A Constant Battle

I would love to say that I’m a healthy living blogger. In fact, I’ve tried to be before with a blog called Lori Goes Raw. During this brief stint, I ate more vegetables than I previously thought possible. I even exercised and got into what might have been the best shape of my life. I recall bits and pieces of my 3-month physical therapy clinical when I lived in Somerville, Massachusetts – the raw days. I remember going to work 5 days a week at an Early Intervention organization where I was praised highly for my skills. This felt good, even though my clinical instructor babied me (pun… intended). I touted the benefits of a raw diet as I ate giant salads every day at lunch. I constantly felt, happily so, like I got off easy with that clinical, working 6 hours a day and driving around to patients’ homes beyond the confines of a clinic. Every day after work, I’d hit the gym where for a while I had a personal trainer, and after that, ran on the treadmill. The treadmill! I once was running next to someone who clearly was only first setting foot on a treadmill. I glanced at my time and it was approaching 1 hour. I vaguely remember giving her some advice when she asked me a question. I tend to have a pretty good poker face, but you better believe I was grinning ear to ear inside.

Once I moved back home, things gradually changed. I was in my parents’ house again, after 6 years of living on my own. I didn’t have the space nor the creative energy to stay happily raw. I wasn’t beaming with the I’m-healthier-than-you glow because my family, the devout meat-eaters, chastised me for not being like them. I hate arguing, but got into a number of arguments about why I eat the way I do. I tried to just set an example, not telling others what to do, but doing it for myself, but it stopped being fun, and the novelty wore off. I eventually transitioned to regular vegan, which isn’t a decision I regret. I do feel that I lost my edge, the something in my life that made me skinnier and prettier than the others. I started occasionally eating processed vegan food, desserts, more coffee than I know is good for me. I started exercising less and developed more anxiety, something that has on-and-off been a problem for my entire life. I started working at a job that scared me to death because the well-being of my patients was in my hands and I knew I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to.

Now, it’s over one year later. I’m still vegan and I get angry with myself when I steal a bite of my dad’s apple crisp, made with butter. My acne remains a source of my anxiety, however less so since I finally quit using natural remedies. Lush, I love you and all you stand for, but yours and the other natural face washes and moisturizers did nothing to fight my adult acne. Hello, benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid. I am drinking far too much coffee these days, something I’ve quit too many times to count. Yes, I’ve tried decaf as well as that non-coffee coffee drink whose name is escaping me at the moment, but I always return to my beloved anxiety-inducing-but-still-somehow-fabulous caffeine. It’s an ongoing battle. I still live at home, which is an unrelenting source of my anxiety. My parents fight often and my brother treats me like we’re kids again, occasionally reminding me that my clinical doctorate isn’t “real,” among other lovely insults. I often resent having to pay rent when I don’t actually want to be here. Over the course of the past year, I mentioned needing to move out, only to have my mom almost break down in tears because they needed my rent money. In about a month and a half, I’ll finally be moving out with friends. This is something I should be excited about, but as it stands, it’s something that is just allowing me to see a faint light at the end of a tunnel.

This weekend has been hard. I recently stopped hanging out with a group of girls because I found that they were shallow, only wanted to go out and get wasted, and didn’t actually care about me as a person. I stopped seeing a guy who I [foolishly] wanted more than sex with. He clearly wanted only that, and though he says he’d like to continue to be friends, I only talk with him briefly at work and hear nothing about weekend plans.  I have so many friends elsewhere; I grew up in New Jersey, went to college in the lovely city of Boston, and now have friends scattered about the country. It’s hard not to get down on myself when I spend weekends alone, at home, where I don’t even want to be. This weekend was the tipping point for starting this blog.

Without making this into any more of a novel than it already is, I would like to say a big thank you to anyone who made it this far. Let it be known that I don’t plan on always writing such long posts! I feel like blogging on such a personal level is going to be a good outlet for me, because no matter how many healthy living blogs I read every day, I know I need to work through many of my own issues to become the person I know I can eventually be – HAPPY and healthy.