A New Beginning

I am depressed. This hasn’t been a very good week… actually, it hasn’t been a very good past couple of months. I was never feeling great about the wedding, but I had basically fixated all of my negative feelings that I was having in general on my wedding and/or my weight. Even my weight I lumped into the wedding category though, because I told myself that if it weren’t for the wedding I could be happy with the progress I’d made since there wouldn’t have been such a definite deadline. But, now the wedding is over and I’m left realizing that my bad feelings weren’t really about the wedding, they’re something much more and something I can’t seem to shake on my own.

I don’t know what is going on in my own head, but I know I’m unhappy. I have had several unfortunate incidents happen since my wedding. First Rob and I discovered that at least 4 cards were stolen from our wedding containing over $500 in gifts. Then about 2 weeks later, our garage was broken into by some drugged out jerk who broke my car window to steal my GPS. He also took Rob’s MP3 player and a few other random things. That cost us another $300ish. Then exactly 2 weeks after that incident, when we were driving home Rob and I were hit by a drunk driver. The drunk never even slowed down but left my car with about $2000 in damage. We have a $1000 deductible on our insurance company, so that left me with another $1000 in expenses and yet another situation in which I have no way of suing or anything to recoup our losses. It’s been frustrating, to say the least.

But, unfortunately, I just haven’t really been able to get over all of the crap that has happened. I’m so angry. Too angry. I’m also just generally feeling down. I don’t have any desire to talk to friends or family (I’d prefer not to talk to anyone), I don’t have the desire to do anything with my hobbies, I don’t care about much of anything. I’ve been working out just the same as always, but I’ve been eating crap (which must stop, btw). So, I went to my primary doctor this week and she prescribed Welbutrin for me. Today is my 3rd day on it and so far I am not impressed. I know it takes weeks to get the full effect of antidepressants though, so I’ll keep taking it. Honestly though, I wonder if it’s just something else that is causing my anger/depression/irritability/whatever. I wonder if I have a tumor or something. I have been so excessively tired, and it doesn’t really matter how much I sleep. I could sleep all day, every day. I get 7 1/2 or 8 hours every single night without fail, yet I’m always tired. Welbutrin is supposed to keep you awake, too, but it definitely hasn’t done anything like that to me.

Another unfortunate thing is that yesterday I got a migraine headache. I’ve been prone to migraines since I was a kid (got my first one in 5th grade and remember it quite clearly). In high school I was getting as many as 3 migraines a week, but they’ve been much less frequent in the past few years. I used to think that my trigger was exerting myself without having eaten anything because I got migraines in the morning right after marching band practice pretty often and I never used to eat breakfast. But, I don’t know anymore. Lately they’ve just been happening at times when that trigger isn’t an issue, and I’m actually starting to think that for me, migraines are tied to depression somehow. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever labeled myself as depressed, but looking back, I know I’ve been depressed for most of my life. It’s obvious. I was definitely unhappy and depressed in high school, a little less so in college, and then again pretty depressed when I worked at my first job after I graduated. Man, I hated that traveling so much. I used to get migraines a lot on audits… and the depression thing certainly explains that as a better trigger.

Anyway, I really need to get focused again. I hope this medicine helps because I’m tired of feeling so tired and just completely unmotivated. Seeing 160.0 on the scale this morning nearly had me in tears. I’ve been eating way too much junk lately and it’s catching up with me. I am not going to be buying anymore potato chips or making anymore candy at home. I love making candy and baking and whatever, but it’s horrible for my weight so I’ve got to focus on other things.

I want to be a size 8, damn it. A real size 8, not an inflated size 8 like they sell in every store lately… which, by the way, has anyone else noticed how ridiculous it has gotten? I am 6 pounds overweight and, according to most stores (Old Navy, Limited, New York & Company, Ann Taylor, etc.) I am a size 10 and lately I’ve been buying medium shirts. So, I decided it might be fun to try and sew a dress to wear to one of the weddings I am going to soon. I went to JoAnn’s and found a pattern labeled “very easy” for a dress style I thought looked nice. I bought the pack of patterns that has sizes 6, 8, 10, and 12, assuming I’d fit in a 10 or 12 based on what I’ve been buying lately. Boy, was I wrong. This is the experience that has woken me up to just how insanely inflated our sizes have become. Obviously, the sewing industry hasn’t jumped on the vanity sizing bandwagon, and honestly, I’m thankful for that! The unfortunate thing is that I had to return my pattern and get the “woman’s” pattern instead, which has sizes 14, 16 and 18. Sadly enough though, I am actually too big for even the size 18 dress! My hips and bust are an 18, and my waist is, wait for it… a size 20! 2-0 people! I am comfortably wearing size 10s in the stores, yet according to the sewing size charts and my measurements, I should be wearing a size 20. This is why Marilyn Monroe was a size 14 (or was it 12?) yet looks stunning… because a 14 in non-vanity sizing is equivalent to about a size 6 in what we wear today. I’ve always found that Mariyln Monroe statistic annoying because I knew it was not accurate and just being used to give overweight women a false sense of “it’s okay to be fat.” But, seeing those pattern sizes for myself has really made me realize just how crazy clothing sizing is… Someday I’m going to be a REAL size 8… which means I’ll probably wear a size 2 or something insane.

Anyway, I hope I will be back on track again soon.  I haven’t been taking phen and that definitely makes things harder.  But, at the same time, I need to figure out how to do this on my own anyway.   Lucky for me, weight gain isn’t a side effect of welbutrin, and in fact, weight loss is.  But, only in my dreams can a pill both make me feel better mentally and make me lose weight… that would be the day!