Brandon, Who Lives At Home

Today was one of the better days I've had in the past week. I did have some cookies, perhaps over indulged but I did pretty good overall. Today I entered a bit of a rut thinking about some things.  Belonging, and where Im at. As a wee lad I used to watch the tv show Friends. I loved the sense of community amongst the friends, trusting one another, going to each other with their problems, hanging out, just  relating and vibing. Ive always wanted that, and hoped some day Id have that as an adult. I do have some nice friends, but its not like the tv shows, its not like the movies. People dont want to hear about your depression, they just want it to go away and the moment you stop bringing it up they assume its gone, you're cured. I dont know how many times Ive been talking about something only to discover the person I was talking to wasnt actully listening, Ive actually outright stopped talking mid sentence when I noticed, and they never noticed I stopped, because they tuned out ...

2013 was really the last year that I played along with everything. I wore my everything is fine mask regularly, hung out with my friends more often even though I questioned why, sometimes even hanging out gave me anxiety. I was still using facebook making sure never to show a photo from the neck down. 2013 the everything is okay here , year. Lets take a brief look back shall we? *** August 11, 2013   August 11, 2013. I think its pretty easy to say that this didn't work out (the first was written, I think with Penultimate app for iPad), very solid outline though. Yes, I used to drink Gatorade like water. Its crazy, I cant remember the last time Ive had one. The plan probably never went active sadly it was probably a Ill start it Monday -thing, or after this, or after that kind of thing. surprising though, its one of the more rational plans. In fact, I had started doing that in 2015 I would have succeeded in the 1st year goal. More interesting is I pla...

Let me tell you about a story. Few years ago when I was working at target we started having car problems, Ive never liked asking people for things, it makes me feel vulnerable, uncomfortable, awkward, and it gives me tremendous anxiety. I hate it. Well during those car problems I had to have my uncle give me a ride to work once. Ill never forget how that went, he agreed, reluctantly. The day of,  he calls to make sure I meet him outside before he even pulls up, I did, when I got into the car, his incredibly cramped car, the first thing I did was smile and thank ed him for taking me in that day. He responded promptly by crushing me to dust (verbally) for not having my license, he went on a tirade Id call it, it was one of the worst car rides Ive ever had, and worse, he was to pick me up too. He ruined what was already going to be a difficult day. Events like that are a trend in my family. I rarely ask people for things, because I can think back to times when I was really young...

Yesterday at work I only had to do computer training, I wasn't on my feet much at all, and yet they still hurt, just not severely. I was happy to get off, and yet emotionally miserable the ride home. When I arrived home and got inside, I headed to my room, and just did a genuine smile, I was glad to see my safe zone. Yesterday was a pretty emotional day (as many of you seen) , I never did end up calling that hotline, and likely wont, I just cant picture it doing me any good, what can they really do? Listen? I don't know. I'm not feeling as dark today, but I still wouldn't say my mental state has improved. However I'm glad to say I'm off until Tuesday, this may seem great, but I kind of feel like its bad. Having this time off then jumping back in, I'm sure by sometime Sunday night, things will start weighing heavy on me again. You know I didn't think Id ever be back at this point, honestly. Last summer I was a similar dark place, and I had no outlet ...

I'm excited to go into next week on a clean slate. Today I will be babysitting one of my six nephews, so it should be really interesting. I have pretty strong connection with a lot of my nephews, and I'm surprised I haven't talked about them more. I have two brothers, both nearly ten years older than me. My relationship with my brothers is, not the best. Because they are only a few years apart in age they have deeper connection with each other, than with me. Ive always felt like an only child. A lot of that had to do with the fact that I also had a different father than them, they shared the same father, whom my mom was married to before I was born, but he beat her severely regularly and my family got her out of that situation. Sometime after she resettled I came along. My personality has always been quite different from theirs, I could always tell. But I still often tried to emulate them, and they were arguable the worst influence's imaginable. They were in and out o...

 2/4/2015 In 2012 I started working for Target for a year after deciding to take time off from university. My life was going nowhere and in 2011 I decided to go back to school, but my social anxiety and crippling low self esteem made the experience awful. I stuck out like a sore thumb and I knew it and often it's all I could focus on. I had to get out of there. So after a year I decided to "break" and eventually got a job at target. I hated it and loved it. What I loved about target was my coworkers, I feel like I'll never be so fortunate to have another team of people so genuinely nice, and fun to work with. What I didn't like was the chronic pain I was in from standing. After standing for about 45 minutes each shift my feet would become inflamed and a tremendous pain would overcome me. Working 3 to 7 hours was excruciating, it made my life miserable and hindered my work experience. It would take a week for my feet to recover from just a days work, so when I ...

I would like to share with you a very personal blog entry I wrote a couple years ago. I was in a very dark place, and severely unhappy. It sort of chronicles my life a bit too.    Hi, my name is Brandon Hall. I’m from a modest sized town in Ohio called Middletown, and I’m overweight… by a lot. I’m obese, and for as long as I can remember I always have been, and for as far as I cant, there are pictures; thus I’ve pretty much always been fat.  When I was younger though my weight got me categorized as chubby, a size I wish I was now. Like a lot of overweight kids, I had to compensate for my extra baggage, so I was the class clown in school.  Tricking people into laughing with me was much better than them laughing at me. This was me for a while, and I was okay with it. It meant that I had a lot of friends, and a lot of people knew me, I wasn’t always a hit with the teachers, but tha...

When I was attending University, I was taking a English 101 course and the teacher was a sweet old lady who simply loved everything about her job. She loved reading, writing and all things that related to them, and she spoke about them with passion. Rarely have I come across someone with that much love for what they do. The one thing she would urge to us every single day, even when she wasn't feeling very well, was that we always charge ahead with enthusiasm in all parts of life. Ive used the line at least once, or twice in previous post, but its something that git burned in my head, and something that I believe we should try to do. With all that said I went into yesterday with one thing in mind, that my 3 mile walk must be started and completed with no bullsh--, I charged ahead with enthusiasm, and had one of the best workouts Ive had in the over 3 weeks I've been doing all this, so my English 101 teachers mantra serves a great purpose on motivating you to go into things th...

Here is a picture of me at my high school graduation. This should have been one of the happiest days of my life, but behind that perfected fake smile is a lot of pain. I had lost over 30 pounds my senior year walking 5 times a week, drinking plenty of waters, cutting back on meals and swapping junk foods for yogurt. But that 30 pounds lose was invisible to the naked eye, and I still was, and felt huge. I remember the outfit my mother bought me, she actually dared to buy me a 4x shirt from Kmart, I was struggle with 6x then, so this was shocking. To my surprise it it fit, though incredibly snug, and it left a good portion of my belly exposed, but she bought me some black stretching pants, I just had to wear them over my belly. My mom said I Was handsome, but the truth was, I looked and felt a mess. And when I arrived at the high school it got worse. I was pretty much alone, as I looked around amongst my peers, looking for distant friends, I had no one. I simply stood in one spot un...

I discovered not too long ago that I still have a ways to go before Ive perfected a healthy relationship with food. No this isn't about me making a mistake and falling off the wagon, no things are still going well. But I had a reaction earlier today that made me judge myself. It all had to deal with two pieces of chicken. My mother had 3, but I only had two, and I was upset, I made a big thing over it because in my mind it was the principle. The truth is it was ridiculous, I only needed the two, and in the end that's all I got. After my weird tiff I sat back and thought to myself so what? Why did that even matter, Ive been dieting and exercising for awhile now and this shouldn't have been a big deal. I should have embraced it, but its almost like for a short time I lost sight what I had been doing, and what I was working for. As much as I've cut back, there still seems to be some deep-seeded attachment to food, and now I know I have to train my mind as much as my bod...

Growing up fat was, and is hard. I reached a point where it felt like I had nothing to give or offer, or to look forward to. I wasn’t athletic so I didn’t have sports, I was not an “it” guy so I was never invited to anything. Felt like I had nothing to offer, all this came front and center at a very young age. I didn’t like going to any hangouts for fear of being made fun of, but mostly the fear of being looked at like a monster kept me away, kept me from going out, and cartoons only get you so far, but then I discovered technology Polaroid Instant cameras, V-Tech Laptops, real laptops, Macintosh, and of course gaming consoles. They were my escape. The latest and greatest became the apple of my eye. I escaped into a world of digital bliss. With gaming I got to escape to fantasy worlds where I was the hero, where I was in control, a place that was fun for me. Everybody else had their sports and hang outs, I had Spyro the Dragon, Blitz NFL Football, and Donkey Kong on...