Anxiety

These are some feelings that I experiencing.  In just the last week and for the first time in the at least last eight years, I've gotten up at the same time, early each morning; I've taken more photos of myself; and I've have eaten the most healthiest.  And while this is conceptually pleasing to me (It's the first step toward great personal growth), I can't help but feel a near overwhelming  sense of anxiety.

I've had now five contact days with the wonderful staff at Five Seasons.  I've experienced it fully and with personal enjoyment--I like being there.  I've penciled notes of my activities, and the staff have documented the early moments of my journey in photographs.  So why can't I finish the blog entries?  Why am I sitting at an open Word document and it feels like I have never written anything before?  For God's sake, it's Day Five and I haven't even introduced you, the reader, to the Players in this, my story!

I've come to the conclusion that it must be the combination of a change in brain chemistry and the sense of a loss of control.  Exercise is known to release endorphins in the brain; who's to say that it might not be the release of this and other hormones (brought on by exercise, stress, change) that must regulate in other for me to feel more "normal."  Maybe it's the last (hopefully) of a cycle of depression that must pass like any other illness.

I must also internalize that, in order to meet of goal of a healthier life, I have volunteered to incorporate a host of healthy activities whilst forsaking less healthy activities.  I had felt, in doing these less healthy activities, comfort and control I am now missing.  If I was unable to fill the soul, overeating certainly made a filled stomach feel satisfying.  [This has diminishing returns like, for example, when one gets too large to physically reach every place on one's body while showering, if you can see where I'm going.]  

I would keep late and varied hours in going to bed, because I would be doing something of a solely person interest and didn't have a reason to get up [Getting up stinks (who gets up when they have the opportunity to sleep in?); but it's part of growing up: business is done in the morning, and to be an adult in that world, one must get up.].

Lastly, in the past I would very rarely allow photographs of myself.  Call it low self-esteem, call it not wanting to face the incontrovertible evidence that I was, to be blunt, a grossly obese piggy-boy, but I would wave off photos of myself like a North Korean propaganda officer [This was purely unproductive: it was part of a self-delusion about my health, and it deprived my family of photographic memories they would have had (They, strangely, love me for me, and didn't share the opinion that my appearance was a blight to the aesthetic quality of their photo albums).  Alas, this is the past; we must live in the present, and conduct ourselves so we may meet our projected futures.].

Cue the clichés--Without these comforts I'm feeling: lost in time and space; like I misplaced by safety blanket; as though I am falling in the dark. 

It uncomfortable, but it's temporary.  To appropriate the mantra of gay youth: 'It gets better,"  And I expect it will; if it gets much worse I'll need to change this blog's name to 'Notes from the Asylum.'