“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”
So the quote says. I guess I never really thought of life until I found out how close my life was to ending.
In our lives, we all strive for accomplishment. This is a story about one person’s accomplishments and what happened after.
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Back a few years ago, almost a decade, I thought I was just cruising through existence being copacetic. Then I found out I could barely move without having to stop and rest for five minutes.
I took a good look at myself and thought, “My God, I’m fat. I gotta do something”.
And so our journey begins.
With help, I found a doctor specializing in non surgical weight loss procedures. Sign me up, I said. COBRA said, OK cool. We got you. Off you go to lose some weight. First things first, though. Time for a battery of tests. I get the tests back, and I believe my reaction was what the Urban Dictionary calls “shook”. My doctor told me I would have been dead in six months.
Damn.
Well, that can be motivation for even the laziest, most procratinatory person. We set up a plan, and then things started happening. Fast. I lost fifteen pounds in the first week. 42 pounds in three weeks. A hundred pounds in three months. Two hundred pounds in nine months. Three hundred pounds in a year and a half.
Let me repeat that. I lost THREE HUNDRED POUNDS in only EIGHTEEN MONTHS.
Well. That kind of progress causes some changes. And all were good. My face shrunk and its definition returned. I was able to shop off the rack. When I lost 200 pounds, my reward was a bike. The first thing I did was Bike The Drive—when Chicago closes Lake Shore Drive to cars and people can ride their bikes up and down one of the nation’s most famous 15 mile stretches of city streets. Then I lost my mind. My sister that summer had run in a couple of triathlons. I thought that was cool, and I found out about the Sprint distance. I said to myself, “I’d like to do that someday.” So later that summer and into the winter, I decided “What the Hell. I’ll do it next summer.” I had been taking some deep water aerobics classes at the local Y. I was also still a strong swimmer. Slow as hell, but strong. I could easily swim the half mile required. Having done one Bike the Drive, I was confident in my ability to bike 12-15 miles. Now, all I had to do was learn how to run a 5K.
Long story short, I figured out running, and to my surprise, I LIKED it. I know, right? The guy whose response to any kind of running used to be a disdainful “I don’t run” coming to LIKE to run? Holy Forrest Gump, Batman.
So then I entered my first triathlon. And finished. My sister finished about 15 minutes or so before I did, so she revved up the crowds at the finish by telling them to cheer as it was my first. And cheer they did. The whole last quarter mile. I finished STRONG. And NOT LAST in my age group.
Then I did another. And another. By now I had caught the triathlon bug. My first year I did four. Then the next year I did five. Then I did three.
I was becoming a “success story”. I was on a billboard for my doctor’s weight loss program. I had articles written about me in the paper. Everything was on track.
Then something happened.
I don’t know exactly how it started, but I noticed a slight increase in weight after my peak weight loss. I don’t know if increased exercise and working out drove my metabolism to eat more than I thought I was eating.
But I now know that in all my medical treatments to help me manage my weight and blood sugar and all that, there was one thing that was never addressed or treated.
Depression is an evil, insidious, vindictive son of a bitch. Its chief power is that whisper in your head, turning everything good you have ever accomplished into ash in your mouth. And it can remain undiagnosed for decades.
I started a slow decline back into weight gain. My depression kept telling me to put off working out, so I did it less and less. Soon I couldn’t even run a full mile without having to walk, that’s how out of practice I was.
Then everything fell apart. Depression’s greatest power is to take the tragedies and insecurities in your life and use them to make you feel like you’re in an inescapable black pit and that there is no hope of rescue. I did not take the deaths of my parents well. Even though I lied to myself and tried to pass it off. But I don’t think I was fooling anyone but myself. But that is another chapter.
And so here I am now. Almost all the progress I have made has been erased almost as if it never happened. At one point, a good friend told me that her first impression of me was “Damn, he can play his ass off, but he is going to DIE”. I wonder what she thinks now. I’ve always had poor social skills, but I wonder what the group I socialize with after choir rehearsal thinks, after watching me go through the greatest period of weight gain after my weight loss. As they’ve watched me literally blow up like a balloon.
And Depression will lie to me and whisper about how much they secretly don’t like me and only pretend to tolerate me when I socialize with them. And hold open that certain door and whisper sweet things about how much better it would be if I were to walk through it.
My purpose in writing this was to talk about accomplishment—about overcoming obstacles to achieve some personal success. My story certainly started out that way.
But now, accomplishment holds a different meaning for me. It’s all about the small victories now. Getting out of bed. Doing Adulting. Reestablishing routines to help me again climb the weight loss mountain. Ignoring the voices when they whisper those sweet things about going through that door.
My goals haven’t changed: I want to race again. I want to run again. I want to be able to shop off the rack. I don’t want to die. However, this time every step will be its own accomplishment. Because the way isn’t clear. The path is muddled. The wrong step will send me walking in circles.
But I step forward anyway. And another voice tells me that there are others out there, ready to help guide me when I need and ask. Or to just walk with me. To help me live.
And living is its own accomplishment.
And now on to Tops!
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