so.. i'm back?

it's been 2 and a half years. My worst fears have come true. And I'm kind of starting out again.

i have come back to this blog kind of to motivate myself; kind of to continue whatever this story is. I did want to make a yt series on weight loss, and I have a lot to process.

let's then quick recap all that happened after my last post so far (since November of 2021). Freshly after a situationship, I threw myself into exercise. I taught myself how to headstand and I was really proud of my progress with it. I was starting to train for pull-ups and jump rope. It was, in some ways, fun.

I also gave up on measuring my scale weight. I loved my body basically as it was; I wanted to expand my limits and focus less on weight.

However I was unhappy in another way - after that situationship. I was invested. I kind of feel some progress of my personality has declined since, and have recently started working on "fixing" that. Let's not skip that far forward, yet. I was also invested in finding a replacement. I went on tinder, I talked to men, and long story short, ended up with a gynecologist to ask for antibiotics. Oh, and after 3 shots against the rona, I did catch the disease.

It was catching the rona that kind of pulled me out of this obsession with men. I decided to go to the gyno, get the antibiotics, and get back into fitness. The gyno took an ultrasound of my stomach and found a cyst.

Let me just quickly drop in and explain my understanding of cysts: I didn't have any! I heard stories of American women getting ovarian cysts and being operated on when they get to the size of an orange, or when they started causing pain. I heard of people getting their fallopian tubes twisted due to cysts and how painful that was.

The gyno told me she was gonna put me on birth control, to treat the cyst that way. I immediately crumbled emotionally. I just barely crawled out of a depressive episode and was struggling to stay out after the break; and then there I was, getting prescribed "treatment" with a blanket size paper of side effects. I followed the treatment plan.

The treatment plan included "a break from intense physical activity" which no one could define for me. Unsurprisingly, I slipped back into the depression, into my old emotional eating, I gained the weight back, and by now I have been missing out on so many martial arts classes that I have been removed from the FB group and I keep wondering if I did something wrong.

I also did not go back to therapy - it could not fit my work schedule, and the therapist's questions, insights and mindset not only made me uncomfortable, I also felt invalidated.

I kept remembering a phrase I heard from my situationship. About how he almost ended it at a certain point. When I initially heard it, I was, let's say, horrified, not only of the thought of him committing, but also of almost having lost him. And as this kept popping up in my mind after he left, after I was removed from my coping mechanisms and put on these hormones that fucked with my mood - I too started considering the exact method he described. Of course, I did not attempt, partially because I found it stupid. Another part of me, still somehow clinging to hope, did not want to give up on everything.

Eventually, after considering ending it that way, I decided if I didn't want to continue either way, I should resume exercising. That also did not work out - I felt weak. I felt my heartrate go up just from standing. I was ashamed.

All of this lead to me not even being sure what my identity should have been at that point. Was I still the girl who lost the weight? Was I still the woman who recovered from emotional binge eating? Was I still the person who loved exercise, the one that could do anything she put her mind to? I did not feel that at all. I felt and saw any goals I had previously set (such as getting to my goal weight, or to black belt) just crumble to dust in front of me. I am in fact still grieving as I type. I honestly could just not cope.

Unsurprisingly, as I slipped back into the old habits and problems, I started losing track of time. There are events I know happened, but I cannot really estimate, when. Some things that happened in 2022 feel like last year, and vice versa. It did take me some time to start digging myself out of it, even after going off birth control as a new cyst developed inside of me, for which it was not effective at all. Surgery remained the only option, and my anger surfaced - I did leave it out to keep the story as concise as possible, but when the initial cyst was diagnosed, I did want to get operated on. I was offered help from a colleague, and then the colleague refused to do it without professional recommendation. To get the professional recommendation, I had to follow the treatment plan and I did keep going back for checkups, saw no progress, or even new cysts forming, and finally after 5 months into a 3 month treatment, I went back and begged for the treatment to stop. Then the new cyst that could not be expected to respond to hormone treatment was discovered.

At this point I was so deep into my angst that I did not follow directions from my doctor to get it MRI'd and just drew back from everything. I needed some new anger and despair to get back both into resolving the medical thing, as well as to restart my weightloss journey. I did get the MRI. It was excrutiating to stay in the tube, bored out of my mind, body unable to move, my overweight body pushing down on itself and stuck in that position. And after the MRI was done, I did get the official recommendation for surgery.

In the meantime, I was fired from my job and lost medical coverage with a private company. I had to pay to complete some of their evaluations, to receive (by my understanding) outdated and to be fair, also upsetting advice, and it again just made me want to handle everything by myself, to prove myself to these doctors. To show that they don't know what they're doing with me, that I am not like their training was. Quite egotistical, if we're fair.

So, after all these conflicts, I'm about a couple weeks out from getting my belly cut up - the cyst is too big to be removed with a simple laparoscopy, so a laparotomy may be needed. I'm disappointed. I really wanted to avoid getting cut up, but in a way, I "deserve" this for delaying the diagnosis while depressed.

I have remained single throughout this bullshit. I want to "fix" my emotions, I want to be able to form secure attachments, and I still want to lose weight. I did lose about 5 kilograms, but now I'm just back at my starting weight from 2021 - January.

So, what is next?