After the “Year of Yes”, maybe it’s time for the “Year of No”

I’m going through a particularly negative phase right now, building up frustration because my physical therapy seems to be regressing. It was going pretty kick ass a few weeks ago and suddenly it became harder and more painful once again. I have no idea why that is happening – we haven’t changed any of the PT protocols – but the physical therapist and the mental health counselor and I are trying to work on it. My PT isn’t sure what is going on and my counselor thinks that my body is conditioned to have sex be painful, so that’s its default. When I do the therapy, my mind thinks, “Oh. Ok. Something’s in there, so it’s going to hurt. That’s what happens. We put something in the vagina and…ouch. Ok. I get it.” Unfortunately, the frustration I feel just circles around and around and then spills over into the rest of my life. I’m working to fight the negativity, but it’s a challenge. 

I suppose it’s meant to be challenging, but I hate that this one part of my life seems to be defining me now. I realize it’s all in my head (once again, I know that’s a big part of the whole problem), but I get tired of feeling that I’m allowing myself to be defined by what is happening with my vagina. Because let’s be real here, no one but me really cares what is going on with my vagina. (Once again, this is also probably a big part of the problem. Ha! I make myself laugh. I'm totally turning this into a stand-up routine when PT is done.). I don’t think other people are defining me by that body part…and it would be creepy if they are, so keep that one to yourself please. I guess I’m frustrated by my frustration. Good grief but I’m a real piece of work!

Stewing so much over my lack of PT progress has taken my focus off of being happy, which has been my general state for the past year. Good things have happened, less-than-good things have happened, but it’s all been a learning experience and while I’m a little down right now, I don’t really want to be complaining. I want to pull my head out of my heinie and see the brighter side of life again.

Last year, a few days after my 44^th birthday, I declared it the “Year of Yes”. I know, I know. No one really cares anymore. I’ve talked about this much too much. Not that it will stop me this time, mind you. The basic premise of the “Year of Yes” was to start saying yes more than I say no. To open myself up to the possibility of new experiences and opportunities. To give the universe the chance to throw more things my way or, as I prefer to think of it, to be open to the things that God brings into my life.

It’s actually gone quite well, in spite of a bumpy ride at times. Sometimes I have to push myself to say yes when I’d rather say no, but I can’t recall much of anything not working out for the better once I stepped outside of my comfort zone. Those bumps just wake you up sometimes and keep you paying attention.

For some reason I feel like I need to put an end to the “Year of Yes” and I got to thinking this week that maybe up next should be the “Year of No”. That doesn’t mean doing a sudden 180 by saying no to everything all the time though. I think it’s more about saying “no” to all the negativity I tend to wrap myself up in. Saying “no” to the things that will do more harm than good. Saying “no” to things like excessive spending or excessive eating. And by saying no, finding that perhaps I’ll be kinder to myself and right now I could use some kindness. 

I’m still formulating the parameters of this new year, but much like me in a yoga or Pilates class, they will be fluid and flexible. Being so damned uptight all the time is what got me into some of my current predicament. It’s time to say “no” to that, too.

I'm scared to death, but not scared to admit it

Earlier today I wrote about dealing with my inner monster, the one that can't seem to stop eating or thinking about food. While driving home this evening I realized that I had left out a key part of all of that which is WHY The Monster stays on my mind. It's simple really. I'm afraid. Terrified, even.

I'm scared to death that I'll regain all of the weight that I've lost. Or any of it, really. I've recently regained 6 pounds and I'm scared that it's the beginning of the end.

If I regain that weight, I really don't know what I'll do. I'll be so disappointed in myself and kind of heartbroken, but more than that I think I'll feel very, very defeated. I worked hard and I did something I never thought I would be able to do. Losing weight was something I always desperately wanted, deep down inside, but I would never put the effort into it to make the dream a reality.

Am I skinny? No. I might have been once, back in high school, but I'm never going to be "skinny" again or even thin and that's ok. I don't have to be skinny. I just have to be better. Better than I used to be and that's what I am today. I like the person who I am now. I always said I liked myself in the past and perhaps I did. I certainly didn't hate myself. Or did I? I know that I used weight to hide behind because it was so much easier than to stop hiding. Easier to feed the fear and insecurity with another cookie than face those fears and try to change. I didn't take care of my body or my spirit and that's certainly not someone who loves or likes themselves. So maybe while claiming to like myself, I was lying to everyone. Something to think about.

The Monster scares me a great deal, because I see what it can steal from me. This newfound sense of accomplishment. The newfound self-confidence (if you thought I had it in the past, well, it was just a defense mechanism and it wasn't real, trust me). I've always thought that I knew who I was, but the past 20 months have made me question that. Am I who I always thought I was? And if I'm not, just who am I?

I can't really answer all those questions - or don't want to right now because I'm jonesing to go take a hot shower - but whoever I am, I'm not the same person that started out in February 2015 with a determination to finally, FINALLY lose the weight. I don't ever want to be that person again and I'm afraid that The Monster can take it all away from me if I let it. I am happier now. I'm more active now. I'm definitely a snappier dresser. haha I think I'm more fun now or at least willing to step out of my comfort zone and do things that I wouldn't have considered in the past. I can say with total honesty that I like myself now. The way that I am today (possibly exactly today because I have on a cute blue dress and I'm seriously obsessed with the blue dresses for some reason). I'm proud of myself...but I'm still scared. I want to keep moving forward and not be dragged back to the person I used to be.

Building the Perfect Beast

I realized a few weeks ago that I have become one of “those people”. By “those people” I mean someone who constantly counts calories and thinks about what they are eating. Or what they are going to eat. What they want to eat. My mind is overtaken entirely too much with food. Not that it wasn’t a lot like that before, but it feels worse now. 

For years I said I didn’t want to count calories, or do a plan like Weight Watchers where you count points, because I didn’t want to have to put that much thought into what I was eating. Then I educated myself – after all those years of admittedly very deliberate denial – and realized I was never going to lose weight if I didn’t pay more attention to what and how much I was eating. My whole life has been a struggle with weight and while my health problems are certainly small in comparison to what many people are juggling, they are still quite real for me and now I realize I’ve created a monster.

Every morning The Monster wakes up. Usually around 10am, but definitely before 11. I can feel it moving around inside me. Slowly at first, but gaining strength as the minutes tick by. tick tock. tick tock “Feed me. Feed me. I’m hungry!!”

I eat breakfast every morning. Every morning. It is confusing when people say they aren’t hungry in the morning and skip breakfast. Those words don’t even register with me. I wake up and while I can’t eat immediately or early in the morning (anything prior to about 7am makes me queasy), I have to eat breakfast by 9am. Between my stomach loudly protesting the lack of food and the genuine craving to break my fast, well, it would get ugly if I didn’t have something to eat.

Meal prep has become my Sunday afternoon routine. If I want to eat during the week, I have to get it prepped or cooked on Sundays and that includes breakfast prep. I’m pretty basic during the work week, eating peanut butter overnight oats with banana sliced on top every day. I never want it on the weekends, but I crave it on weekdays. In the past, it’s been very filling and kept me going until lunchtime. That is, until I realized I had The Monster to deal with.

The Monster starts moving around and telling me it’s time to eat again mid-morning. I try to fight it, believing perhaps it’s all in my head, but after about an hour (ok, sometimes after 5 minutes…I can be pretty weak) I have to give in. Maybe a small handful of almonds. Another piece of fruit. Although some days the only thing that satisfies me is a small bag of chips or a granola bar. Drinking water does nothing to curb my appetite, though I wish it did. I must drink a gallon a day as it is, but I do try calming The Monster down with water sometimes, just in case I’m really thirsty and not hungry.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with a snack now and then, but once I start, it’s painfully hard to stop. If I can even stop at all. I used to mindlessly eat and I’m much better at not doing that now, but some days (most days, lately) I simply cannot stop eating. I try to stop to give my body a chance to feel full, but that doesn’t help and if I don’t get whatever it is I am craving then it gets worse. The Monster starts thrashing around inside me, refusing to settle down.

So I keep fighting against The Monster (maybe I’ll name it Grover, in homage to The Monster at the End of This Book - *spoiler alert* Grover is the monster at the end of the book…). Every day. I’m sure it’s easy for someone to shrug it off and say “Just stop eating so much!” or “You can control your urges!”, but unless you have ever had to fight with your weight, unless you’ve ever been overweight and desperately wanted to lose some of it, then you don’t know what you are talking about. It’s like telling someone you understand what they are feeling due to the loss of a parent, but both of your parents are still alive. You don’t get it, you won’t get it, you simply CAN’T get it. Because you haven’t been there. And let’s be really real here. Everyone’s experience is different, so even if you have lost a parent, you still don’t know how I felt when my mother died and even if you have had to fight to lose weight, you still don’t know how I feel or how I’ve fought to drop some pounds. Our experiences are different.

I’ve gained 6 pounds in the past few months and while I want to blame The Monster, I have to blame me. I created this monster and I continue to quite literally feed it. If I keep doing that, it’ll never leave. Sure, 6 pounds might not seem like a lot, but I fought to lose those 40 and I fight to maintain. Do I eat a lot of cake? Absolutely! I love cake and I’m not giving it up, but I was eating a lot of cake while I was losing those 40 pounds. If I can’t find a way to maintain the loss without giving up the things I enjoy then I have to regroup and figure out a new plan of attack. A life full of celery sticks and baked fish isn’t one I am interested in.

Now I’ll try to make peace with The Monster and think of it more as Grover. I always liked Grover. He was silly and goofy and fun and I like to think I’m at least 2 out of the 3 of those things (the jury is usually out on whether or not I'm fun). Maybe if The Monster and I can make friends we can work together to literally feed my body the nutrients that it needs to function and (hopefully) thrive, but also know when to stop. I’ve never been good at stopping. Maybe that’s the next lesson to work on.

I'll Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

Women seem to say this all the time, but it bears repeating. It is so important for us to have girlfriends. Well, ok. Maybe women don't say this all the time, but we should. Magazines always seem to have articles on the important of having women friends and making time to nurture and cultivate those friendships.

Susan and I on a visit to Louisville, where she and her family live, back in 2010.

To have other women we can laugh with and cry with. Eat with (ummm...I may have a food obsession issue...don't judge me!), talk to and share with and learn from and just have the support that we all need while going through this crazy thing called life. I've really come to realize how much those friendships mean to me in the past few months while I've been dealing with this crazy and inconvenient little health issue of mine (for the love of God, I just wanted to get laid!). I've had more friends than I can count or acknowledge who have been willing to listen to me and be supportive. It also may help that I am paying someone to listen to me every other week, too, before I drive those friends absolutely insane talking about things all the time. Never underestimate the importance of professional help when you can't seem to help yourself. (And before your friends and family no longer want to deal with listening to you.)

With my friends Heather and DD. We could have talked for 3 more hours easily.

This is all in the forefront of my mind today because I was lucky enough to spend several hours with two lovely friends yesterday. I hadn't seen them in several years, but through the "wonders" of social media, it often feels like you've only seen someone a few days ago. We picked up where we'd left off and had the best time together. We could have kept talking for several more hours if we all hadn't needed to get home. And no, I didn't monopolize the conversation talking about all my issues and what's going on in my life. My life really isn't interesting enough to talk about it all day long, no matter how much I wish that it was!

Laughing after dinner with Ilana and Linda in Arizona.

I also had a great mini vacation out west last month to hang out with one of my oldest friends, Linda, where we stayed up late talking and drinking and eating and then playing dress up at 4am. Things are rarely boring with the people who know you so well. Although I refuse to take responsibility for trying on a dress 2 sizes smaller than I am since it really was 4am and we'd killed 2 bottles of wine at that point.


I'm going to try to take a little step back in the future and really try to appreciate the friendships that I am blessed to have. As an adult, it can be so hard to meet new people and forge new friendships since we are all busy with our lives and families and jobs. It can be even more difficult to keep nurturing the friendships you already have. But it's important to try. To remember why we love the people that we love and the amazing value they bring into our lives. It's time for me to be better about that. Starting now.

Two of my best friends from college, Kelli and Cindy, catching up a couple of years ago at Thanksgiving.

The Unmentionables

I made the declaration on social media the other day that I should filter a new list strictly for the status updates I always want to post, but never do because they seem inappropriate. Possibly extremely funny, but not really appropriate.

Several friends seemed enthused by that notion, but every now and then my better judgement prevails.

Or does it?

It’s always a dilemma. But maybe that’s what blogs are for (aside from being a delightful exercise in vanity).

I told my friend Ruby I was going to blame her for this blog post and so I am. She told me that I should start a 2^nd blog with the title “The Vaginismus Chronicles”. I will NOT be doing that, even though all the funny nonsense that seems to come out of my mouth these days is related to my attempts to get healthy. But for Ruby, I’m collecting some of the things I didn’t want to post on FB and putting them here. And then, naturally, posting a link on Facebook so people can read it. I mean, that makes sense, right?

I get so tired of going to physical therapy twice a week. This has been going on since April and while I know time and patience are involved, patience is a virtue I have never possessed. It’s not even about wanting to be able to have pain-free sex – or have sex, period – anymore, but being tired of having to spend so much time thinking about my vagina. I swear, adult film stars don’t spend this much time thinking about their private parts. It really gets old. As does my vagina. Older every day. It's like I'm living in a world I never even planned to visit and now I'm taking up permanent residence.

Much as I am weary of the physical therapy, I do try to have a positive attitude about it because going into a session without feeling positive is only going to make for a bad session. The PT is not cheap and I refuse to waste my time or money. If my mind and body won’t relax, then the therapy won’t work and I may complain a little, but I’m very determined for it to work. I’ve kind of forgotten exactly why now, but I’m sure there is a good reason. What was it…what was it… Gimme a few minutes. It’ll come back to me.

The physical therapy room. It's like a spa for your vagina!

Except, y'know, not.

The therapy room is relaxing, as it is intended to be, and I’ve said in the past that the physical therapist as the perfect personality for the kind of work she does. We laugh all the time, which is dangerous if I drink too much water in the morning before I go and feel the desperate need to pee. Nothing good can come of that. It’s a horrible accident waiting to happen.

The other day after PT, I was cleaning up and thought to myself, “Man, there is lube everywhere!" That seemed like an inappropriate status update to post on Facebook though, but totally funny to me and probably to my PT as she always says that she uses too much lube. But let’s get real here, lack of lube usage is probably part of the problem for some people, so I say the more the merrier. Except, y’know, it’s really messy. That’s something they don’t teach you in sex ed class I’d wager.

This morning I was picking up a bra to put it on and saw something on one of the cups that I couldn’t identify. I just looked and thought, “Oh, there’s something on this. Not sure what it is.” *pausing* “Well, I hope at least I had fun!” When I relayed that to a friend, her response was, “Here’s hoping you did!” and the first response I could think of was, “Well, usually when my blouse is off I'm having a good time, so there's a solid chance that I did.” This. This is what you get from my brain on too many Oreos. The struggle is real.

My counseling sessions with the psychotherapist also continue and progress. Well, they feel like they are progressing, so I hope that they are. Right now she wants me to make an effort to get out and meet more people, be more social. I’m also sure she wants me to take the opportunity to meet more men, making it easier to get over any lasting attachments I may have to the friend I was canoodling with earlier this year. But when someone says you need to ‘get over him’, I usually want to respond with “But I haven’t even been UNDER him recently!!” Buh-dum-bum. Yes, yes, I do fancy myself quite funny.

Thankfully, I have some friends who will check on my progress and how I’m dealing with my situation. It’s not the end of the world or some monstrous health crisis, I know. I get that. But it’s a quality of life issue and that cannot be denied.

One friend is a former boss of mine who I now see once a week. For a while, she kept tabs on me after she’d left our office to make sure I hadn’t decided to up and quit. Even though she, y’know, up and quit and left me there. But whatever. We’re buddies and appreciate the snark in each other and it’s nice to get to see her regularly now, even for a few minutes between her meeting and running back to her new office.

She asked why I was at physical therapy the first time she came around and I told her the whole story. Since I keep saying I’ve lost my filter, I will tell pretty much anyone all about this situation, even if they’d probably rather I did not. But as my friend is a doctor, she was instantly familiar with what vaginismus is and the treatment options and was mostly pleased at first that I might be having sex at all. Gotta love a supportive friend, right?

Still defective, but it could always

be worse.

On her way out the door the first time she said, “I’ll text you and check on how your va-jay-jay is doing!” She hasn’t yet, but I can assure you that eventually she will. This week, however, she simply said, “I’ll be back next week to see how you are doing!” My response was, “I’ll still be defective!”

Ah yes, that’s how it feels. Like I’m defective. I know that I’m not, but those thoughts of negativity and frustration and slight depression still sneak in from time to time. But for now, right this minute, I’m just going to laugh. If laughter is the best medicine, then I’m all set.