Emotion Soup

I started writing here at first to motivate myself to lose weight and get healthy so that I increase my life span and chances of being able to adopt a child. But this has also become a place where I write my thoughts and my emotions. It's becoming an avenue to get my fears, tears, frustrations out instead of eating them. So, while not all of my posts will deal exclusively with my weight loss efforts, the other subjects I tackle here are vital to my long term success. If I don't find a way to get my pain out, empty my mind, heart, and soul of all the emotions that seek to destroy me, then I won't be successful. Success is what I want more than anything.

I say that as more of a preface in that yes, I know what my primary focus is and that struggle is about me and me alone; however, getting healthy and overcoming food addiction/emotional eating is being constructive with my emotions so they don't become destructive to my livelihood.

There are few simple truths of me: I love God. I love family. I love my husband. I love myself. That last one is not always easy, but even on days when the mere thought of myself invokes nausea, I do still love myself or else I wouldn't care as much. I'm smart. I'm funny. I'm an animal lover. I'm compassionate. I'm a survivor. Those are my simple truths.

Then there is one complex truth of me: I've been hurt, deeply wounded, at times to my very core. Details are not necessary and honestly tend to become more harmful than helpful when sorting out the pain and obtaining the upper hand.

These wounds have allowed me to give away the power I have as a woman, human, and a child of God. I have allowed myself to fall prey to self-victimization by not allowing myself to surrender my past pains, regrets, and feelings of inferiority. I often look into the mirror and cannot recognize the image gazing back. Who is that woman? That young child who had more pressure put on her than any adult should have to handle? Who is that pale and puffy-faced human being?

There where times, when I was growing up, I felt like I was crazy. Like mentally, I didn't match up. I spent a lot of time with Chandra*. A relative. Chandra put expectations upon my childhood that even an adult would find impossible to comprehend. Chandra compelled me to conform to her wishes or else, she made it known, I would be the reason for her death. The equation was simple: 1 homesick child leaving to go home = 1 adult committing suicide. Anytime I mentioned wanting to go home during overnight stays I was told, "if you go home, you don't love me so I'll just kill myself."

A young child doesn't understand calling some one's bluff or else I would have. I rationalized it as "well, I don't want her to die so I guess I'll just stay." This portion of my past makes me a very unsympathetic person when it comes to idle threats of suicide. I have no patience for someone who attempts to control the actions, emotions, and lives of others by compelling certain behavior in prevention of someone killing themselves. If you want to kill yourself, don't let me stop you.

Chandra is mentally ill. Growing up I was compared to her a lot. I look a lot like her. She was well known to a lot of my school friends given her position in our lives at that time. Many of my childhood friends thought she was my mother since she never married and carried the same last name. There were a lot of times that I felt that I was destined to be nuts because I was just like her.

I'm nothing like her. I know this now. But even into my late twenties, my biggest fear in life was ending up just like her. Alone. Unmarried. Childless. Crazy. Broken. Racist. Pitiful. But I didn't.

I married a wonderful man.

Even though it's natural in life to feel alone even in the company of thousands, I am am not alone.

I am childless but not by choice. My day of being a mom will come.

I've been told by many therapists that I am not crazy. I am not broken.

Lord, and anyone else who spends more than five seconds with me, knows the last thing anyone would call me is racist.

And even though I feel it sometimes, I am NOT Pitiful.

I am not her. I never was her. Physical resemblance does not mean anything other than you look like another person. Period.

I no longer speak with Chandra. I'm no longer controlled by her. I'm no longer hurt by her. Writing this does not mean I still associate myself, my victimization, with her. But speaking of her, of our past relationships and my past feelings, brings to the table another piece of the puzzle and allows me to heal that much more.

As of today, right this very minute, the reason I am where I am at this stage in my life is no longer because of who she is or what she's done or who I thought or felt I was so many years ago. Chandra is Chandra and Allison is Allison. Separate and not even close to equal.

Chandra and my memories of her yield no more power over my life.

Months ago I befriended, on Facebook, two gentlemen with whom I went to high school and whom caused me some of the greatest pain of my life. I found the courage and strength to confront one of them. He has a daughter now. He did not dismiss my feelings. He now is thinking like a father of a little girl for whom he has many dreams. My confrontation made him think about being my father and having someone hurting his little girl the way he hurt my father's. He said the thought made him sick. I think he got it. You get what you give out of life. He now knows that what he did was more than just being a silly boy in high school. He now knows that his words from 18 years ago were still haunting me up until I was able to confront him. He knows that when things like that are said to someone that the person can take those words and design his or her life around them. I allowed who I became as I aged to be ruled by the words of a 16 year old twerp. I forgave him. I forgave myself for holding on to the pain and allowing myself to remain in a victim mentality.

Conner* no longer yields any power over my life.

However, today I found out Jayden* is about to become a father to a little girl. A precious little pink bundle of female hormones. I have not confronted him. I never will. He never realized he was anything but cool. He would not respond to a confrontation in the same manner as Conner, in my humble opinion. And even though that's a simple assumption on my part, I have been able to put aside the pain and anger I felt towards him and I've moved on. And while it may seem bitter, I do hope that one day, while I wish no pain upon his daughter, that when he must wipe away her tears after a silly boy says something to break her heart, that he might remember how, when he was a silly boy, he said hurtful things to some other daddies little girls.

Jayden no longer yields any power over my life.

Most of you know that my husband and I struggled for years to have children and during those years we suffered loss. I know many in my family and some of my friends feel that I continue to put too much focus on my loss. They think I talk about it too much and it makes them uncomfortable. They don't know what to say. They don't know how to help me. For the longest time I never understood this. I was too centered in my own ocean of pain that I wasn't able to see how the tides of my pain washed upon their shores.

I don't imagine I'll ever forget that period of my life, but I don't have to be victimized by it for all time and eternity. God doesn't want that. My family doesn't want that. I don't want that.

Finding the way to move forward is difficult. I never dealt with the loss or the challenges in any kind of therapeutic environment. Basically it was just me trying to dig out from under an avalanche of pain and sorrow. I thought wow, if I just shift all of my thoughts, efforts, and concentrations into becoming an adoptive mommy then I won't have to feel these ugly feelings, think these ugly thoughts, and wander in the valley of What If any longer.

It simply doesn't work that way. So, what did that season of my life give me that was something for which I can be thankful?

I learned that I am a survivor. I learned a lot of medical information surrounding fertility treatments that has been able to help some women who are very near and dear to me. I learned a lot of emotional feelings that these women felt and how to help them understand their feelings and how to handle them. I learned that I can coach someone through the process by giving them something that I didn't have: someone who has been there, done that.

I do want to be a mother. My husband wants to be a father. We want this just as much today as we did when we began treatments to have children biologically. However, becoming parents for us has taken on a new life. It's no longer something I'm compelled to do to prove to someone that I can, but rather, has become a destination on this journey that is our lives.

If I were to picture the rest of my life laid out similar to the game Monopoly, significant weight loss, vast improvements in my health are what we are working to achieve right now. I roll the dice daily and pass Go. I'm on the B&O railroad working my way towards Park Place or Boardwalk. But during this journey, there will be free parking, trips to jail, visiting others in jail, and get out of jail free cards and moving back three spaces. But in order to win the game you have to continue to roll the dice and take chances.

Monopoly is a long game and my life will be long. I will reach my goals one at a time. But the biggest thing I've have come to understand is that I will reach my goals in the order and time of God's divine plan and timeline. There is nothing I can do to expedite it. I can't change the order. I can't make the weight come off sooner. I can't wrinkle my nose and make a baby magically appear that is to be our child. I just have to be open and honest in my understanding that what is to be for me, will be. But the only thing I control in any of it is my dedication to the promises, the destiny, and the dream. God helps those who help themselves and that's all I have control over.

A friend of mine that I've never met in person, yet I call her friend, is someone who came into my life when Jeff and I were going through fertility treatments. I never had any real friends who had a lot of experience in all the how-tos of getting pregnant with the help of others so I turned to online communities where, virtually, I was able to become friends with a group of women who had the knowledge and the compassion and the understanding necessary to help me from start to present day. This particular friend suffered through four difficult losses and has began the process to become an adoptive parent.

Much like myself, she has turned to a blog as her way of detailing her journey to motherhood. The other day, I read an update and I was moved by her words. I was moved for a couple of different reasons that are personal but show me that my biggest fear in one day becoming an adoptive mother is not unique to me.

" Whatever children God gives Jim and I, whether they all be adopted or some adopted, some natural, going through this journey has taught and showed me one thing…its that no matter where our children come from, they are not our own, they are God’s! If we are then entrusted by God to raise these children, my prayer is that each and every day God will help me to give love, show love and most of all in all I say to the children and with all my actions, may I show them Christ’s love and how much He means to me!”

I am not the only woman who is considering adoption who wonders if she will love the child as much as a biological child. When that season of my life is upon us, God will provide for us a child who will fill every single space of our hearts with a love so powerful that I will look back on my insecurities and think I was crazy.

Why have I written all of this? Honestly, because I felt like I had to get it out or else I would have eaten the feelings away. This was far more uncomfortable than I had imagined. Some of the emotions tasted bitter in my mouth as I walked along the yellow brick road of my life with you during my recollections. But, I am satisified. Not satisified as I'm happy and everything is okay, but satisfied that I allowed myself to feel rather than eat. Feeling can be more uncomfortable than jeans that are a size too small. But, feeling instead of eating feels like the comfiest of sweatpants!

So, even though the scale told me today I am UP 1.8 pounds, I took the anger, fears, and frustrations and poured them into this post instead of shoving them down with chocolate. And while being so open and vulnerable is rather uncomfortable at times, it's feels much better than eating.

Today I allowed myself to feel and it's okay. I'm still alive. I feel free. I feel like I could fly. And no chocolate was required.

Today, I am proud of myself. Moreso than I have ever been to date. I may not completely know the woman in the mirror, but today I think I'm closer to being her friend.

*names have been changed