The verdict for this past week - I lost 3.6 lbs total and a big goose egg for inches. Weird, seeing as my clothes are fitting way better today than they did last Sunday.
Anyway. I don't want to talk about food today. Well, I kind of do. I guess I want to talk about WHY I over eat. I've always been a highly emotional person - I care... a lot. Which means I'm hurt... a lot. I try really hard to just keep that all in check and be a normal even keel person on the outside but the truth is I mask a lot of hurt feelings. Recently I went through a really painful experience that I'm honestly ashamed is still affecting me so badly. I'm a grown woman, I'm an adult... a wife, a mother... a business owner, a hard working contributing person. Yet I recently found myself in the most middle school of friendship situations.
For context... we live in a pretty small town. And what they say about small town drama is no stretch of the truth. We get it here, bad. I have lived here since I was 10, only leaving for college for a couple of years. Growing up here was hard - the kids at school were less than nice to me especially in middle school. High school was tough, too, but for the most part I found my place and was able to have a pretty good experience "not giving a shit" through most of it. But honestly the HARDEST part of living here has been during my adult life. Because I got pretty savvy to the small town drama, I decided I'd be pretty choosy about my friendships. I have my family here, it's not like I don't have people to spend time with. But a girl needs friends, right?! I just haven't put myself out there very much, I've absorbed myself in my work and my kids and it hasn't left any time for playing or girls nights. The girls that used to invite me to do things just quit after I said no like a dozen times. That hurts sometimes. But I get it. I became close with a mom that goes to my church, we had a lot in common and spent a lot of time talking on the phone or going out to the late movie after the kids were in bed and hubbies were home to enjoy time to themselves. In fact, I'd call her my BFF if I wanted to be REALLY middle school about it. We were BFFs. Honestly I didn't have any other friends here. I had really friendly acquaintances, but no one else that I go do things with or would just call randomly to vent or chat or ask advice. She was my person, pretty much my only person.
Well, through my work I met a girl who also owns a business and she and I hit it off right away. We actually went to high school together but I didn't know her real well growing up. We really had a lot of good vibes, we could talk about literally anything and she was so much fun. Just crazy, fun. She doesn't have kids so her life is a lot more flexible and because we worked in the same building we'd see a lot of each other, we'd do lunches and would find ways to incorporate our work with one another so we got to spend more time together. I think BFF got a little jealous of this friendship because, while it didn't mean I spent any less attention on her, she was in the same 1-friend-in-this-town boat as I was! So of course, I tried to incorporate her and make sure she wasn't feeling left out. She'd drop in frequently, we had a good time. Well Work Girl and I were both struggling with the building we were in (we own our own businesses) and decided we would try to find a building to ourselves that we'd share. Our businesses were hitting it off, just like we were as friends, so why not just permanently incorporate the two.
There was a perfect building downtown that I'd been eying for 3 or 4 years, I knew I needed to have that building. Well, the building came open just at the time we were discussing this. I heard about it first, I told her to come look at it with me. We went, we looked at it and fell in love - put money down and moved just a few weeks later! It was a whirlwind, totally crazy. At first things were just nuts, how to incorporate the two businesses visually with out stepping on one anothers toes was a really fine line we were walking. It was around this time that I feel like I got to know her even better and in a lot of ways I was feeling kind of disappointed - I realized she was spending a lot of time talking badly about other people, something I try to completely avoid. I don't want to be involved in the small town drama, I have worked really hard to maintain my integrity as a good person and I don't want to spread the crap around. She does. A lot. Which looking back, I wish I'd known just before we'd decided to move - I probably never would have made that decision. It may seem silly, but that's honestly a deal breaker to me. You never know what people like that are saying behind YOUR back. I would prefer to know what's being put out there about myself. I realized I'd put myself right in the fire when I started hearing things around town about myself that simply were not true, and of course I knew where they generated. It was heart breaking to feel like I trusted someone so much and they were just... fake. And mean.
Before long I noticed she was pushing me out of the space. She'd arrange her retail stuff to hide my space, which by the way I paid half of the rent, everything down the middle, and was using about 1/3 of the space. So to have my "down town presence" disguised was really frustrating. Then, the summer came and my husband had to take a job out of state. He was gone for 2 months (the only 2 months he's been able to work in the last 14! yeah, it's stressful up in here). I had to bring my work home, to work around my kids nap and school schedule, it was the only way it'd work. This is when everything really went to crap. She began telling people that I was a flake, that I was flaking out on her. WHAT?! And I spent literally zero minutes at the space for those 2 months, literally - no time. And I was still paying half of the utilities, per our agreement, but when the electric bill was $300 and I used NO electricity, AND I was getting gypped out of the space we'd agreed was mine, AND I was getting smeared publicly by her, I had enough! Working from home was just fine, in fact it was better than working down town in a lot of ways. But I didn't want to leave her in the lurch - I wasn't going to just leave. I had to talk to her about it and figure something out. It was so weird, I went in to talk about all this with her and before I could say anything she says, "You know, if you need to get out you should just get out, I have a LOT of people interested in sharing space here with me, I'm going to be just fine." So I decided not to try to talk about any of the other stuff, she had just given me my out and I didn't need to give more fuel for the fire, more stuff for her to talk about me behind my back about! I decided to keep it as basic and stripped down as possible, as little drama as necessary. She didn't NEED me there anymore. So I told her I'd never considered leaving, which was true, and that I'd think about it and talk to my husband about it that night. We both agreed this was the right thing, so the next day I told her I was giving my 30 days notice but that I would get my stuff out IMMEDIATELY so she could start using the space that much sooner - meaning I paid for that months rent, but she was getting the whole space. In every single decision I defaulted to what was the benefit of her business - I did as I was taught growing up, I put others needs before mine. And you know what? I got really burned. Because I was out a TON of money, and if anything I just made my business look flaky for moving for such a short period of time, and I opened myself up to a lot of public smearing. She is a TALKER, she is in touch with a lot of people on a daily basis. And I was getting Facebook messages, emails, phone calls about wanting to know the story about what happened, because this and this and this is what they had heard from her - all of which was totally misrepresented and untrue.
During this time... BFF and Work Girl became pretty close. Shocker, right? I really know how to pick 'em. BFF called me at one point and said "You know I love you both and I'm not going to pick sides." I said, "There are no sides to pick, she and I came to this conclusion together and everything is fine, we both did what was best for our businesses" (which is TOTALLY true, all emotion aside, this really was better for both of us) And she said, "Well, I just don't want to be caught in the middle." Which is hilarious- obviously she was hearing things about me, HER BFF, and wasn't defending me the way a BFF should because she "wasn't going to pick sides". There really were no sides to pick, but wouldn't it be nice to know that if there WERE, your best, closest and only friend would have your back and be loyal to you? Well. I realized with that friendship that I was putting a lot of the effort into the friendship for quite some time - if we visited, it's because I called. If we did something like go out to dinner or the movies it's because I invited. I decided to go cold turkey and let her fight for the friendship a little bit because at this point I couldn't care less how everything ended up. I felt really hurt. She never called. She never asked me to do anything. She never emailed. She has texted a few times "I miss u! Let's get together and catch up soon!" I don't want to be fake with her, the truth is our friendship has REALLY changed. In fact, she now works at Work Girl's store one day a week and literally every time I drive past her car is parked there where she's obviously just shooting the shit. She did choose a side, in the end. And I hope she doesn't get hurt the way I did by that friendship but I will never trust either of them the way I used to. I don't mind being casual friends, the occasional girls night or whatever, but I will not share personal things or ask advice or rely on them for anything. During those 2 months while my husband was working out of state and things fell apart at work with our arrangement, neither one of them checked on me, brought me a Chai Latte or called to see how I was doing as a single working mother, putting in 40-60 hours a week WHILE THE KIDS SLEEP. Do you know how crazy that is? They weren't there for me, not once. No one was. Actually, to be honest, my HAIR DRESSER was - she offered several times to bring her kids over to play with mine so we could just chat. She was very sweet. I never took her up on it, but she was the only person that made me feel like I was being thought about or cared about at all during that really hard time.
Obviously I need to get over this all. During the last 6 months or so that all this has happened, my weight did go up and I was really emotionally eating a lot. I kept feeling so stupid for feeling so hurt and worked up about all this, I wanted to convince myself that my emotions weren't valid and I tried to shut them up with food. I really didn't have anyone to talk to about all of this, and I'm the kind of person that just has to vent to get over it. So maybe this is me venting to get over it, I don't know.
I do know that I don't trust people easily and I think I come across as a little stand-offish to new people, maybe I'm not easy to befriend. But I have a lot of love to give and I like to have fun and socialize. It's been so hard feeling so lonely for the last long time. I mean, really really lonely.
I'm not sure why I had to just word vomit all of that... I don't even know if I feel better now. I do know that I lost 3.6 pounds this week and I'm pretty proud of that, I'm proud of my changing body and my changing habits. I'm really ready for P2 to be over with, I'm putting in at least another 6 days of it, trying to lose another 6 or 7 pounds before I go into P3. So... let's see how it goes! :)
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