I remember walking home from gymnastics practice every day. Monday through Friday. Seventh grade through 9th grade. Junior High. It was four blocks. I remember stopping at Corner Drug at least three times a week and buying an ice cold Tab out of the pop machine. I loved that pop. Who cares if the artificial sweetener caused cancer. It had frozen ice chips at the top and was in a glass bottle. I had to stay there and drink it, because I didn’t have the money for the deposit to take the bottle. It was so refreshing. I remember walking by the big picture window of the store every day and looking at the fat on my thighs. The reflection. You know, the inner thigh when you take a big step. The fat right there. I hated my fucking fat thighs. I hated my body. How could I look like that and be a gymnast? Weren’t gymnasts supposed to be in spectacular shape?

I remember a light blue leotard I had. I thought I looked really good in it. Turns out, not so much. Someone commented on how I looked. It wasn’t a good comment.

My issues with my body began then. My issues with food began then. I have written about this before. I had a gymnastics coach named Mr. Ball. I loved him as a coach. The first time he saw me he loved me. I was 12. The summer of 6th grade, going into 7th. I could knock out 15 pull-ups, easily. I was so strong. He loved that about me and of course, could see some potential in me. I lived and breathed gymnastics. I loved it. I loved going to practice everyday. I loved the hard work. I loved everything about it. I loved it until I was told I needed to lose ten pounds. I remember it. It was the summer of 9th grade. I weighed 116 pounds.

I remember questioning everything about everything. I remember feeling defeated and wondering how the hell I was going to lose ten pounds and why I even had to lose ten pounds. Maybe he saw the fat on my thighs. I struggled with this so bad. Because vulnerable age. Because vulnerable mindset. Because vulnerable.

Why can’t people think about things before they speak. I really don’t blame him. I guess it was a sign of the times back then. Nothing like now. Probably not meant in a harmful way at all. All in my best interests.

The weight loss journey began. Lots of different diets. Nothing worked. Surprise, surprise. I think I even rebelled and started eating candy bars and diet pop before practice. Because nobody was going to tell me what to do. Attitude perhaps. Of course.

I don’t even remember if I told my parents about it. I doubt it. I ordered a diet out of the back of Teen Magazine. It was a trifold piece of thick paper. It was pink. It was a high protein diet. I remember it had steak and boiled eggs. It worked, because I was slightly consistent. I may have lost a few pounds. Things do work when a person is consistent.

I have also written about my disordered eating and eating disorder as a result of this. I felt so out of control and the only way I could control this aspect of my life was with food. Bulimia hit me hard. This was awesome. Eat all the food. Puke all the food. Sure fire weight loss, right? Maybe. Sure fire health problems. It was a long and gory road. I had a lot of self hate. I remember seeing pictures of a gymnastics party at another coach’s house. Holy shit. Black circles under the eyes, cheeks drawn, but still fat.

It takes a lot of work to climb out of a pit like that. The self confidence is non-existent. Everything about yourself seems fake. Why did he have to say that?

I worked on myself for many, many years after that. The bulimia lasted through my junior year, I think. I didn’t go out my senior year. My beloved gymnastics career came to an end. I didn’t have the desire or passion for it any more. I was done.

I finally am starting to feel comfortable in my own skin. I don’t look in the picture windows anymore when I walk down the street. I don’t really pay attention much anymore.

I get asked a lot about how I come up with things to blog about. It is a little strange. I have all these jumbled words in my head waiting to form some semblance of a sentence and then paragraphs and finally a blog post. I write in fragmented sentences. It’s just what I do. It’s how I talk. It’s my style. Sorry if it drives people crazy. Sometimes, I get inspiration from clients. Sometimes I get inspiration from something I see on social media. Sometimes, something just pops into my head and I type it in my notes app on my phone and then hope that I remember what the hell I was talking about when I go back to review. I have a long list of notes. The problem is when I am going back to start writing a post, there might be just four words or three or maybe just a phrase. For example, as I was going back today to look at my notes entries, I found one that said, “Do you live in fear?” I’m glad it triggered me into remembering what I wanted to write about, because sometimes it doesn’t. I hate when that happens.

Do you live in fear? What does that even mean? Do you know?

If you follow my blog you know that my last few blog posts have been about life and have had a lot of reflection going on. They have been pretty serious. This is a serious one too, but in a different way.

Living in fear. When I say living in fear, I mean living in fear of disease. Living in fear of dying. Living in fear of living. A lot of people are afraid to live, don’t you think? I sure do.

The more we fear, the more we make ourselves bat shit crazy. I think the last month or so, has been very sobering. I have written about young people having heart attacks and young people dying. I have written about dead people in cemeteries. It makes you take a look at your own life. Pretty soon the voice creeps in. You know which one I’m talking about. The asshole fear voice. We all have it inside of us. When we are feeling vulnerable, or scared or alone, it usually makes its appearance. So the voice starts in, making you wonder. Do I have cancer floating around in my body? I HAVE been soooooo tired lately. I HAVE been feeling weak. Or you wonder if that little twinge you feel in your chest means you are going to have a heart attack. You wonder if because you are eating crappy food you are going to make yourself sick. You wonder if you are going to get heart disease or cancer or any other lifestyle disease. It is so easy to become OCD about this. It is so easy to get hung up on this mentality. So many people do it. So many people can’t get away from it. It consumes them. Pretty soon, you don’t want to go play outside with the kids or grandkids. Pretty soon, you just want to hang out on the couch and watch TV. Pretty soon, you are afraid to do ANYTHING.

I think we have certain expectations of how we should be, of how we should feel, of how we want to be and of how we want to feel. When those expectations are not being met to our OCD standards, we freak out a little. It’s okay to a certain extent. But, when thoughts like that start consuming us all the time, we need to step back and reevaluate what is going on with our health. We need to check it and listen to our body. We need to separate fiction from reality. We need to know the damn difference. We need to take a little inventory. Stress much? Sleep much? Play much? Eat much? Work much?

Take a step back and do a little reality check with yourself. Find that positive voice. You know which one I’m talking about. The nice and friendly voice. The one that says, “Nice job on the eight hours of sleep last night.” Or, “Nice job relaxing after work today.” The one that says, “You rocked your eating today.” You know, the positive voice The one that likes you. The one that looks out for you. The voice we should be listening to 90 percent of the time.

We need to quit living in fear and quit being afraid to live our lives. Get out there and try something new. Get out there and enjoy your kids or grandkids. Get our there and live your life! We are all going to die sometime. Don’t live in fear. Fear is a liar.