It has been years. Years. I have had an abusive, toxic, love/hate relationship for years with 'the asshole".
I am not really certain when I realized that our relationship was abusive or toxic. I do know, that I announced last year, that I was ending the relationship and breaking up. It took a whole extra year to actually do it. I knew the relationship was over and there was no turning back. No amount of counseling was going to change my mind.
And I knew my day to day life would be hard in the beginning, but after time, I would be ok and could make it without him.
It was not easy, we had been together for a long time, but I did it and I am not looking back.
It all started in my parents closet, an archaic scale, yellow and black. No, not Steeler's colors.
I remember as a young girl stepping on the scale. It started out as an occasional thing, I was just a kid.
Then I became a teen and the occasional weigh in became more frequent.
And then, it was daily.
Sometimes hourly. I was like the wrestlers in my home with their obsession with weighing themselves.
I have always struggled with my weight and body image. I didn't have a disorder. Didn't puke, binge eat or restrict but, I did have a bad body image. Me and half the planet.
For years, I have started my day on the scale.
You know, that is not the best way to start your day, regardless of who you are.
I would weigh myself, check my banking account and my "button's" grades and by 6:15 am, my day was already turning to shit.
Over the years, the scale become my measuring stick. And that scaled moved up and down and all around. And, I measured myself by the scale.
I would have conversations with other women who would admit that they had never had a mammogram and did not weigh themselves. I will admit I was appalled about the scale, not the mammogram. Shame on me.
About two years ago, one of my good friends posted something about how many times you weigh yourself. I answered honestly, "daily".
She replied, "I wish you didn't do that.'
I was shocked, didn't people weigh themselves?
I have thought about that statement for two years.
And that is a lot of time in my brain.
Look, I am approaching my 61 birthday. I am pretty sure my swimsuit modeling days are over. I am who I am. I am not on medication, walk about 30 miles per week, have some muscles and am not often sick...not bad for a chunky girl.
So, why not weigh yourself? Why not check in? Why not have a measuring stick?
So for two years, I weighed myself on the scale thinking about what my friend said, "I wish you would not do that".
Somedays I loved the scale and somedays I hated the scale. I would torture myself every morning by this flat thing, with numbers on it on the floor. Ridiculous.
And then, something happened. I was having a conversation with somebody who was ending a relationship and was feeling badly about it and he said this "everyone else is getting married and I should be too."
I quickly jumped on him and said, "do not measure yourself by anybody else and their actions."
As quickly as it came out of my own mouth, I wanted to slap myself. I had been doing that exact thing.
I would step on that scale to check weight but I was really measuring my "success" or happiness, whatever, by some scale.
That scale did NOT measure my happiness, health, spirituality, relationships nothing but my weight.
It occurred to me, when thinking about the conversation with that young man, the lowest the scale ever was for me, was the worst time in my life. Seriously, worst part of my life, the scale had the lowest number.
All of these years, I had been stepping on the wrong thing. I was allowing a thing on the floor, that I would move around and around on the floor until I got a number I was happy with, to measure me. I was Kate in the first episode of "This is Us" except I don't wear earrings.
It was not something I should have been bound to or relying on on a daily basis.
Instead, I should have been measuring love in my heart and those positive relationships and the bounce in my step during those morning walks.
I named my scale "asshole" Seriously, pathetic. Who names a scale? I did it. And interesting enough, I was the asshole.
I judged and measured myself.by something on a floor that I manipulated some days to get the reading I wanted. I am the asshole.
My new year's resolution was to break up with the asshole, the scale and not measure my losses or my wins by that machine.
Instead, I was going to measure my wins or losses but the animals I saw in the morning while I walked, the sunbeams and the peace I felt from being outside and the pairs of shoes I had to replace.
Funny how we measure ourselves. The cars we drive, the homes we chose, the vacations we take, the titles we acquire, the sickness we beat, how we measure ourselves.
The very person who questioned me weighing myself, gave up a pharma sales job to be a personal trainer. Interesting enough, somebody told her (and seriously who would say this) "you don't have the body of the trainer?"
That statement changed her life. For the better. So, take that.
How much of our body and fitness should be measured by mental wellness? The majority of it. Do we cripple ourselves with imaginary yardsticks or scales? Maybe?
Because I have stepped away from the scale, I have stepped back in time. I have spent an enormous amount of time measuring sweet moments spent with my mom and brother, my husband and three children, nieces and nephews and friends and family.
I took a deep look at life and time and realized it is little and short filled with big and small moments. But, if I was honest and my life was an hour glass, it is getting short on the sand. This was something I could not fathom and could not measure. So instead of measuring losses, I had to go for monumental gains.
Better moments would be spent outside breathing air than inside rearranging the scale.
And when I think about all of those moments, nobody ever said, "your number on the scale does not meet my expectations", only the voice in my head said that. Asshole.
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