Finding Balance

This past weekend had its ups and downs. One of the best parts was just hanging out with my mom. I spent several hours out and about with her and talking her ear off. Yes you all know I am quite good at talking peoples ears off. The good part was she got time to talk to. One of the biggest things she said to me was to make sure I find a balance in my life, and to not only work on my physical body (losing weight and running) but also to look at my body Hollistically. She also said she was glad to see me getting excited about running again and not looking at it negatively. My mom is completely right about both of those things. With finding a balance, I have a tendency to start something (new or not new) and become obsessed with it. It then becomes my whole life. This entire past year it was obsessing about work, which helped me with work but I also think it hurt me in someways as I wasnt able to seperate myself from work and work stresses. In high school my obsession was definitely running (Michaela and Lisa how many times did I torment you guys with countdowns to track season starting?) I tried to balance it out with friends but I didnt always do a good job. In College is when this obsession switched to working, I hate to say it but I became a workaholic. Pretty much the more I was working the happier I was. Whats interesting is I can almost already feel myself becoming obsessed over this weight loss thing, and running. Now I know I need to find a spiritual way to heal my body as well. Now I am not saying religion when I say spirtual, I mean I may but that is something I need to figure out. I just mean i need to work on things like meditating, and different ways to relax and reflect. This may be connected to my running, as I love to do a lot of my thinking while I run or walk. I just have to remember to take care of my entire body. I am actually hoping that by the time I see my neurologist next in October that I will have enough weight that she ccan lower my medication dose. I know I will never be able to come off my meds but lowering the dose would be wonderful. So runnign is not just helping me lose weight but also helping me with different body systems. The other thing my mom said to me was that she was glad I am happier exercising again. I realized afterwards that what she said is true. For quite some time, I have been looking at running as something everyone else expects me to do and was forcing me to do. Somewhere in that negative attitude I lost perspective on how much I actually do love running. The runner in the picture below is the runner I want to become again. I dont necessarily mean that is how fast I want to be. I just mean I want to be the runner who loved running (on my way because I am once again upset when I cant get out for a run) and when I was running nothing else mattered! I could run forever and as long as I was giving it my best I was happy. I am very much looking forward to tomorrows workout and actually the rest of this summer because I can spend the time getting myself in a good place before the new school year starts.

dealing/ weight loss

So I have been in a better mood for the most part over the last few days. Dealing with some stuff at home, but not letting it get me down and since most of it doesnt involve me I am doing my best to not worry about it and to take care of myself. Most of you who know me know I am very good at putting others needs before mine. Like for instance today my family is going to the Patriots training camp at 1:30. I am supposed to go to a 11:00 weight watchers meeting, in the past I would have just skipped my weight watchers meeting to make it easier on everyone else. But this week I told my family I was going to the 10:00 meeting instead and would be at my parents by 12. And of course my parents were completely fine with this. Working on my mindset that I dont need to do everything for everyone or be everywhere for everyone is going to be difficult. There have often been times when I feel like I have to be home every weekend to help my parents and often put that above my own needs. Now my dad has often said he doesnt want to interfere in my plans but that doesnt mean that I understand and get that right away. It really has taken till I am 27 to realize that it is ok if I say no. And I still dont always remember that. I guess my mom really instilled her sense of helping others into me, now I just need to balance that with taking care of myself. As I sit here this morning, I am actually a bit nervous about my weight watchers meeting today.I know I have been exercising more then I normally do even though not as much as I would have liked. I also know I have been tracking my food like I am supposed to, but for some reason my mind is convinced I will fail when I get to my weigh in today. Last time I did weightwatchers I lived at homee and could check my weight daily with my parents scale (which wasnt always a good thing) The not knowing is really bothering right now, I guess I will know in just under 2 hours. Not having a scale at home is kind of good for me because I have focused more on the trying to become fit again instead of on the number on the scale. Ok time for me to go get ready before my meeting. I will update everyone later on on how I did at my meeting but it probably wont be till later tonight since I am going to Patriots training camp with my mom this afternoon. Have a good weekend everyone!

New Day

Yesterday was a rough day for me emotionally. But I am determined to make today a better day! I am going to head off to work and enjoy space camp this afternoon then come home and go for a run. I am going to go for this run enjoy it and feel good about it afterwards. I am also not going to let the little things bother me, like I normally do. I will also make a list of good things that happened to me today this afternoon. Thank you for all of the support yesterday. I will update everyone on how today goes later tonight/tomorrow am.

emotional rollercoaster

While so far I have done pretty well with getting pieces of my life back in order, I am still struggling with a lot of the emotional piece. Yes I have been exercising more, and I even joined weightwatchers this week. Both of those are great things but I am still feeling bad about myself, and to be honest I dont know why. Each day I am basically having an emotional tug of war with myself. For instance yesterday morning I ran a mile straight through for the first time in quite some time. I was ecstatic when I finished and for a while afterwards but by midday I was putting myself down again for being overweight and for only running a mile, and for just being me. I guess I thought that I would start feeling better about myself much sooner after I did all of this. But I dont not really. I mean everyone tells me how wonderful I am but I just dont feel like that. If I was so wonderful then why doesnt making new friends and keeping old ones come any easier to me? Why do I feel like crying right now even though I have wonderful job and have started working out again? I honestly done know what to do about it. There have been numerous times when I feel like im not making a difference and im not worth anyones time. I guess this upsets me the most because all i have ever wanted to do was make a difference in the world. I also have always wanted to be needed which I am not feeling very needed right now. To be honest there have been times where I thought that if I moved away no one would miss me or even realize I was gone. Most of the time I know that that isnt true but there are times where I feel like I dont matter to anyone other then my immediate family. The worst part of it is,I know I really have nothing to complain about when I look at other peoples lives but it doesnt help my mood. I am sorry for this being such a negatice blog but I had to get this out for me to hopefully turn this day around. Thanks again for listening to me vent.

9 years of my life linked to now

Wow! I just finished going through all of my running memorabilia (not including the wearable ones) and sorting it by high school and college. It kind of put running into perspective. Without sounding conceited, it also made me realize how much I actually accomplished in the 9 years that I did Cross Country and the 6 years I did track. I learned a lot of lessons about self-discipline, being a team player and always trying your hardest. Running cross country and track (and trying to do several field events, trying being the operative word) is actually what helped me find myself and my confidence as I made my way through High School. When I started 7th and 8th grade, I was definitely not one of the more popular kids, I had to switch two classes in 8th grade due to teasing by other students. But by the time I reached senior year I actually considered and still do consider the majority of the 111 kids that I graduated with my friends. Along with a lot of us growing up, I really feel that what made the biggest difference was the change in the way I carried myself. That is just one of the benefits that I gained from running. It looks like running is going to be a big part of finding myself again. Running also helped me to find friends outside of school. Looking back at all of my years running competitively, the accomplishment I am most proud of is the team winning the Quabbin Invitational my senior year. I thought I was going to die from happiness, after Lisa came running over to me with the news while I was getting the younger kids ready to run. I actually almost didn’t believe her at first. I think it meant so much to me because of how far the team had come from when I first joined in 7th grade. We were a small team that didn’t even have enough members to be split into a Junior Varsity and a Varsity. That is probably the only reason I made Varsity in 7th grade. I mean I joined in 7th grade because Amy was doing it, and I joined with no training other than running laps around my house when we fought (moms rule). I have been walking this week and feeling guilty that I was only doing 3 miles, and looked up maps for ways to do 6 miles or more. Then I realized that probably wasn’t a good idea. I finally have a way to look at where I am running wise without feeling guilty. I will look at it as if it is my seventh grade year all over again. I mean I didn’t run 10 ½ miles till I was going into my senior year at Foss camp. I joined weight watchers this weekend (again) and something my leader said really stuck with me, I believe she said it was an Allan Woody quote (I may be wrong) “The only thing that stands between me and success is me”. That really stuck with me because I think that’s something I used to live every day when I gave running my best shot all year long (and when I would annoy my coaches with a countdown to track and my parents with a countdown to cross country), However; I don’t think it is something I have been living since College. I have been blaming my failures on other people/things. I have also been using different things as excuses for my reasons for not succeeding (mainly my seizures). This weekend I caught myself trying to use many different things as an excuse not to go for a walk. It will be hard but I will stop myself from doing that anymore. Over this weekend I have also come up with some goals. My long-term goals are to be ready to run a 5k by the end of September and to lose 80 pounds (that one will take a while I know). My short term goal is to run 1 mile tomorrow. Now I plan to run the whole thing but I also will not put myself down if I have to walk a telephone pole or two. Thank you for listening to me ramble tonight I appreciate it.

Weekend Hiatus

HI Everyone, I am going to try and take the weekend off from technology other then my cell phone. Now this may change if I cannot get my phone to charge. I have a lot I want to accomplish this weekend and I feel like once I go on my blog or go on facebook I easily lose track of time and nothing gets accomplished. I have all these people telling me I can do it and now its time for me to tell myself I can do it I will spend this weekend doing that. I will update everyone on how this weekend went and how the running is going either Sunday night or Monday sometime.

Body Image and its effects

Body image is an interesting thing. The way your mind sees your body is never quite accurate. When I was in high school I used to think I was fat and ugly. The only part of my body I liked was my legs, as they were well defined from all of my running.   Looking back now I realize I wasn’t that fat and wasn’t ugly. I used to think that was why guys never looked at me, actually that is wrong I still think that how I look is why I haven’t found a decent guy and only seem to attract the jerks. Now I know I am overweight and don’t like the way I look.  The difference is now I am to the point of hating to look at myself in the mirror. I look at myself long enough to get ready but that’s it.  It also doesn’t seem to matter what my family tells me about me being cute.  Even when I did weight watchers and lost over 20 pounds (which I have since gained back) I still considered myself ugly and fat. I know my body image and my self- consciousness have caused me to place a lot of negativity on myself. It has also caused me to be shy, now I know everyone is going to say that they think I am outgoing. But I am only outgoing with people I know or trust, or around kids. I mean come on its not hard to be outgoing around kids or my friends or family. I have also become more introverted over the years. This blog is the first time  that I am openly expressing my feelings. I have always had to be the “strong one” in most of my relationships. I know that this is self-inflicted but it’s because I usually don’t want people to look down on me for being weak, since I already feel like people look down on me for my weight.  My feelings about myself have also helped me to become a home body,  I have become a home body so I don’t  have to show myself to others.  Subconsciously I am almost ashamed of myself and the way I look.  To turn this into a positive spin, I have set myself 2 goals for this week. My first goal is when I look at myself in the mirror tell myself at least one positive thing about myself. We will see how this goes as how I see myself is often affected by my moods as well.  If I were looking in a mirror right now I would have to start with the fact that I have gotten out for a workout three days in a row before today when the weather or threat of bad weather kept me inside.  That is my positive item today because it kind of reminds me of one of the quotes I love and would always read in Runners world each month when I was younger.  The quote is “The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start." John Bingham.  It also brings me to my second goal which is to keep the workouts coming over the next week.

The Debate

So today during my walk there was a debate going on in my head. The debate was all over my pace and keeping track of my times. I was also having a hard time not comparing myself to the high school Carolyn in regards to running. Then I realized part of this issue was because I am and always have been very competitive with myself and others. Even in high school, I always wanted to beat my time and to see myself at the top of the time sheets we would get after every cross country meet. Of course 9 years later I still have several of those time sheets with my 7 minute pace on them.  I mean I even have a box score from 7^th grade track with my two mile time on it.  Yes I know most people will think I am crazy but running cross country and track were some of if not my best memories from that 6 year period (7^th through 12^th). During my walk today I was looking at my pace (thanks to technology I could see it as I walked) and thinking of those time sheets and how much slower I was now. But then another part of me was telling me to realize that just getting out there was a good thing and to not worry about how fast I used to be or how slow I am now. I mean I don’t expect to get back to my 7 minute pace or faster than that. Honestly I would just like to get back to a 10 minute pace for now. I did run just over a quarter mile of today’s workout and I ran it at just under a 12 minute pace.  Luckily the voice telling me not to worry about how fast or slow I am is winning out this week. I just know it will be a constant fight to make sure it wins out in the long run.  

Running and feelings

Before I start todays post I need to say that I absolutely LOVE my parents and my sisters. I would not have made it as far as I have without them and even though I love them they are not privy to this blog. They are not privy to it because I would not be able to be as honest as I currently am being with all of you for fear of offending my family.  They will be getting most of this information but in a different way.

                Now onto the real post.  About an hour ago I finished Sunday dinner with my family. It was in Worcester at mine and Theresa’s apartment.  We had a pretty healthy meal consisting of turkey burgers and grilled veggies. We also had some pasta salad. No matter what I do though it doesn’t seem to be good enough for my mom because there are always 2 things she complains about when she comes over. The first thing is any treats I have in my fridge and the second thing which she brings up every time I see her and most times I talk to her on the phone is my weight issue.  Today the food in the fridge that she didn’t like was Apple pie. I bought an apple pie because we didn’t have one for the fourth of July and I was craving it. It hasn’t been opened yet and my mom went on a lecture about how I shouldn’t have even bought it and how I should just throw it away.  While Yes maybe I shouldn’t have bought it, I am not going to throw it away as that would be wasting both food and money. I came up with the idea of having some tonight then bringing the rest to share at work, but this seemed to upset my mom even more as she claimed I wasn’t really hearing her.  This of course then went on to the topic of my weight. This is an almost daily conversation with my mom and sometimes my dad as well.  She also complains that I don’t exercise enough (again I already know this is true). But I am beginning to think that a lot of this pressure may be while I have gained a negative attitude towards working out. It has become a matter of pleasing my family instead of pleasing myself.   For instance I was already planning a 2 mile run or whatever it would turn into for about 6:30 today but then my sister told my mom I was  going and all of a sudden there was all this pressure on this one workout session.  The moment they left I was emotionally drained and didn’t want to go.  The good news is everything is laid out so once I get finished with this post I will be ready to go. I have decided to blog before my run to try and get some of these negative feelings out before I go for my run/walk so I can hopefully enjoy it for what it is. I would also like to enjoy running again like I used to eventually. Running was such a big part of my life from seventh grade all the way through junior year of college which was my last cross country season.  I absolutely loved it and as my family could probably tell you if I went more then 2 days without running I was not always fun to be with. I also know I was a pain to my coaches the few times I was injured or sick and couldn’t be out there running with my team, especially when I knew I was missing meets.  I know these feelings of loving running are still there but are just masked by all of these negative feelings. The reason I know they are still there because my mom keeps trying to convince me to go  to a gym to get my exercise in but I can’t stand the idea of running on a treadmill. I am sure I will sign up for a gym eventually but not yet. The part of today’s dinner that really got me thinking about running and all these negative feelings is when after Theresa told my mom that we were going for a run I mentioned to her that I am planning to run the Fall Festival 5k in Shrewsbury at the end of September. This is something I had just decided on earlier today as I realized that I have always been the type of person who needs to have a goal in mind or know where they are going ( Possibly why I hate treadmills) to really accomplish much of anything. As of right now I don’t care what my time is, my only goal is will be to complete the full 5k without walking. That is something I haven’t been able to accomplish in several years.  My moms reaction : Well you better get yourself in shape fast, you have a very long way to go. And some other words of doubt. Which I kind of understand but what I needed more was just some positive feedback. Was that too much to ask?  It also made me want to be alone on my run (well that was the whole plan to begin with but my sister invited herself along). I did get the courage up to tell my sister (politely of course) that I do not want any company on my run. She understood and is letting me go by myself.  Ok well I am looking at the time I am going to get off of here and go get changed and then stretch so I don’t hurt myself on this run (See Michaela and Lisa I still can hear both of you in my head saying stretch well before you run). I have the map my run app on my phone now so I will post on facebook how I do on this run after I have finished and recovered sometime tonight. Before I forget have a great week everyone and for those of you who are going to be running/walking/any exercise outside I recommend doing it in the morning as it’s supposed to be a scorcher this week.

My 19th birthday present

 The year I turned 19 was an interesting year.  I had just finished my freshmen year at Assumption and would be starting at Framingham in the fall.   I had had a rough start to freshmen year but it ended pretty well.  During the year I had had some minor health issues which all of the nurse practitioners and doctors I had seen said it was from being exhausted. (this was the explanation given when I apparently "shook myself" out of my bed in my dorm room at school)  I had just gotten a nannying job for my pediatricians kids. I was ready for it to be a great summer. My body had other plans apparently. While babysitting I got the ringing in my ears that had become too familiar as it had been going on since Senior year of high school. The difference this time was it was accompanied by my left foot going numb as well. When the kids father got home I left  and drove myself straight to the doctors office which was also where my mom worked. The ringing in my ears and my foot going numb happened another time but this time it was while I was driving.  I called my mom to let her know I was coming and to have her fit me in. That day began the longest week of my life. Getting blood work done, getting EEG's done, and getting an MRI done.  Then the week of my 19th birthday I cant remember if it was the day before or the day after I got the phone call from my pediatrician, letting me know that I had seizures. I was in complete shock and had no clue what this meant for me.  I was immediately put on meds to control my seizures. The only good news I received was that I didn't have a brain tumor. I then went and met with my new neurologist.  The first appointment was very overwhelming, everything was about to change. We spent most of the appointment trying to find out what caused me to have seizures only to find out that I will probably never know what caused my seizures. That is one of the worst parts of it because I am the type of person who wants answers. The one thing that we did figure out was I had probably been having  seizures since at least 8th grade if not earlier. The reason we are pretty sure about 8th grade is because I passed out the day of the DVC meet but right before I passed out I lost my vision for a couple minutes as I walked up the stairs. And since my current seizures have to do with my senses (hearing specifically) my neurologist says it wasn't a far leap to assuming that I passed out because of a seizure. This started a very emotional couple of weeks for me.  I was still upset about the seizures but didn't know how to deal with it. While I didn't know how to deal with it, I of course kept my emotions to my self for the most part(one or two tearful phone calls were made to close friends).  I don't like to be a burden to my friends or my family. Because of this fear of being a burden I find I hide a lot and just try to put on the smile that everyone expects of me. Now I don't know why but I believe my diagnosis of seizure disorder and then subsequently having 2 Grand Mal seizures which ended in an ER visit, has made me almost afraid of life. Working to not be afraid of life is going to be one of my biggest challenges. Thank you for reading this, I am sorry about the length. It was just so much to explain and I know many of my friends don't know all of the details so if I was going to talk about this in the future everyone would need to have this background knowledge.

Identity crisis

Welcome to my first blog. I am starting a journey of trying to find myself and getting myself back in shape. I hope you enjoy it. I dont know how often I will blog but I will try for at least twice a week.

Less than a month after my 27th birthday, I find myself sitting here wondering two things 1) Where has the time gone, and 2) Where is the Carolyn that I used to be and loved.  10 years ago, I was spending the summer training for my senior season of cross country, which would be a very emotional season for me as senior year always is. Running was my life. I lived and breathed cross country and track.  Everything in my life was centered around these 2 sports. from my jobs to when I got my drivers license ( I couldnt take drivers ed right away because of cross country or track) At the time I did not think that I was very popular but I was happy.  I had my family, a small group of close friends and some absolutely amazing coaches! Who taught me so much more then just how to train and run a good race.  I was so confident and so ambitious, and I do not know when that changed. I have some ideas but I am not completly sure. I have definitely gone through a lot in the last 10 years. From losing a few friends to getting diagnosed with my seizures that I had apparently been living with since 8th grade when I passed out one morning.  In all of this I no longer recognize myself, I am no longer running, or even exercising, I am now the type of person who comes up with excuses to avoid anything challenging, and im not nearly as motivated. I am also not as outgoing as I tend to hide my emotions from everyone. I may just be starting on my journey of finding myself but the few things I do know are 1) I am at least able to realize I am not the person I used to be and I dont want the people who helped me so much and admire to see me like this even though I want to see them 2) that the first step in finding myself is to go for a run as running has always cleared my head. I may only be able to run for a few minutes at a time but I will do it. I apologize for this first post being all over the place, I just had so much to get out there and I still only barely skimmed the top of everything. Future posts will be more focused. To those of you who have taken the time out of your day to read this thank you!