Dale W.
When hitting rock bottom just isn't enough...
Jan 26, 2012
Hitting bottom is that proverbial thing we always here of in relation to being able to get back on the top of things. But what happens when you climb back up without having hit bottom first? Does it ever take? Does it ever truly let you turn things around for the better? Lately I’m starting to think that continuously falling and hitting and getting right back on the top of your game isn’t really all that good of a thing. My life has changed a lot in the last few years. I started my own company 2 years ago and I have recently lost a large amount of weight. Both have been two huge positive steps in my life. The only problem is that I think I’ve even been fooling myself as to just how positive they are. Firs off, let me say without hesitation, leaving my last company to start my own game and choosing to have weight loss surgery have been probably the two biggest things I’ve taken the initiative to do in my life. And I would never, ever, change having done them when I did. They have both left me with things in my life that are some amazing traits that who know if I would have developed otherwise. But sadly it’s not the whole story. I started my own company, but I never really found any customers. For two years now I’ve had to OUTSTANDING parents that have supported me pretty much unconditionally while I am finding myself or doing whatever the heck this is. I look at things to do and keep resumes and such out there. But I have so far been content with this little facade I have created about being successful on my own. I’ve always been raised to believe that you don’t settle for anything and you fight to keep true to who you think you are. Perhaps they problem… I think I’m a lot of who I am not. Who I am right now is a 35-year-old kid essentially whose parents still are buying him all the toys he ever wanted. Just a couple of years ago I was paying for all the toys myself, paying for the amazing house, the fishing trips, the shooting trips etc… But when I decided to strike it out on my own, I kept letting my parents float that bill instead of changing my lifestyle.
Why does any of this matter? And why is it something I’d let me friends know after keeping it nicely masked for so long? Why have I spent so many years painting a picture that takes away from every single bad trait I have to replace them with things that so many others don’t have in the “status quo”? We’ve already figured out that I spend too much money. TO the point of excess. I’ve had some jobs over the years that I’ve made really good money. And you know… I’ve spent every single dime of it. On myself no less. Yep toys toys toys out the wazoo. I’m a fly fisherman… rods and reels and gear that I could never use all of it. I’m a big shooting and gun fanatic… a stockpile of weapons practically that has got to have me on some watch list by now if they’re smart. I’m a musician… bass guitars, guitars, a drum set that would make Neal Peart smile. I inherited my father’s addiction to cars… so that’s averaged out to about a new car every other year in my adult life. Plus motorcycles and even two cars when one style wasn’t enough for a while. My Mom and Dad have paid for it all. Sure I had money for most of these things when I first did them. But now, two years later without a steady income and they’re still footing the bill. All of my spending habits have stemmed from things my parents did while I was growing up. But I’ll be damned if I haven’t taken every one of them to excess. I just never saw the lesson. I never had self-control behind it. Whatever was the cause of my spending problems was clearly behind my eating problems over the years. Hungry…eat everything you can until your tummy feels like it’s goanna pop and that must mean it’s time to stop eating. Need a snack before going to bed… how about down to McDonald’s for a couple of burgers and orders of fries. Snack while watching the big game… whole bag of chips surely isn’t out of the question. It’s all excess. It’s all GOOD lessons I’ve learned from people over the years about feeling good and not denying yourself happiness. But I’ve taken those lessons and gone so far past what they were meant to teach that they’ve gone in the opposite direction. People that have tried to get close to me over the years, including I think my parents, I’ve essentially come to the conclusion that I’ve thrown away a lot of it because it just was easier to do my own thing, buy my own toys, eat by myself so no one would comment, etc… Being able to look at it now, with some clarity (ironically clarity doesn’t always garner a solution) I am able to see I’ve shit one lot of people just because I could. I’ve always taken great pride in knowing that I’m a good person at heart and I don’t mistreat or belittle people. But wow, how have I been convincing myself of this without throwing my parents into that equation?
So why risk telling you all of this? Why go to the extreme of alienating myself once again just for the sake of getting a clean conscious? I’ve met some good, really good people since I’ve had my weight loss surgery. People that have taught me what it’s like to have friends and not just acquaintances. People that remind me how good I have it just by being who they are and letting me see what’s around me. Yeah, I can sit here and say the obvious that it’s not fair to lie to them any more. But honestly, I think the right answer, and the one I have a feeling they’d support, is that it’s not fair to lie to myself any more. How much of this have I done just to avoid working on ANY single problems in my life? I used to think people were tired of hearing me complain about things so it seems logical that I just kept painting a picture that I even believed that there wasn’t anything to complain about. I’m fed up with it now. I’ve lost 134 pounds in 6 months. It was easy… too easy. WAY TOO EASY. I’m now no longer the fat person who can blame all his problems on weight and image any more. I’ve lost that excuse. Even worse, any excuse I do come up with for behaviors lately is even starting to sound silly to myself.
I’ve got 4 exception friends right now in my life. The kind of friends I’ve never had before. People I grew up with treated be poorly… beyond what anyone should have to endure when it comes to bullying. The occasional friend I would get here and there I let do absolutely anything to me and put up with anything that I never got a spine in dealing with anyone I care about. I was arguing with a friend last night about a medical question. I was more worried about her not being unhappy with my viewpoint than I was with the potential problem itself. I’ve got a friend I’m in love with. She and I hit it off from day one and she supports me without even ever talking about weight and image, etc… But I’m scared as hell to think about what happens if it ever gets not easy. We’ve connected and it just works in the relationship we have on here that’s separated by thousands of miles across the world. So there again…easy. Yet I can’t build friendships with the people right in front of me. I do love this girl… so why do I not let myself make friendships that are below that? It’s the excess again… has to be all or nothing. I don’t want to be an idiot any more and just go through life carefree. When I tell someone that being carefree all the time is a problem, I’d like to seem like I least act in a way to back that up. I don’t wan to spend, I don’t want to eat, I don’t want to isolate. Part of that is clearly letting those 4 friends know my whole story and not just the one I’ve painted. Sure, there might not be a lot of differences from who they see and who I am other than a back story and a financial backer… but that’s pretty damn deceptive even if it’s just those two. So Cheryl, Summer, Denise, and most of all Julie… I really hope you understand what I’m trying to do here as far as coming clean and needing to be 100% of who I am in order to help myself possibly hit rock bottom just in an effort to genuinely get to the top again. The same goes for my Mom and Dad. I don’t expect them to change about how they approach things, but I’ll be damned if I would be stupid enough to sit here and say I could do every bit of this without the 4 of you and my parents who are still a big part of my life. I hope you all understand. And I hope you all see that I just need to get to the bottom of what is something I’ve always pointed fingers at the weight having caused the issue.
