a public love letter.

I've always believed that I was one of those people whose life was just harder than other people's. While I watched everyone else check things off their to-do lists of success I was struggling with what seemed like every detail of my fairly simple life. I always felt like there was no path of least resistance designed for me and it was really a matter of just getting through most days with any will to make forward motion. I think that in some ways it was true that I was making my life difficult until I found you.

It was hard for me not to be self-conscious until I found myself in a park with you, throwing water balloons around and smiling for what felt like the first time in ages. It was hard for me to give a description of who I was to someone new without feeling like I had something that I had to be ashamed of because of all I hadn't accomplished. But then you asked, I answered and I felt like my path had led me right where I was supposed to be.

It was hard for me to not dive in and get ahead of myself then you flew across the country and left me for months. It's hard for me to be patient but rather than feeling like you had left me, I patiently waited. I looked forward to pay phone calls where I understood every third word the way most people look forward to dates and first kisses. I think we had fit more into the three weeks before you left than any normal couple would fit into the two months that you were gone. It was hard to be away from you when I should have just been getting to know you--but I liked that the distance meant we had to get to know each other above all the glam and glitz of trying to impress each other with a shell of who we really were. We had to learn to communicate and talk about only those things which were substantial in the few words that we had over the phone or on a piece of paper.

It was hard for me to start anything and feel like it's actually on a clean slate. I held on to memories and hurts like as though they were the present moment. I felt like one of those cheap dollar store chalkboards that never actually erases completely. The ones that you always see the answer of the student who used it in the class before you. What you taught me is that it's okay to have all those marks but that we can make them a part of a bigger, beautiful picture. With you it was easy to see that they were just the faint outline of the life that I was meant to live.

It was hard for me to get attached to people. I thought that needing someone meant that every moment of every day your heart would beat only for them. And although there are moments that I could burst with happiness and love just from your smile across the room, I've learned needing someone meant so much more. It's having a rock. It's having someone who can joke away your crazy and offers a hand when they see you fall. It's being equals and starting where the other one ends. It means having someone who is home. Sure that means that sometimes life is the mundane that I've been running from but you, you've shown me the beauty in the most ordinary moments. You taught me that the most important part of needing someone is being needed in return.

It was hard for me to think that two people could be together without changing for each other. I was always scared of the change and not holding on to the parts of me that I loved. What I've realized is that people shouldn't change FOR each other or as I had come to believe that you both with change but in the same direction. What I learned with you is that each individual changes and when you love that person you support those changes. I don't always see my reflection in you but I see someone who understands and embraces who I was and even more so embraces who I want to be. By understanding each others goals, we've learned how easy it is to appreciate the changes each of us has made over the years and will continue to make.

It was hard for me to ever imagine that I would get married (again). With you the image of a house in the woods laying out on a blanket with a dog and some messy kids having a picnic looked right in my head. It was the picture of the calm in the midst of the storm that is life. I know that whether in person or through e-mail, phone call or text, you would always produce that calm in me. The calm that will get us through the ups and downs of a life that is lived fully.

Mostly, it has always been hard for me to deal with difficulties. I always believed that struggles were something to be kept to yourself with and dealt with in the quiet. Life has decided to hand us plenty of bumps in the road but I'm no longer scared how hard life is. I'm no longer scared of a goal being too big or a problem being too stressful because I know that I have someone next to me to share the burden. Together, we will always find a way to make things just a little bit easier.

week 24: pregnancy and body image.

I always feel bad talking about my pregnancy because I so easily wander to the negatives rather than the positives. So I will start out by saying I have thus far been blessed with the easiest pregnancy ever. I've never thrown up, I have huge stores of energy, I can still work out and I can stay out until at least 12:30 if I really mentally prepare for it. I have wanted to be pregnant more than most things in my life and I am so thankful and blessed to have such an easy go of it when we started trying. I thankfully have a partner who wants to be involved. He reads pregnancy books, gives me a massage every night, and kisses my belly every time he leaves a room we're in. So then what do I have to be negative about, right?  I know this is naive because clearly we have all seen pregnant women before but I did not expect to feel the way I do about my body. Jim often asks me "what did you think was going to happen?" He is right. But the changes happening to my body, and the body of all pregnant women, is a little more than not fitting into my skinny jeans.

As my body has slipped from a place that I am proud of to the place where I'm now back to buying size 12 jeans and XL shirts in order to stay out of maternity clothes, my mind can't exactly wrap itself around what is happening. I know it's more important to be healthy than it is to worry about the weight gain but let's be honest, fitness is a numbers game. Think about it--even when we're not talking about the number on the scale or a pair of pants we are tracking how fast our mile is or how many pounds our deadlift. I don't need numbers to show me my changing body but I haven't come to the place where I find these changes beautiful. I see them as completely utilitarian.

It's hard to explain to anyone, including mothers who love their pregnant body, why it's so bothersome to wake up in the morning and find a shirt that fit in the last wash cycle no longer does. People always talk about the glow and the great boobs.  My boobs have decided to stay the same while my ass seems to be receiving more of the curve than my stomach. The only glow I have is the one that last the four hours after a facial and don't even get me started on the craziness that is my curly hair. I have spent the last 18 months losing all my curve and now they are showing back up but now in unpredictable ways. When I'm eating unhealthy and not working out I know what to expect but letting go of control and surrendering to whatever unpredictable changes occur is one of the most difficult struggles I've ever gone through.

Maybe the problem is that over the last 18 months I have invested too much of my identity in fitness and nutrition. When my body tells me now that I have to spend the extra half an hour in bed rather than going for a morning jog, I find my heart breaking slightly. (On the opposite side, after not eating carbs for almost a year, when my body is begging for pasta, I probably give in a little too easily.) I will be running my first 5k with this little guy next month and I might find that key for me. To get back to some sense of normal physical activity beyond a few miles on the treadmill to give me a taste of the runners high I so love to hate. To train for a goal, no matter how short.

I have no answers on how to change my mental attitude. I can tell myself I am growing a human, that it's not about me, or to just to get over myself but I haven't been able to cross that mental plane yet. I'm not sure that I will get there during what is perhaps my one and only pregnancy but I'm okay with being  one of those woman who just didn't love my pregnant body. If I have one positive thing to say about my pregnant body, it will be the most amazing little guy that I will get at the end of it.