As usual, Michelle should learn to never say "Never"

I’ve sat down to write several times in the last week and have even gotten half way through a post several times only to leave it to come back to and just never got back. I think I’ve been struggling for a few reasons. First of all, whenever I say I’m NOT going to talk about something in my blog (most recently it’s been my love life), I find that it stifles the desire to write at all. Part of me feels as if it has been gagged and bound and thrown into the closet and the rest of me has to go on and act as if everything else is hunky dory and well, I’ve never been that great of a liar…ask anyone that knows me…my mom used to joke that she never had to pressure me to own up to a dishonesty because eventually, I’d just own up to it and spill my guts at her feet. My conscience has always been the size of Texas.

Anyway, I realize that there is nothing that says I have to share EVERYTHING here, but when I put these self-imposed stipulations on what I can and can’t talk about, it just seems to stifle the rest of me and anything I wind up writing sounds shallow, hollow and just dry as dirt. So, most of the writing I’ve done in the past week has found itself in the waste basket (of course they’ve actually found themselves in the Window’s recycle bin…I mean who actually rips paper out of a typewriter, crumples it up and pitches it in a waste basket anymore?)

So, I guess I’m just going to talk about whatever comes to mind and try not to edit myself too much for content and see where it gets me. Probably a novel of a post, but considering I seem to be posting once a week if I’m lucky, you guys are owed a nice long one. I’ll try to make it interesting :)

On the weight loss and exercise front, I am down to around 306-307 (YAY!), but have been pretty crappy about the exercise (BOO!). I’m super excited that I will be leaving the 300’s forever in hopefully a few weeks, but disappointed that I’ve been so lazy when it comes to the exercise. We just had some new neighbors move in next door and one of them is a young mom that seems super nice. Her kidlets are adorable as well and I was talking to her yesterday about maybe going walking with me. I may run over there later and see if she’d like to join Tanner and me.

I still want to get back on the P90 thing too. I was going fairly well (for a whole three days lol) and then got sidetracked, with work or some other convenient excuse I’m sure. I’m really starting to see my body change as the weight comes off and while I know NO amount of exercise is going to make this skin shrink up or give me the gorgeous ta-ta’s I want, it sure won’t hurt things and when I do get around to getting plastic surgery, at least I’ll have a nice firm shape to show off once everything is tightened back up. Here is one plastic surgeon.I’m evaluating. The link should take you to an article where she basically details the plastic surgery post-bariatric patients often opt for and even gives a time-line. Using her BMI calculator, I need to be around 185 lbs before we can talk about surgery. I’m going to see if I can get in to see her closer to 220 though because I have such a huge bone structure, she may want to revise when I’d be ready to start. Honestly, at 220 most people guessed me at 160. Maybe I just carry the weight well, but I also think I have the bone structure of a cro-magnon. I know I’m going to always be scarred for life, but I really don’t care at this point. I’m just looking forward to getting my body as close to what it should have been had I never put it through the yo-yo dieting of the last 35 years.

Now for the bits I’ve been avoiding…Yes, I am seeing someone at the moment. He is the writer/photographer/intellectual guy I met on one of the dating sites. You may remember that I had contacted him and one other man after closing my main account to see if they might be interested in being friends once I decided I wasn’t ready for a relationship. I heard back from both, but really only seemed to click with this particular man. We sent pages and pages of emails getting to know each other and discovering that we shared the same sense of humor, values, parenting ideology (he has a daughter about 9 days younger than Tanner), etc. We met several times as friends and the more I got to know him, the more I wanted to know. He is extremely sweet and thoughtful and unlike the few others I encountered in the online dating realm, completely respectful of my boundaries. This poor guy has had to deal with me slamming on the brakes time and time again in the last month or so as something would spook me, making me question whether I was doing the right thing in even pursuing a relationship period.

So far, it doesn’t take much to spook me apparently. I’ve already gotten the obvious questions about his sexuality out of the way and he took that like a champ assuring me that he is most definitely straight. Of course, having heard this before in my marriage and having countless other str8 spouses report the same from spouses in denial, I’m not as inclined to accept things at face value. However, I do believe him. Of course now I'm just waiting for him to admit a desire to dress up in my lingerie or perhaps as an adult baby with me playing the role as nanny. He's given me absolutely no reason to suspect something like this, but I guess I've been somewhat conditioned to expect the worst.

Despite all of this, I am finding that my hesitation and need to take things extremely slow probably have less to do with my experience in my marriage and more to do with my experiences as a young girl growing up in a body that looked years older than the girl inside.

Last night I was with him and all he did was kiss me and after a few minutes, I could feel the old need to bolt begin to build inside. I like him. I’m attracted to him (physically and otherwise) and I was enjoying the kiss; yet, all of a sudden…I just began to feel like I wanted to run and just keep running. He could sense this and just came out and asked me if I was ok. I was honest with him and explained how I was feeling and he immediately reassured me, sat back and just started talking to me. While sipping on some wine, we spent the next two or three hours just talking (about various things…not just my feelings or where we were headed, etc). Basically, we just enjoyed each other’s company, and he put no pressure on me for anything more than that. Our evening ended with a nice hug, a quick kiss and a final whispered reminder from him about how special he thought I was (yeah he’s that sweet). He seems ok with the snail’s pace our relationship seems to be moving so I’m going to try and just accept that maybe I actually found the elusive male who can control himself when he feels the outcome is worth the wait.

Who knows if this is the right time for me to be pursuing this? I am going to be looking more seriously into finalizing my divorce with Erik. Even though it is just a formality, I think it is a necessary formality; even if I wasn’t involved with someone and even though our living arrangement won’t change any time soon.

I have no idea where this is going with this other man and I’m honestly trying to not look too far into the future because that scares the hell out of me too. All I know is that I like this person for many reasons and while it may be the wrong time, I’d hate to pass on something promising because circumstances are less than ideal. Working through these issues is going to happen sooner or later and pausing things right now just means I’ll have to pick them up later; possibly with someone who won’t be as understanding or accommodating. And yes, I will be looking into finding a professional to talk to about all my “issues.” Not just in regards to my fears when it comes to men, but how that all relates to my weight issues because…duh! Doesn’t take a psychologist to see the connection there does it?