Falling off the wagon

The past three days have been incredi-stressful. I worked and then quit my VERY short-lived job as a home health caretaker (thank fucking God), ran around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get myself together enough to get a new job, went to the lady-doctor for some lady-problems, and managed to somehow break my AC/get it fixed/break it again on the way home just in time for the middle of July. And on top of all of this, I've had a sore throat and lingering malaise for the past three days that I can't seem to shake.

[FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS]

When I get stressed, I turn to self-pity and self-indulgence. The reason I tried for a straight year to quit smoking is that every time something not-so-good happened to me, I would make excuses as to why I NEEDED THOSE TEN EXTRA CIGARETTES, IF I DIDN'T HAVE THEM I'D GET REALLY PISSY, AND DON'T I FUCKING DESERVE THEM? SHUT UP, I TOTALLY DO, NO REALLY, SHUT UP, GOD YOU'RE OBNOXIOUS, YOU MAKE ME WANT TO SMOKE.

I fear the same thing is beginning to happen with this diet. Oddly enough, not so much with the exercise--yes, I've skipped a few days (tonight included, because I felt so ill that I just fell asleep at like 9 PM) but I've at least made efforts to get through an entire workout. Diet? The diet has gone pretty much to hell for the past three days. And now I'm beginning to wonder if this sore throat/malaise stuff is related to that. EUREKA!

I have never ever EVER cared about my health or nutrition. I've always been healthy in the sense that I rarely get sick, and until about a year ago my metabolism was fast enough that I could get away with eating nothing but Mi Casita breakfast burritos, Shiner Black and fast food burgers all day every day. So yeah, that was good enough for me--being 5'6", 125-130 pounds, and eating/drinking whatever the fuck I wanted was really fun. 20 pounds later, here I am, full of self-loathing and apathy, rolling around on the ground post-fall from the wagon.

It's not the past three days that were my fall off the wagon, it's the past four years. Come to think of it, until now, was I ever really ON the damn proverbial wagon in the first place? Balancing health and hedonism is a tall order, and I've never been a very balanced person; my personal little universe tends toward entropy, which is part of what led me to embrace a hedonistic lifestyle while growing up and on into adulthood. When I'm drunk I feel simultaneously like God and the absence of one--I feel so witty and social, so fearless and powerful, as though I could do anything I wanted, and yet my anxieties and fears and aggressive tendencies are also unleashed, and sometimes I just yell and break shit. I feel best about myself when I'm tearing some part of me down, letting some aspect of myself crack and crumble until it sits in a pile on the floor, and throughout the years I've found that drinking And Other Things can be really good outlets for these urges (hence the Freshman 20 I've put on since starting college three years ago.)

But do I really want to be fat and unhealthy for the sake of having fun? Every time I watch that video Sean posted I want to vomit all over everything. I'm at 31% body fat (that is A LOT.) I have no energy when I stray from this diet; I feel sick and ashamed and lazy. But the cool thing is that this first week has taught me that exercise really CAN make you feel good. Before starting P90X I had never really experienced the "post-workout high" that so many people talk about. Surely enough, after the second day (Plyometrics, UGH), I collapsed on my living room floor in a pile of sad and fat and gave myself a few moments of feeling sorry for myself, and then BOOM out of nowhere I felt fucking phenomenal. My muscles were so relaxed and limber and I could feel every inch of my body purging the sleepy lazy years of disuse. My legs and feet were throbbing and I could almost hear them screaming at me, "BESS, YOU FUCKING CUNT, WHY DON'T YOU USE US MORE OFTEN? OH YEAH, BECAUSE YOU LOVE BEER MORE THAN MOST THINGS, INCLUDING US. QUIT IT, YOU TUBBY BITCH."

(It was really a much more poetic moment than I'm making it out to be, but it's four in the morning and I'm not really feeling eloquent and shit right now.)

I digress. My point in all of this is that I think hedonism and health CAN actually coexist, or at least be embraced in the same plane of existence, however begrudgingly. When I do my poorly-executed jab/cross/hook/uppercut combo during Kenpo, I get horribly angry and imagine that I'm actually punching the P90X guy in the dick; then I get super giddy and my mind goes blank. My hedonism has been an outlet for similar feelings--stupid professor, this assignment is fucking dumb and you're a cunt, guess I'll just drink until I'm passionate enough to actually care about it, TAKE THAT YOU COLLEGIATE BITCH. Holy crap guys, they're, like, kind of the same thing? Except that exercise DOESN'T make me fat and, in fact, makes me the opposite?

Enough wagon-falling. Enough beer gut and cellulite and whining. I am not going to punch fat in the face, I am going to knife it and leave it to bleed out in a ditch.

Jesus, I get really violent with my metaphors in the middle of the night. ♥