery shopping, but meh. Not into it. Look at all that dust. I should do something about that.

Weekends like these make me feel like the clouds are lifting. Slowly, but surely I’m regaining control. I’ve been paying more attention to what I eat, although I haven’t been counting calories or points or fat grams because I’m not ready to be crazy like that. But I notice a difference when I’m eating things that are good for me and I’ve been paying more attention to that again. It’s not that I don’t know how to do this, just that for the past year and a half I’ve been ignoring all those signals my body sends out when I eat like a junkyard dog because when you’re depressed a carb coma is kinda nice.

Summer does this to me. It’s like my engines kick into full gear and I’m able to function more clearly. I can give some of the credit for my sunnier outlook to having actual sun and warm weather, but I think some of it is coming from me too. I am on the road to conquering the pain thing, and I’m doing my best to drag my brain out of the doldrums. I’m making a conscious effort to stop beating myself up about the huge fatness, I’m making inroads in the family wreckage, and I’m starting to concentrate on feeling good.

After being able to do what I did this weekend without stroking out, I feel a lot more confident that I haven’t broken my body forever. Sure it’s going to take time and hard work, but that’s nothing I haven’t done before. I can handle things not being easy and I can handle hard work; that’s a cakewalk compared to the despondency of thinking that I was going to be like this forever.

So yeah. It was a good weekend.