I wish I could go back. I miss it. I miss the excitement. I miss learning about what’s new. I miss the awesome feeling of starting out fresh and full of motivation. I miss the opportunity to find a new gadget or two just for kicks. I miss that first week of being on WW–the determination, the drive to succeed, the steadfast refusal to fail. Lately, it’s all about having done this before. Countless times. And failed. Countless times. It doesn’t seem like a new start these days, so much as unwelcome reruns of a bad sitcom. Everything is stale and old. It’s not exciting, it’s S.O.S.–the Same Old Sh!t. And that makes it very hard to make it work. I’ve been there, done that, over and over and over. And now I’m doing it again, because I haven’t gotten anywhere all the times I’ve done this before.
How can I make this new again? I know WW is the right program for me. It’s healthy, it’s simple, it’s sensible. But it’s not new. Why do I need it to be new? What is it about “new” that makes this seem easier? Maybe, like the first day of school, it’s because it’s all fresh and clean. It hasn’t been mucked up yet. And as a perfectionist, once it’s mucked up, it can never go back to fresh and clean. Why does that matter? What’s wrong with starting over after erasing mistakes and giving it another try, instead of just giving up? All through school, I would do just that–make a mistake, erase, and then end up berated for the less than stellar condition of my paper. Dirty mark from the eraser, maybe a hole in the paper, clearly not fresh and clean, like Kathy S.’s papers always were. So give up and don’t even try. Because you can’t do it right, perfectly right.
I’ve messed it up so many times that I just can’t start over one more time. What’s the point? I’LL TELL YOU WHAT THE FREAKIN’ POINT IS! It’s about taking care of myself, not about being perfect and neat and right. It’s about caring for myself as much as I care about others. It’s about being the best I can be, whether I’m sloppy or neat. Why does that get lost in the process? Why is that so hard to grasp? Because I learned right at the start that it has to be clean and neat and perfect, or they won’t like you and you’ll get yelled at. But it can’t be clean and neat and perfect, so why bother?
More on this later. This really isn’t where I expected this to go. I have to let this marinate between my ears for a while to see where else it takes me…