Stories and Honesty

The lie is so easy, it's so simple to tell ourselves stories that make us seem  more important, more vital to existence.  We tell ourselves stories to justify our positions, to make the inexplicable make sense.  These stories can make us the hero.

We are all the hero of our own stories.  As the information around Brian Williams keeps coming out and I'm sitting here watching American Sniper I keep thinking about honesty and the stores we tell ourselves.  In both cases Chris Kyle and Brian Williams are the hero of their own story. I honestly think that both men thought that they were telling all of the truth. 

What strikes me in both stories is that they are both amazingly impressive men.  Brian Williams was our voice in the news for the last decade, he worked hard to get where he was and somehow still felt it necessary to embellish stories that started true.  He was in a helicopter in Iraq getting the stories for us he just wasn't hit.  Still to be that close is a feat in and of its self.

I'm not interested in political debate about Chris Kyle, he was an American hero but he felt the need to embellish in his own life story to make himself look bigger and better. He wasn't satisfied with the truth, something in him, like Williams needed to be bigger.

This has been on my mind this morning a lot with looking at how we tell ourselves our stories.  Where Brian Williams and Chris Kyle told stories to make them 10 feet tall, the stories I tell myself are a bit different.  I am not going down a gender path here at all, I do embellish stories for effect. I love a good story and a laugh so I will stretch.  But the stories I'm most interested in are the ones that I tell myself.

We are not kind when it comes to telling our own stories.  I tell the story of the rape and it becomes I should have known better, that I was somehow at fault.  I tell the story of putting on weight as I'm lazy and it was the only way to comfort myself-that I don't deserve to reach out to people.  I don’t work out because I'm tired, my leg hurts and until Thursday it would kill me. 

Like Brian and Chris I know all of my public stories and I believe them, I'm fine, life is wonderful, I'm training for a marathon again.  Like them I will have to come up with a new story when something ends up not true, or I could tell the truth now.

The truth is, life is hard.  Life isn't always wonderful. Sometimes the only comfort we can find is by admitting weakness and reaching out to friends (thank you Monica and Sohp).  I want to be training for the Omaha 1/2 and will keep talking about it. 

Something about admitting this out loud bends my normal story and for today, life is wonderful and I have comfort.

Appreciation

This year I'm trying to love working out, I'm trying to love running and moving my body.  I set a goal to work out every day for 30 days to force the habit. The rule is that if I don't work out then I start over again at day 1.  This alone is inspiration to move. But working against me is the way my body moves. The way that things shake and move of their own volition, the fact that I can't bend or move as well as I'd like because things get in the way.   But there is no such thing as perfection. 

The hardest part of any journey is to remember that it's progress not perfection.  I have to appreciate the getting there more than the destination, because there is no destination with health. There is strength and stamina but no true ending.  I will never be waif thin, and I don't want that. 

I'm starting to appreciate my curves, I know all of us chubby girls all of them curves, but it's time. I have curves and valleys and rolls that the very thin don’t.  I'm sure that thin girls appreciate their angles the way I love the swell of breast or curve of my knee.

There is no judgment in this for me, it's appreciating my own unique form no matter the size I currently am. It's knowing for the jackass who yelled at me while I ran a few months ago, that there is a wolf whistle from a man in a construction truck.  I may not be your type, but I am mine.

Cleanse

This time of year I hear about all kinds of cleanses, juice cleanse, fasting cleanse, the honey, cinnamon and maple cleanse.  Yesterday I did a different kind of cleanse.  I emptied every dresser drawer, every closet and the spare bedroom and started purging.  I feel like there is just too much here, too much stuff just too much.

As I look out at 2015 Monique and I have had conversations about streamlining our food, exercising more and being kinder to ourselves.  To that list I'm adding simplifying my home.  With cleaning out all the clothing I don't love yesterday  I am reminded that there are all kinds of binging that can happen beyond just food.

I'm really enjoying the cleanse I'm on this year.  I've talked about body image and how I want to be more comfortable in my skin in my clothes.  I also want to be more comfortable in my space.  Having three bookcases, two full closets, overflow kitchen gear in a closet and overstuffed drawers aren't comfortable.

Eating food that makes me feel horrible isn't comfortable.  Wasting my talents and my strength isn't comfortable.  I'm considering something scary in February.  I'm considering working out for 30 straight days. I know, 28 days in February but I'm curious to see if I can force exercise to be a habit. I'm scared to say this out loud but I want to love fitness and running again.

I know me, I know that I can find a million things to do that are a distraction. I can find all sorts of things that can distract me from the scary thing that I am working for.  The key with that is to stay silent. Keep my goals to myself so that when I don't make them the only person I have let down is me.

And now all of you. I've said it out loud.  I said I want to work out for 30 days in a row.  And to qualify that, that's at least 15 minutes of my heart pounding like I'm in love for the first time and he's looking back at you too. We all know what that feeling is like, it's truly being alive.  And we can all have that feeling when we challenge ourselves, when we cleanse all the old feelings and attitudes and stand tall and proud and look forward.

As I'm typing this my heart is pounding a little bit, I'm admitting out loud that I want to clean out the fear, clean out the quit and move forward to the new me.  I am saying outloud that I'm worth it and that I can have big goals that someone other than me knows about.

Right now I have six bags of things for the Lydia House and already I feel lighter.  Is there a big goal you are scared to say out loud??  Go for the cleanse!