i was just reading through some of my older entries and there was reference to the date that everything fell apart with him. i picked up my phone to scroll through my texts. i knew i had one with a time/day stamp from the day i saw him. i had thought it was may, but it turns out i was wrong. is it weird that the same day he finally called and the same day that we hung out was exactly a year later? just another reason why i can’t deny my connection with him.

i guess i haven’t written about how it all happened. it was april 11, almost midnight when the phone rang and it was him. i should rewind even further and explain how i ended up where i was. her boyfriend was coming and she didn’t want me to stay there so i booked a hotel on hotwire. when i arrived at the hotel over an hour later, they did not have my reservation. i was told they were supposed to receive a fax and could not check me in without it. frustrated and tired, i called hotwire to resolve the issue. i was told they would resend the fax and it should be there within a few minutes. ten minutes later, i called back and asked the woman to stay on the phone with me until it went through.  throughout all of this, a homeless couple came in looking to secure a place for the following night after they got a check from a local church. another man came in wanting to use a bathroom and then asked to see a room when he was denied. the manager made him leave a cash deposit while he went to look at the room. when the man left, i asked him about that and he said people would come in and take showers or use the restroom and then he would charge them for the entire night. after it not going through again, she called and spoke with the hotel manager to try to get him to check me in until the fax came through. i already knew what the answer would be after having over an hour to assess his character as people wandered in and out. the answer was no.

finally, the woman at hotwire apologized profusely, told me that this has never happened and they were just going to re-book me at a higher star hotel nearby and hotwire would cover the difference. pleased that the situation seemed to be resolving itself, i happily went to the hotel next door and waited as the representative from hotwire called the new hotel’s manager to make sure everything was straight and i would be allowed to check-in promptly. when i arrived, my phone was about to die, so i plugged into an outlet in the lobby and waited on hold. once she came back on, she informed me that they were awaiting the confirmation fax and i would be checked in shortly. another half an hour later and the supervisor came on the phone. he told me that he had tried everything, even asking the hotel to book it with his credit card directly, but they would not oblige. he apologized profusely, confessed his embarrassment, and offered me a full refund and a fifty dollar “hotbucks” credit to my account and suggested i book the hotel directly at their higher rate.

as this played out over several hours, i started to get the sense that it was all happening for a reason. i had no clue what it could be as i was in the valley in the middle of nowhere where i know nothing but my pilates studio, however, that feeling was planted. i called kels and asked if i could spend one more night and promised that i would sleep on the couch so as not to dirty up her freshy cleaned sheets. the next morning i decided that i wanted to secure a hotel for the evening and i would then look for places from the hotel on my laptop and i wouldn’t feel stressed or rushed. i went on hotwire and decided to go for a 4 star hotel in west hollywood/beverly hills because i had the fifty dollar credit and it made the hotel less than the previous nights 2.5 star.

as anyone who has used hotwire knows, you do not select the individual hotel, but an area and star level. there are so many hotels in the area, i had no idea where i would end up, but i figured a 4 star would be nice and i would feel good having a little pampering after shuffling all over the city. what a surprise it was when it was revealed that i was staying at le parc suites. le parc suites is the first place i ever stayed in los angeles, the first time i ever visited the city. courtney had flown me out and put me up there for several days. i remember feeling so chic and i still have a corkscrew with the hotels name on it to this day.

when i arrived, it was exactly as i had remembered. as i went to check-in, i noticed a large tour bus pulling off. again, i got this feeling that this was still happening for a reason, maybe something to do with him, but when i asked the valet who the tour bus belonged to, it was no one that meant anything to me. still, i had planned to go in, bathe, and put on my makeup. i wanted to be out and about looking beautiful, but i ended up feeling lazy and decided to stay in and relax. i was hungry so i went to the nearby 7-11 and bought a bag full of crap, only to decide i needed a hotdog while i was checking out. slightly embarassed but completely ravenous,  i ate the hotdog in the parking lot as i thought to myself how mortified i would be if he happened to see me.

back at the hotel, i made microwave food and scolded myself for it. i put on a mask and lounged around the suite getting ready for bed, snacking on chips. my phone rang. “bread in the oven bakin’…” , my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. it was pounding and i couldn’t bring myself to even pick up the phone. i had seen him online on messenger, but i definitely was not expecting a call. i had to calm myself, smoke a cigarette, smoke a spliff, do deep breathing as i ran around and jumped up and down like a giddy school girl. i couldn’t believe he was calling, that he called. today, tonight, now, of all times. and he left a message!

i decided to finish getting ready for bed and climb in before calling him back. talking in bed was something we did often and i was looking forward to it like christmas morning. i dialed his number and as it rang, i filled with anticipation… only to reach voicemail. i had only waited ten minutes to return the call, where could he be? brick wall. again. sigh. so i turned on the tv and tried to forget about it. a few minutes later, i received a text message. “what up?” … OMG OMG OMG. i called him back and it sounded like he was in a loud bar. i inquired and he confirmed, then asked where i was. i told him LA, but he didn’t relent and wanted to know where in LA. “oh, i’m in a hotel in west hollywood, where are you”. he responded that he was at barney’s beanery and my heart skipped a beat. that was walking distance from me and right next to the 7-11 i had visited only an hour earlier. i laughed at him and questioned why he would be there of all places. he said it was down the street from his hotel. he said his credit was about to be finished and i said i wasn’t done talking. he told me to come meet him for a drink. so i did.

so i think i have found a gym that i am going to go to for the next 30 days while i am in town. they offer tons of classes all day every day and i think i will be able to happily workout several times per day without getting bored. i have been eating pretty good, but i know that the key for me has always been the exercise. that is why a workout regimen is so important for me to stick to. i don’t want to just be skinny, i want to be fit and i want to have muscles, especially a killer stomach. is it too much to ask for great abs? well, i’d love a great ass too. my breasts are pretty much a lost cause, my 85 year old grandmothers might just look better than mine, my mother’s definitely do, and there is not really any getting around a surgery if i want them to stand up on their own. from experience, they only get worse with weight loss.

i need to commit to the exercise and just really go for it. i don’t have much else going on and i can easily fit it within my schedule. it’s not true to say i don’t have a lot going on, but i am flexible. i want to get all of my things organized and listed for sale by the end of the month so i can spend all of may finalizing and working on luxurate. 

i’ve decided to keep writing as often as possible, just to get in the habit, but also to chronicle my efforts. i am turning thirty at the end of the summer and i am determined to deal with these issues so the next thirty years of my life will not be clouded with body and confidence issues. i know this isn’t going to happen miraculously overnight, but i do know from experience that my confidence increases when i lose weight and become more comfortable with my body.

i know i need to be dating as much as i can. i need to get out there and experience men and find what really suits me. i don’t know that he is actually the one for me, but i’ll never know if there is someone else or for sure if it’s him unless i “shop” (as my mom would say) long and hard. i want to have a child in the next five years and i want it to be in a stable relationship with a man that makes me happy. i can’t do those things unless i get over my body issues and really put myself out there. 

i am beautiful, and i can be a triple threat with super confidence when i achieve this. there really can’t be a question or a delay anymore. this is my life and as the sign at brothers house says, “enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think”. i’m about to be a real, Real, REAL adult and it’s time to live my life to the fullest.

ps – i want to be under 200 by may 1 and i think it’s entirely achievable. only 2 pounds in a week? i can totally do that!

throughout my life, i have repeatedly been told that i should write. i don’t think i am a bad writer, but it’s never been a passion. more specifically, i’m always told i should write a book. by all types of people for all sorts of reasons. i tend to think this was a somewhat silly and pompous notion, but lately i’ve been thinking about it more seriously. i have many stories to tell and last night i had an epiphany. it became perfect clear to me what would be the glue to hold his book together. the anecdotes of my life and my struggle with the constant reminder that EXCESS MATTERS.

this morning when i sat down to write about the book, the title of the book looked me straight in the eyes. excess matters. sure, i’ll have to come up with some witty tagline, like ‘excess matters : 25 years in a fatsuit’… but the premise will be the stories that make up my life and how being in a fatsuit for all of it effected my confidence, self esteem, and ability to really ENJOY my life.

often times, i wake up from a dream due to an alarm, a phone call, etc. and i find myself wanting to continue the dream so i try to go back to sleep. this occasionally works, but usually ends up causing a twist or a turn that is not always in my favor. 

i hope to start writing more about my dreams. last night i had a particularly interesting and long, drawn out, woken up a few times in the middle dream. i should have written when i first got up. i just remembered this dream because there was someone making 2 bags of popcorn in the dream and i came up behind them and was conversing with them as to why. i’m just looking for healthy snack ideas and popcorn was on the list. obviously this triggered the memory of that aspect in the dream.

the part i woke up to, was that kels had begun texting and talking to him. i was upset about it and obviously i have some issue feeling threatened by her. i know its my own shit, but she just always has such a keen interest in him, it has always bothered me. i barely remember the details now, but i do remember feeling like she was keeping it from me. i felt betrayed and left out. 

then i remembered the earlier part and the setting of the seen. i was with kels in a city like new york and she was studying for her finals. we must have been staying at a hotel, because we had a hotel room that i went to and called him after i found out she had been texting him. in the beginning of the dream, i went to go look for something and i was carrying my chanel marais tote. i was walking around a corner when two men came up to me and began trying to get things OUT of my purse. they were also trying to take the bag itself, but more than anything they were trying to get at something inside of the purse. i fought them off for quite awhile and called for help. i’m not sure if anyone ever came to help, but they eventually left and i still had everything intact. 

i likened him to the chanel bag. when i relayed that comparison to satsuma, he asked me if the bag was black and indeed it was. not only black, but big, rough, AND black. 

i’ve officially lost more than 10 pounds so i should probably congratulate myself on the progress, even if it is not as much as i would have liked. it is progress. only a few more pounds to go to reach my first major goal and i am pretty certain i can achieve that goal by the end of the month if i really put my heart into it. considering a piece of my heart is suddenly back on the scene, that should make things a little easier as long as i channel this as positive energy.

although i have slacked off on the pilates this week, i am looking forward to finishing it up with a solid 2 workouts thursday and friday. they will be my last 2 and i am really going to miss these classes, but i need to do what i need to do. i think it might be a good idea to have a plan for austin, walking everyday should certainly be included. i need to do more though, i need to keep up the muscle definition. i guess researching exercise options in austin would be a good move.

i need to have a green smoothie again tomorrow and start the day off with my bowl of oatmeal. i was doing so well with taking my supplements at every meal and washing my face twice a day, but now that i have been uprooted, i am finding it difficult to stick to my regimen. maybe i need a home, a stable place to have some semblance of routine. tomorrow morning, i am going to wake and make my oatmeal and tea. i will take my morning supplements and play scrabble. 

i should go ahead and start wearing the patches that i was sent. i will know immediately if they are placebo or not and if not, then i have been chosen to quit smoking WITHOUT any sort of crutch. i know that i can quit smoking so i need to just do it. i will feel so much better about myself and it will be the first and easiest step in completing a MAJOR goal for myself. i can’t magically get skinny over night, but i can become a non-smoker overnight. so, it’s settled. tomorrow i quit smoking forever and ever. 

i want my heart and my heart needs me to love myself.

Things have been going pretty well, but I can definitley step it up a notch. I have been exercising, but not as much as I should be. The gym was going well in terms of training and actually doing something with my muscles but I did not like the trainer. I am now going to try out a pilates center nearby that offers unlimited classes. I think that is more my style.

I quit smoking for a week and then I started again. what a stupid habit I have that has this control over me. I’m not going to let it any longer. I am going to fight this addiction with all I have. I’m going to combat it with exercise. I’m back in the mountains, I have the momentum, and it’s really pretty easy with the patch and the hypnosis. I don’t like that the patch causes my skin to be red, but I still think it is a good temporary solution to keep the cravings and emotional bitchiness to a minimum. I think it helps with not over eating also.

This far I have lost approximatley 7 pounds since I started. While that is fantastic, I really could and should have lost more by staying more focussed. I am going to commit to doing that from here on out. I will include a green smoothie everyday, I will continue to tale my supplements and vitamins daily as regimented. I will go to pilates class and/or walk EVERY day. Moving is essential to this process and it is really good for my mental clarity.

On the issue of vitamins and supplements, I have been taking them very consistently and have noticed an improvement in my skin. I can only assume they not smoking for a week played a great role in my skin looking better as well. I am looking forward to receiving the rest of my supplements and implementing them into my regimen.

Do I really have to throw away the cigarettes or can I have them around for recreational or desperate measures. I hhink that is just a cop-out though. I don’t need them at all. I’m tired of the addiction and any social benefit is not really worth it. I have to be stronger than that.

So far so good with the Mediterranean diet. This is breakfast! I saved some money by using string cheese instead of buying the big ball of mozzarella.

I’m nearly 30 years old, and as long as I can remember, I have been overweight and unhappy. Sure, there have been those brief moments where I have gone below the overweight line and felt confident and pleased with the results, but even then I was unhappy about my body and never quite reached my goals. It’s obvious I self sabotage and yet I continue to do it, despite having recognized it.

I just weighed myself on a friends scale and was appalled and shocked by the reading. I’m back over 200 and that is a number I never thought I would see on the scale again. I find myself wailing out loud – “Why did I do this to myself? Why?” and not having a good answer. 

There is a reoccurring thought process that I can’t let go of. Get my shit together and achieve these goals for myself. There are so many that I have achieved, yet so many important ones that I haven’t. It is very clear to me that the way I care for my body is unacceptable, yet somehow I can’t seem to make that commitment to really change long-term. I’m lazy I guess, but if that’s the case, I must really hate myself.

There are two things that I have wanted to achieve consistently, thought about on a day to day basis, and beat myself up over regularly – losing weight and quitting smoking. I know that I ingest toxic food and drinks on a regular basis, I know that I ingest toxic fumes from cigarettes that are killing me as often as I can. I have a chronic cough and occasionally sound like darth vader when I wake up in the morning. But,  I love to smoke and I love to eat bad food. What does this say about me that I know these things are terrible for me and I continue on like I’m going to the chair.

I’d like to live my life free of the guilt and burden of the detriment I am causing to my health. I want to be able to stop obsessing about finding the perfect clothes and being able to wear them all without worrying about them being too small. I am the girl with a closet full of designer clothing, shoes, and accessories, that rarely, if ever wears them. I’ve built the perfect closet, a nearly complete seasonal wardrobe, yet most of it hangs there, tags still attached, waiting for the day I magically get myself together and do what I’ve said I was going to do for the last 20+ years. At the rate I’m going, it will all be vintage if the day ever comes. 

I don’t want this for myself. It’s not just the closet, it’s my life that has taken a back burner and put on hold. I am not confident with my body and therefore I delay or refuse important life experiences that I resent myself for. For example, I have never been comfortable going to the beach or participating in any type of water activity because of my body. Because of that, I don’t fully enjoy myself or the experience. My body is constantly on my mind. You could say the same for going out to meet new people. I am self conscious of how I look and it effects me every hour of the day. 

I am going to try a new approach to achieve my goals, because I am really not after a number on the scale as much as I am after measurements, or being able to wear a size 8 or equivalent. In normal sizing, size 10-12 is the maximum size available. I am not talking about Old Navy here, I’m talking about my favorite designers and fashion that I covet to become a part of my closet. In jeans and such, this would be a size 29 or 30. I just want to be slightly below the top tier. I am not trying to be a size 2 or be stick thin, I just want to not have to always look for the biggest size. 

I am scared to measure myself, but I suppose measurements will probably be a better indicator than weight - after-all, I want to gain muscle and lose fat, and the tone and condition of my skin and body is just as important as the weight itself. It would be nice to know my measurements so I can actually use a sizing chart and know, instead of just guessing. 

I woke up late again today. around 2pm. i actually wake up sooner than that, but then I want to stay in bed and sleep more. I guess I don’t want to face the day so I put it off as long as possible. I made a lot of progress yesterday and I think I will make a lot today as well once I get rolling. I just came out to get on the computer and check in on everything, emails, etc. I have to say it was sort of nice not just jumping up and going straight to the computer to smoke a cigarette. That is a terrible habit I have that will hopefully be broken now that I can no longer smoke where my computer will be located (in various places over the next few months). I am supposed to be quit anyway. I promised myself that in exchange for the Invisalign and it went right out the window. This is a prime example of promises I have made to myself and not kept and how this has diminished my belief and trust in myself.

I am going to quit though, really, really I am. I think the only reason I continue to smoke is that I am lonely and bored. I am alone 99.9% of the time and I guess the cigarette comforts me. It entertains me, it takes up chunks of time in the day where I can sit there and do nothing other than contemplate and inhale the bittersweet smoke. I keep telling myself it’s the stress of the move, the stress of everything coming to a culmination and when it’s done, I’ll be done, but I think I’ve just realized it is more the comfort, like food is, that I am addicted to. Cigarettes and Food will always be there for me, always soothe me. Evil little fuckers. 

Today I have to go through all of my clothes and sort them by size and pack them away. I love all of my clothes, but I also have so many clothes I have bought that were too small at the time or I never got to wear them when I was at that weight due to the season and most of them do not fit, a lot of them still new with tags. I adore these beautiful clothes and I don’t want to get rid of them, but they can’t all stay piled together so I never know what will fit and what won’t. One thing is for sure, when I lose the weight, I need to throw out all stretchy clothes (except pajamas or a few lounge outfits) and stick to more fitted clothing so I can better tell when I am gaining weight and do something about it. I definitely cannot be sitting around in sweat pants day in and day out, that is just asking for it. 

Well, I guess I better go take a shower. I’ve put it off long enough. I smell horrible and feel greasy and disgusting. I’m realizing this might also be a part of my not taking care of myself and perpetuating the state of being I am in. I’ve tried so many times to get in the habit of taking a daily shower, but was thinking earlier how I can’t remember the last time I had a shower two days in a row. That is really disgusting and I know it is, but without ever seeing anyone, I frequently feel like why bother? I know that is an even more unhealthy way of looking at it. I should be showering to take care of my body and clean myself, it should have nothing to do with an outside source. I know it doesn’t have anything to do with an outside source either, because I will go into public smelling rank and convince myself I don’t care. Try to be invisible and not interact with anyone. It’s sick, I’m sick. Why do I do this? I am sure this plays into my issues with needing comfort from food and cigarettes. 

I’m dealing with this. What do you think I’m writing about it all for. To face myself and identify and dissect what is really going that causes me to continue with these damaging behaviors so I can correct them. I suspect it is a core issue that causes them all so I need to continue to observe this further.