Just heard a Brooks & Dunn song that made me literally ache for the old days in San Antonio when I had such a wonderful group of both college and work friends that would regularly meet for happy hours on St. Mary's Street.   It's incredibly sad that I've never had a group of friends like that since moving to Atlanta.  Even when I had a slightly bigger group of friends, they were all married with kids (and therefore unable to ever do spontaneous happy hours), and they all lived and worked too far apart.

I really need to try and create some sort of group to do that with again.  It was wonderful.

Vacation was about the same this year, though I left still being able to speak to most of the family, so I suppose that's an improvement.

Unbelievable!!  I had my annual physical last week, and after six months of attempting my new program of Intuitive Eating and not exercising AT ALL, I was terrified that I'd have gained 20 pounds and that my blood sugar and cholesterol were going to be nightmares.  But, quite amazingly, the opposite was true!  I'd gained only 3 pounds, and all of my bloodwork came back normal!  Maybe it's actually possible to be fat, depressed AND healthy!  Who knew?  And the other good thing was that I fell back in love with my doctor at the appointment.  For the first time in forever, he was happy and jokey and not lecturing about my weight!  (Though I did cut him off at the pass somewhat by bringing up the mere 3 pound gain right away.)  And now that he's seen my test results, he should hopefully be the same way at my next appointment in September.  And with any luck, I might actually be less depressed by then, as I am thinking about heading back to the shrink in the next few weeks, to supplement the eating program and work on my family and social life issues.  So, maybe a tiny turnaround of sorts?  We'll see.

I'm having a week a feeling defeated.  Primarily because I feel like every effort I make to try and pull myself out my depression crashes and burns.  Somehow everything I attempt to do to change my life seems to leave me feeling more alone.

The biggest example right now is the career coach.  I was first disappointed by the fact that I would never actually meet her in person.  All of her coaching is done by phone, unless you have a huge amount of money to spend a whole weekend with her at a hotel.  Weird.  And the group coaching plan she thought would be great for me had been a complete dud, even by her own admission.  It's an hour per week on the phone with two or three other coachees, none of whom are very interesting, or even very interested, in my opinion.  They never do the assignments, they generally have little to contribute, and they certainly aren't interested in anyone else's issues.  But the bigger problem is that so far, 99% of the "program" we've gone through involves things I already know, and it doesn't appear that the rest of it is going to give me any fabulous new insight either, even doing a few private sessions with the coach for the last few weeks.  I think it is literally going to be a waste of $1500.  I think the only lesson I'm really going to learn from it is that I need to learn to trust myself more -- I really do know what I'm going to have to do (i.e., get off my ass, meet more people, take those damn computer classes again, and probably sign up with more recruiters.)  No one else has any genius ideas.

My next biggest disappointment has been signing up with another animal rescue group based on getting to know one of the girls in my building who does it too.  While I certainly enjoy being back at Petsmart with the cats, it's not nearly the same experience when you're doing it by yourself, which is how this group has it set up currently.  And they are also just as disorganized as my former group, which is disappointing as well.  I had hoped that my friend from downstairs and I would be able to work together to solve some of this, but lately she has seemed less interested in doing this, so I've backed off a bit so as not to appear overeager on either the "new girl takes over" front or the "desperate for friendship" front.  (As I've been on the other side of the latter, I know how annoying it is!)  But, as usual, I am impatient with the disorganization, as well as how slowly the social aspect of it all is going.

I'm also frustrated right now with my intuitive eating process.  While I think I've made decent strides at the first few steps of it -- allowing all foods, not berating myself for eating, noticing my physical hunger and full signs -- I still suck at being able to stop eating when I am full.  Because somehow to me, comfortably full does not alway equal satisfied.  A part of me, generally the part they refer to as "mouth hunger" - because it's based on taste, almost always wants to keep going.  And while I have not been on a scale since the doctor's office, I know I am still slowly gaining weight.  And I have not been able to make myself exercise yet, though I have no idea why, as I have mentally given myself permission to walk as little and as slowly as I want.  (Actually, that's a lie.  I do have some idea why.  It's because I am so damn tired at the end of the day -- a combined result of pure boredom at my job all day and the extra meds I'm on now -- that all I want to do is nap as soon as I get home, which is usually what I do.)

I know IE is a process, and can take a long time to learn, but my impatience is definitely not helping me out with it.  Plus, having my physical looming at the end of next month, and the family beach trip in July, I have several things on the horizon that I feel will damage my current calm approach.  And again, I feel like I am pretty much alone in this as well because I don't have anyone to talk to about it.  Even the online community for it responds to everything with "just love yourself", which is good advice in general, is not enough for me.  I've been trying to find some real life IE support groups in town, but the only one I've found is at an inpatient eating disorders clinic which I think would not be at all what I'm looking for.

I guess I am just really sad that even when I go out and make efforts to change things, none of it ever seems to pan out.   And maybe part of the problem is trying to do too much at once -- fixing the job problem, the social problem and the eating problem all at once.  Because it does feel somewhat exhausting.  But all of these things sort of came up at the same time, and at a time where I really felt I HAD to do SOMETHING about my life, so I don't think I could have said no to any of them.  I just wish even one of them were really making a serious difference in how I feel.

In followup to my last post:  I've had three doctor visits since then.  The first two were the absolute worst ever, with me bawling in his office while he berated me about my weight.  The second one even included some passive-agressive behavior I didn't even think he was even capable of, which was really, really disappointing. (It was in reaction to a letter I faxed him before my appointment asking him to please lay off his admonishments for now, as I was perfectly aware of my weight/health situation and his yelling only made things worse.)  At the end of the second appointment, he seemed to be a bit more understanding of my issues being primarily in my head, with my weight just being a symptom.  He agreed to up my antidepressants and give me anxiety meds also.   He really wanted me to get a shrink right away, but as I still don't have the money, I compromised and got a career coach instead, as that process is both shorter and cheaper, and might make enough change that I can live without a shrink for now.

So now I am working on several things.  The "identify my ideal career and go get it" process with the job counselor, which should take 2-4 months according to her.  And then I have also decided to finally take the advice of my very first (and best ever) shrink in Atlanta, Lynn, and try the Intuitive Eating process she thought I needed to do 10 years ago, as it really does seem to address almost exactly what I feel like I'm going through right now.

Of course, if I win the lottery, I will definitely be adding real therapy to all of this, but for now, I'm hoping these things will make enough of a dent to keep me from jumping off the proverbial bridge.  (Or in my case, just never getting out of my bed again.)

One more of my bizarro problems:  my ridiculous unhealthy (on my part) relationship with my doctor.  The issue:  I put WAY too much thought and stress into preparing for my appointments with him.  I know that it's due to the fact that I have so few people in my life (thereby giving the few people I do deal with undue influence on me), along with the fact that so much of my life has been focused on health related issues in the past few years, but I still can't stop myself from doing it.  I worry for weeks before each appointment about what he's going to say about my weight.  I plan for weeks exactly what I want to say to him about what's going on with me so that I can somehow elicit a response that doesn't chastise me for any weight gain and that doesn't necessitate me having to come back and see him any time soon.  The second part of that is literally just so that I can eat what I want for a week or so after each appointment.  Pathetic, I know, but 110% true.  It's so bad right now that I don't even want to tell him how I've recently reactivated my herniation, and how much pain it's causing me, because I don't want to have him tell me to come back in 6 weeks to evaluate it!  I would rather just suffer and be able to eat!

My food issues and depression issues are so huge now that I don't even feel like discussing them with him any more.  There have been times when I've felt like he heard me a little on these things, but certainly not every time, and not knowing how he's going to react to me each time makes me want to just go in, say as little as possible, and get out, just so he doesn't say anything to add to my depression.  Plus, I know he's not a shrink and, while he should be made aware of the fact that of my issues, he's not the one who should be altering his treatment of me to make me feel better about them.  He is genuinely entitled to be concerned about my weight medically, and therefore entitled to chastise me about it, as he knows I am capable of doing something about it.  But right now I spend way too much of my life planning serious dieting before my appointments, then big cheating sessions as soon as I'm out of his office.  I want soooo much to be able to just live my life, all year long, in a way that is normal and healthy, without all this obsession about his opinions.

I know this is a completely unhealthy way to relate to your doctor, but I can't seem to break out of it.  I try to tell myself to stop obsessing about it and being worried about what he thinks of me (as I have a huge case of "perfect patient" syndrome), because logically I know he doesn't think about me in any of the ways I imagine (meaning that I'm sure he thinks about all of his patients about the same - he's concerned with their health, but if they're generally doing OK, with no really major health problems, he's certainly not thinking of them much beyond their 20 minute appointments).  But I still fall into it every time.

I know I really need to find a therapist about all this.  And if it takes the rest of my savings account to see one, I should just suck it up and do it.  But I'm so torn about money right now....should I keep saving in the hopes of somehow, someday starting my bakery business, or should I spend it on a shrink?  First world problems, I know, but they are really tearing me apart right now.

The past month has been close to my most depressed ever.  The vacation was the usual family nightmare, to the point that I couldn't stand to speak to any of them for weeks afterward.  And since then I've sat at work watching the idiots I work for rake in money, while sharing absolutely none.  I have spent almost every minute I'm not at work in bed, either sleeping or voraciously reading in an effort to give myself some sort of alternate reality.  And the absolute worst part is having no one I can talk to about it.  Because basically I only speak to 3 people right now...my mother, my best friend from college, and my friend at work.  The idea of talking to my mother about it literally makes my skin crawl, as her suggestions are pathetic.  And I'm actually barely speaking to my work friend because all she can do is bitch about her own similar situation, but with no desire to talk about ways out of it.  So talking to her only makes me feel worse.  And while my friend from college is good to talk to, she has 3 kids and a crazy hectic life and no time.  Even therapy would frustrate me right now because I feel like I would need 3 hour sessions just to "un-frustrate" myself right now.   (Plus, of course, the fact that I can't even afford therapy right now.)

I feel like I live my life hating my job, worrying about my weight (which I am working on gaining all back, god damn it!), and trying to find a good book to escape into.  It's beyond pathetic.

I am feeling somewhat better today and am trying to work on a list of things I can do to change things, but the semi-good moods don't seem to last long lately.