Tomorrow morning I am getting up, packing all of my stuff into my car and driving back to Minneapolis. I’ll be spending a couple days in Minneapolis and then heading off. It’s sad, in a way, but I’m really ready for this. My mom told me several times today that it makes her really sad that I’m leaving and she doesn’t know when she’ll get to see me again. I understand that it’s hard for her. It’s been nice that I’ve been in the Twin Cities the past few years so she can visit me easily and frequently. I’ve liked being at my parents’ house the past few days. I like the comfort and safety I feel while I’m here, but it’s time for me to move on with my life. I can’t stay here forever and don’t want to stay here forever. I’ve got to find something that engages me and that I can devote the rest of my life to. Well devoting the rest of my life makes it sound so epic. I really just need to find something I can do for a while that makes me happy. I could be wrong, but I can see myself doing many different things over the course of my life. Like I’ll find something I really like and then do it for a while before moving on to something else.

My knees still hurt from surgery, but each day they seem to be getting better. Hopefully by the time I make it to New Jersey I’ll be able to start going to the gym again and at least getting back into shape a little bit. It’s been nearly 4 months since I’ve been able to work out and even then I had to take several months off for the first knee surgery. It’s really taken a toll on me both physically and psychologically. I feel huge… like beluga whale huge. I know that it’s mostly in my head. I have gained weight, but nothing drastic. Actually, I’ve pretty much stayed about the same weight I was before any of the surgeries, but my body composition has changed a lot. In all likelihood I’m never going to like my body or how I look. It’s just a given, but I know that when I work out and at least feel athletic I’ve got more confidence and despite still seeing flaws before things I like when I look in the mirror, I’m a lot more positive than I am right now. I’ve been texting with this guy out in NJ. I’ve been out there 3 times this year and each time he sent me a message on scruff. He’s pretty worked out and it seems nearly any pic he sends me is without a shirt. The first two times he messaged me I didn’t give him the time of day because when someone sends me a barrage of shirtless pics I automatically assume I’m not what they are looking for. I’m not bad looking or anything, but I’ll never be an underwear model. Because I was heavier growing up and lost weight in the least healthy way possible my body is never going to look the way I want it to look – or the way I assume guys who send a million shirtless pics want their boyfriend’s body to look. If this was a year ago when I was doing Crossfit a lot and the disliking of how I looked was much lower than it is now I’d probably be ok with meeting him and just seeing how things go. Now I’m not totally sure about it. I still plan on meeting him, but I’m going to be very reluctant to do anything that would involve taking my shirt off. I mean I’d like to do that stuff, but really I just don’t think I can at this point. Maybe if I start going to the gym for a couple weeks and am able to at least feel better about how I look that would change things. I guess we’ll see. At this point I really don’t like how things look when I take my shirt off. Blergh.

Anyway, yay for moving on. I meant to start packing much earlier tonight, but ended up going through old stuff my mom had saved. Most of it was from high school. I tried to pinpoint when it all went wrong, but wasn’t able to. Things I found that I really liked: A note from my 5th grade art teacher to my parents saying I was very creative and had a lot of potential, a journal my 5th grade teacher made all of her students keep and test results from a standardized test I had to take in 10th grade. It was one of the Iowa ones. I always did really well on tests so it was interesting to see all of my scores. Nearly all of them were in the upper 90th percentile for all test takers and the composite score was in the 99th percentile. I was always pretty good at everything, but not great at anything. Or maybe I was great at nearly everything, but not exceptional at anything. Actually, that’s probably more the case. I want to be exceptional. I bet there is one thing I can work towards becoming exceptional at doing. Hopefully it’ll be expressing myself. Maybe through writing, art or some other means. Yep, I’d most like to be exceptional at expressing myself. Somehow.

I did find one other interesting thing while looking through everything in my bedroom. Up on the top shelf in my closet hidden behind a box was an empty bottle of bacardi. I’m sure it’s been there for over 4 years from when I briefly lived here when I was 26. Glad that’s no longer something I have to deal with. My mom came in and saw it and starting asking me about it. I had to explain to her that I’d hidden it and clearly forgotten about it a long time ago and that yes, it was empty when I found it. If it hadn’t been empty I would have never forgotten about it.

Gratitude List:
Sobriety
New Friends
One chapter of life ending and another beginning.