A little writting I call "A year and nine months later"

A little something I wrote the other day when I was having a moment:
The other day I caught myself looking at someone and saying “she is not that pretty”. I could not believe those words literally came out of my mouth. I started my weight loss journey Feb. 07 and it is Nov. 09 it has only been a year and nine months and who I am has changed dramatically for both the positive and negative.
Loosing weight has given me a chance to do more physically in my life. It has helped me to be healthy and add years to my life. Now what I do with those years is what is important. I have always been a person who has not judged others for their looks. Yet I am now doing that. I always was able to see someone from the inside out and now it is a lot more difficult. Who am I to think I am any better than anyone else. We are all equal and have great and unique things about each of us. Who am I to not allow myself to see those things in others as much anymore?
There are so many emotional ups and downs you go through with weight loss. I am at a down right now. I am preparing to do an 80 mile bike ride in three days and have completed two triathlons yet right now I feel like I am still obese. If I gain a couple of pounds I start worrying that I am going to end up gaining it all back. That is a motivator to keep it off sometimes, but right now it just is not. I want to eat. I want to gorge myself to take away my sadness. I know it will not take it away, but it is still my addiction trying to pull me in. I should not feel like I am still overweight, but more importantly I should not feel that it is so negative to be overweight.

Being overweight has no bearing on who you are inside, or does it? I have always thought the above to be true but now that I write that I am not so sure. I know I am totally different inside now that I am thinner. I feel myself getting more prideful, judgmental and not as considerate of others. When I was heavier those characteristics made me who I was. They are all I had. I have now put so much into my looks that they are my main concern. If I do something wrong now I have such a hard time dealing with it, even the smallest criticism is huge. I feel like I have worked so hard to be a good person but I fall short more and more now.

The world does not understand my heart like they used to. I don’t know how to express myself as a thin person. When I was heavy I was such a touchy person. Cuddling and hugging everyone. Now for some reason I have it in my head that it is not okay to do that. When I did do that thinner then people took it different than they used to. It is almost like the world feels bad for you when you are over weight so they have different expectations of you and different inhibitions around you. They are not threatened by you. Now all the sudden living a life of people not being threatened by me I am now in a world of people being intimidated by me and I do not see this kind of intimidation as a good thing.

When you are fat and don’t make eye contact with someone or smile at them it is taken as a “oh it is sad that person is so sad because they are overweight”. Well now if I don’t make eye contact or smile I am automatically defined as a snob or a person who thinks they are better than others. When in reality it is still my way of hiding from people just like I did when I was bigger. Why can’t we all just see each other for the people we are, Children of God. Why can’t we all just realize we are children of God and respect ourselves enough to feel that no matter who we are, what we look like or what our backgrounds are?
It is funny that I started this journey not only to be healthier but also to learn to love myself more. In reality I think I like myself a lot less. I miss the person I was able to be as a heavy person. I don’t miss everything else that came with being heavy and I don’t want to go back, but I do want to just be me and figure out how to do that no matter what body I am in.
The pressure to always feel like I have to remain in shape is so draining. I love to work out and I want to remain in shape but I feel that if I don’t I will let people down. I will let my husband down and I will let myself down. What I am trying to get at is other than being healthy, why does it matter. You would think that the people want you to not gain weight because of your health, yet when people talk about it the subject is always about looks not health.
I have had three of my guy friends say comments like “if you looked like that when we were around each other, you would not have been able to keep my hands off you”, “If you looked like that when I used to brush your hand off my shoulder jokingly, I would have taken it and put it on my shoulder as much as I could and not brushed it away”, “I cant wrestle with you anymore because if I did now I would be scared I would be to attracted to you”. Now tell me how those statements show that people care about my health. Do people not see that those are put downs? I understand people were trying to be nice and compliment me and I will only allow myself to see it as such, but I am still that same person who had my arm pushed off, hung out with friends that were only friends and wrestled. What gives people the right to put that person down in order to give me a compliment….it is still me!
Then again I don’t know who I am anymore so why should I expect others to. Okay do you see my need for therapy now and why I always tell people who want to loose weight to see a therapist throughout the process? I need to take my own advice huh.
Well I am not going to live my life like this. I am going to keep healthy yet find a way to be the person I want to be. I have to figure out how to not care what others are thinking as much as I do. Let them be them and I will be me. Show the world I am proud of who I was by allowing myself to talk about those times in my life around people who might get embarrassed if I bring it up. I want to be able to look at my pictures and see the fun times I have and not only concentrate on how I looked. Those times had a lot of great experiences that I want to talk about and have others comfortable with me talking about them. Every day I am going to own who I am, who I have been and who I will always be… a daughter off God no matter what body I happen to be wearing at that moment.

Yes it is true, I am actually posting

So much for my new Team Cockerill blog I started a month after we got married. Now that it has almost been a year I thought I should post something and catch you all up. Well I wont do to much catching up because, well Ill save that for the family Christmas letter I will be writing tomorrow, if my creative juices are flowing that is.
Why is it I always, ok two times a year, write during the wee hours of the morning. It is 3:40 am and we just got back from Cliffs parents where we spent Thanksgiving. We told his brother we would take him to the midnight sales and thought we would just stay overnight. Well as soon as we get cuddled into bed and Cliff drifts off to dream land I did my usual and reviewed the day a little. All the sudden I realized "oh crap....I think the cat is in the house, has been since noon and there is no litter box in the house". SO needless to say we are home and it is almost 4 in the morning. Kudos to the cat so far no evidence of any instances happening while we were out. That is one big bladder!
There is so much I have to be greatful for this year! This year has been a whirl wind to say the least. Getting two people who are very strong headed, independent and prideful to work hand in hand and form a partnership is well not the easiest thing I have ever done. What a year of lessons we have had and I am so greatful for it. We have great families and friends who support us, the opportunity to go to the temple together and put God first in our lives, a job that though I do not love it pays the bills so I cant complain, animals that all get along with each other, hot water, food to eat and a buy one get one free coupon book for dinners out. What more could you ask for in life? We finially got things somewhat figured out, well for the meantime, about two months ago. We are now having a blast and loving every minute of being together, spoiling each other and just having a great time laughing and loving each other.
I love AZ! The weather is amazing, yes today is Thanksgiving and it was about 80 degrees! I never thought that Thanksgiving and talk about going boating could go in the same sentence.
We got the bug last night to rebel against Denise's theory about CHristmas and put up our decorations. All I can say is I love plugging the lights in and feeling such relief when that moment of wonder passes and they turn on! Contrary I really cant stand if they dont turn on. Who wants to spend time testing the lights to see which one needs to be replaced? I think that is what husbands are for :).
Well I am off to bed. Just thought I would let everyone know how greatful I am to them and suprise you all with a quick little doodle. No promises but I will try to be better.

It all begins here....

In honor of our 1 month aniversary I wanted to do something for my hubby to let him know how much I love him. We are far from each other for the next few days since I had to take a trip to MD for some medical stuff. It has been a long time since I have written on my personal blog and thought this would be a great time to start a new one since my life is not just mine anymore.
Dec. 20th was one of the greatest days of my life. It was so fun to be with the man I love and who I will spend forever with. We were sorounded by people who we love and felt so supported. We had a lot of friends and family who could not be there in person due to distance, but we could feel them there. I am going to try to post a slide show of our day but bear with me. It is 2:30 am and Im not having much sucess.
I am not always great at letting my defences down and showing people my true feelings. For some reason at 2 in the morning I seem to be a little better at it. I hope to be able to show you all a glimpse into our family and our love. We hope to learn from you and your family and and the love you share. Most of all I want my husband to always know how much I love him, how proud of him I am and what a great man I know he is. Let the blogging begin.....