Brandon, Who Lives At Home

I reckon it's time I finally discuss the big misery topic I've been so vague about the last few weeks. It's pretty much come full circle now, after a lifetime wait I decided to address it. First in therapy, then to two select friends (not the two you might think), and just recently with my mom. Now I suppose I will here. Obviously it took me a very long time to get to this point, but in the past few months I truly realized I wasn't going to truly be happy  or make any real progress in terms of my mental health if I kept having to repress who I was around other people, if I couldn't just be myself a little bit more. I started truly realizing how much these things mattered. It's hard enough masking your emotions  but masking a whole part of your identity puts an incredible strain on your life, and might be why my depression tends to yoyo so dramatically. Perhaps those days are behind me because finally at 28 I'm ready to be myself, be brave, be honest ...

I went to see my doctor today, it's time to redo a lot of my lab work, also I need to start doing the labs for the kidney specialist. The doctor greets me with a congratulations she says I see you hit the 200 mark on our scale.  I wasn't sure at all what she was even talking about so  curiously I replied,  200?  Suddenly thinking "does she somehow think I'm 200 freaking pounds?!" which  would have given me a devastating amount of anxiety having to clear up that I'm, in fact,  not 200 lbs all of a sudden, but still well into 300s. However she says,   you've lost 200 lbs see , she moves a computer monitor that shows my highest recorded weight of 567, and todays of 367. It was a perfectly even 200, she goes on to say well you've probably lost more on your scale , ironically or not, no, because I've only been going by the date I knew my exact weight which wasn't until last year, but I always say I think I reached the border of or just over 600 off ...

So right away I gained weight this week, an even 2lbs to be exact. Last week was tangled in terms of overall eating, I stayed within calories but then there were days when I had unusual things like a flat-bread pizza that wasn't at all geared to the healthy side of things, I had Chinese food for the first time in over a year last Tuesday, and it's just been a mixed bag of questionable little additions that I know I should probably avoid but then didn't like Reese cups when I'm at my friends . There was no exercising so that didn't help either, I'm actually in a very poor place with this gain, not that I've ever taken a gain particularly well regardless of the circumstance. I just see numbers going up and I immediately feel like I'm failing, and see the goal weight slipping further away, and of course my depression monster has been taking its multivitamins  and is ready to skewer every thought in my head! Worse is it's all my fault, I know I jus...

Yesterday, the entirety of the day I had a lurking anxiety in my gut that I could not shake or explain, my overall mood was pretty well balanced so this was particularly odd. Throughout the day the anxiety slowly increased, but I would just barely notice. I kept asking myself what's this all about ? I thought maybe the potential selling of my grandmothers house is having some kind of subconscious effect on me, but even that doesn't make sense. Maybe I feel guilty for not visiting dad in over a year, but I've been facing my own demons, the fact is it's probably for the best that I'm just now getting around to making this happen. So what is it? My dad actually called me yesterday via my aunt Carolines phone, I was surprised to see her calling so soon after I had just talked to her the day before, but it all made sense once I answered. My dad wanted to talk to me, I guess she went to see him. We talked for a bit, " hey son " and it went from there. To b...

Yesterday I finally made my way to see my father at my late grandmothers house. When I arrived there was some kind of bookcase on the front porch which immediately struck me as odd. I knocked on the door for a bit and then someone shouted to me from the street, what do you need, who are you? It was my great-aunt Caroline who apparently could not recognize me at all since the last time I seen her, last year. Once I told her I was looking for my I dad everything came back to her and she told me to come over to her, she just happened to be driving by as I was knocking. Seems my dad is now living in an assisted-living home, and the past year stay at grandmothers house he wasn't doing very well, even believed to have been on drugs up until he decided he no longer wanted to stay in the house. This change happened just a few months ago, apparently it was the best thing for him because she says before he wasn't taking his medications  properly, skipping dosages or days completely, h...

Today is a new day, a lot of sudden curve balls were thrown at me yesterday evening that typically would have me feeling like my rare moment of optimism was for nothing, but I've decided not to take it that way, and continue on the steady path, the very long sometimes depressing steady path. Not let these other obstacles derail me or send me into and emotional state  that leads to setbacks. My mom was recently diagnosed with a kidney stone, due to its size and location it will have to be removed via surgery. The operation has been scheduled for October 5th, the whole thing makes me rather nervous but she seems rather fine about it so I'm not going to over think it. She'll be out of the hospital the very next day. I've decided to finally go see my dad today and see how he's doing, I reckon it's going to be a rather awkward experience but I'll at least feel a bit better knowing I checked up on him. Stay tuned.

I had therapy today, and that went really well, I'm in a pretty good place right now about a lot of things. I feel like for the first time things could start working in harmony. I'm still in an unfortunate place with my image, and sometimes on Instagram seeing really successful weight loss  transformation before-and-afters really sends me into a self-loathing spiral, but I feel like that should become less and less of an occasion. I have to start taking back control, or really for the first time get control. I feel like there is a lot of instability around me which is rather ironic considering I come so undone so often, but these situations around me aren't helping. Stay tuned.

First things first, it's Monday, which means it's weigh-in day. If you kept up with last week you know that there wasn't any exercise, and unfortunately I took what felt like leaps backwards in my mental and emotional state of being. My eating stayed solid for the most part, I didn't binge, I did  skip some meals do to the intensity of therapy one day, and even after that day I found that eating enough was rather iffy, but I was certainly staying hydrated because  I've learned when I skimp on both areas (eating and drinking) I typically gain weight because my body desperately holds on to what water it has (it doesn't help that I retain water rather easily to begin with). So last week I weighed 368.6, this week I weigh 365.2. I lost 3.2lbs. I didn't know what to expect this week, but three is a bit surprising, I wonder if this has something todo with the potential  new muscle. I seen my aunt over the the week for the first time since her procedure, ...

Im making it back. I'm feeling better overall. I'm actually quite excited where therapy can go from this point forward, it's a new frontier really, but not just for therapy this will be the start of lifting restraints and breaking illusions in all aspects of my life and that is going to be freeing but hard. I will likely tackle the subject here (or attempt anyways)in the coming weeks. Nick and Melissa have been concerned about me. I stayed at their place Tuesday and left early Wednesday because I had therapy, they wanted me to come back but I told them I had a real big session and it depended on how that went and that I'd let one of them know. Well obviously Wednesday had me glued to my bed skipping meals (but keeping hydrated). So they have been checking in on me every day, they have invited me to stay this weekend and I said I would. I decided to do FaceToFace Friday post on Instagram and I didn't fight myself as much as usual, though there was still a little...

Yesterday was rough, today is rough. There isn't going to be any exercising this week, it didn't happen yesterday and I skipped  yesterday's dinner and now today I feel drained and weak and I don't feel like doing anything , so no, there is no chance of any real pshyical activity happening. Therapy  was harder than expected, though everything was brought up that I wanted to bring up. It took me pretty much that whole session to finally do it, I walked out feeling good about it, but later just all my emotions hit me and I was overwhelmed. There went the rest of the day. Today I try to get myself together.

Well Im essentially in a pre-dark haze cocoon, I haven't worked out in two days (this includes today). Not because I'm feeling confident about the recent loss or how I'm eating, but because chronic depression becomes me. I decided to leave the house today and hangout with my friends Nick and Melissa to try to slither out of this cocoon. Getting out of the house was a good idea, but I haven't exactly broken free of the cocoon.

Last week saw me returning to my religious use of MyfitnessPal food tracking to keep an idea of my sodium levels and overall calories, typically I have pretty good idea about sodium (when I'm clearly going over, anyways) , I pretty much know when I've gone overboard, but sometimes there are surprises. I was actually slightly above a few days last week, however the week before last  I was like comically overboard. Also there is a pretty good chance that same week  I went over calories too a couple times, it's interesting just how easy something can seem harmless but, nope, what's done is done. I only worked out 3/5 days last week but it's better than nothing, and I was feeling every bit of those three days. My eating was to back to normal, no fast food, no over-calorie days. So last week I weighed 371.6, and this week I weigh 368.6 . I lost an even 3 pounds. I officially moved out of the 70s. The agenda for this week is to actually workout all 5 days, and st...