This one's kind of brutal and wordy

So, I didn't sleep well last night.  This led to a little bit of a nervous breakdown today. 

I mean, it's not normal to cry when you're getting your bangs trimmed because your nice hairdresser asked how you were doing, right?

Well, first off.  I didn't sleep well last night.  And the reason I didn't sleep was because I was reliving all of my mistakes and failures from the boot camp.  Feeling like crap because I couldn't finish things or couldn't do them well.  Feeling intimidated by the next few weeks and the workouts getting harder and harder.  Just reliving my failures over and over and over.

It was a long night.

I tried to spend most of today suppressing those feelings.  But they were lurking.  I talked to BFF Tina on the way to my bang trimming and tried to verbalize why I felt this way, but couldn't.  She admitted that she didn't know if I wanted her to kick me in the ass or be supportive and listen.  Trouble is, I didn't really know either.  Which made me cry a little bit more.  By the time I got to the chair for my hair love, needless to say I was pretty much at the edge... 

This experience is really tapping into my inner fat kid.  The inner fat kid inside my outer fat girl.  My inner fat kid was never an athlete.  Even when the inner fat kid got skinny and was in high school.  I was in softball for five minutes and sucked and quit.  Took tennis lessons for about 10 minutes and sucked and quit.  There weren't many more attempts.  I tried to get out of gym as much as possible, and I'm relatively certain that one of my few C's in high school may actually have been in PE. 

I'm not telling you these things because I'm proud of them.  I'm dealing with a lifetime build-up of what it feels like to be picked last in kickball.

It's depressing to be in this social pressure situation again and not feel any different than I did at 13.  And while I felt some of this during the body challenge days, it was different because my failure didn't result in punishment for my teammates.  It's the ultimate shame to be one of the reasons that my team now has to do burpees instead of getting a minute to breathe.  And I dig way down to the bottom of my soul, and (as that song says) I feel nothing.  Even with that shame and desire to flee embarrassment, I do not feel like an athlete.  I do not feel an athlete in there.  I just feel like someone who sometimes tries to do athletic things and then quits them. 

"If I try and I fail, there's no more one day." - Laurie on Cougar Town

Because this is the other truth.  I can think one day I'm going to be able to run or one day I'm going to be bad ass or whatever, but the truth is that once I start trying if I can't do it -- then I can't pretend that one day it's going to happen.

I guess I'm afraid of the failure.  I'm afraid I'm going to try and quit again.  I'm afraid I'm never going to have the inner stuff to push myself and keep pushing myself.  I'm afraid I'm going to look this way and feel this way for the rest of my life. 

I guess I'm just afraid. 

Maybe I've always been afraid?  I want to find that place that takes this fear and uses it to empower myself, but folks I hope you're sitting down -- life is not a Nike commercial.  It doesn't always work that way.  For people like me, these types of spirals don't always end in triumph.

I'm being this honest on the world wide web because I want my hand full of readers to know how much I appreciate your support on Facebook and when you see me at work.  It means so much.  It means way more than I'm going to be able to express to you directly because that would involve letting down a couple of my giant brick defense walls.  So, this level of depressing honesty is for you.

Love,
the inner fat kid picked last for kickball