Cutting the fat - week 2

Week 2

Loss – 1.5 kg.

Yes, I am aware that this was a very long week.

Unfortunately due to a nasty case of the flu I was out of action for a few weeks, and I wanted to save the updates until after I’d managed a full week of being able to eat and exercise properly.

This is a good loss, but I’m not sure how my being sick factors in here.  My diet wasn’t perfect this week, but it was better, so who knows.  We’ll just have to see how I go next week.

Getting back into the exercise after such a break was also a challenge.  They say muscles have memory but that sure doesn’t seem to apply to me.  I’ve taken a few weeks off, and it’s like starting at square one again!  I couldn’t even do a single push-up.  It was like a terribly sad scene from the Biggest Loser, a fatty in her tights and singlet lying spent on the ground after doing half a sit up, with out the benefit of a super hot personal trainer yelling “C’mon Voyager, don’t be beaching yourself now!”

In this exercise routine I devised for myself I did allow for situations like this – somewhat – and I took them.  I really wanted to stick to it though; otherwise I’ll just keep doing less and less until I give up.  That I did – gave myself one day off this week, but otherwise I got through.  I had to take a lot of breaks, so it was slow going, but I feel better for it, and will try and go harder next week.

I’ll be aiming for another half kilo next week.  Can I do it?  Of course.  Will I do it?  Errr…

Well, keep thinking positive thoughts,

Voyager

Help! I hate my best friend's girlfriend!

What do I do, now that I have to lie to the one person I could always be honest with?

 I’ve been wanting to blog about this for awhile but I’ve had no idea how to approach this sensitive problem.  So I turned to the internet for help.

This is what I came up with.

I like it.  Especially the line graph, that’s eerily accurate.

My best friend is male and has known me for years.  He may be neurotypical, but I’ve never felt like I’ve had to explain myself to him for any reason.  Such friendships are rare these days.

Him getting a girlfriend – and changing the friendship dynamic – is something I was going to have to deal with at sometime.  The self entitled part of my personality doesn’t like it but realistically, it’s well within his right to do so, and I was just going to have to be supportive.

Well, recently that’s precisely what happened.  The BFF took me aside and told me about a girl he’d met, let’s call her Ali, and that he wanted the three of us to hang out.  He told me that she’s an older woman, attractive, and they had been hooking up.  He then showed me this text message:

Hey babe, buying scarves 4 all the bite marks u left on me xx ;)

Ewwwww.  Ok, WTF?  Even I know sharing sexy texts with your best mates is bad manners.  But it did at least give me a mild warning for what I would be subjected to the next day.

So, the next day at BFF’s place, I’m awaiting her arrival, hoping I make an ok impression.  Given that I would be spending a lot of time around this girl, it would make things awkward if she didn’t like me.

Then when she arrived I did, I’ll admit, nearly screw things up immediately.

Ali:  *sensuously* hey babe, like my new scarf?

Me:  *hysterical laughter*

The BFF shot me an alarmed look and I remembered I wasn’t supposed to know why that was funny…oops.

We were introduced and then she started talking.  All I could think was “please God, make it stop.”

Look, they say it takes one to know one, right?  I knew straight away that this girl was all sorts of issues.  Now I am the last person to place blame on someone for being mentally ill.  What I don’t like is when someone is mentally unstable, does nothing about it, and then inflicts their illness on others to get attention.

Ali’s conversation has a certain pattern – we talk about her being injured/ill/overwhelmed.  Then we hear about how she heroically over came set obstacle.  Then we hear an ‘interesting’ fact about something she’s good at.  It’s always on her – if conversation moves away from her, she brings it back somehow.  And it’s always the heavy stuff.  In the space of about 3 hours, I found this about her  -

-          she’s asthmatic

-          she was hospitalized for whooping cough for two weeks

-          She had surgery on her hip and couldn’t walk for six months

-          She’s dyslexic

-          She has OCD (allegedly)

-          She has celiac disease (allegedly)

-          She has ehland syndrome

-          She has chronic hiccups (allegedly)

-          She was once hospitalized for a nervous breakdown (oh I’m sorry, that is not something you should find out about someone you’ve just met!)

-          She has had various breaks and sprains that impacted her detrimentally (too many to name here)

Basically, the girl’s self esteem is so poor she needs attention and validation constantly.  See, this is also what I know about her, that the BFF told me because she never talks about these things.    She is 25, but still lives at home.  She moved back there shortly after her last nervous breakdown and still hasn’t left.   She went to business college after high school, and has had countless office jobs but never for more than a few months.  This is probably why she had to move states and apply for university – had to go by open foundation because her grades from school weren’t good enough.

Ali’s life has been hard, I can admit. By portraying herself as a tragic heroine she creates more positive image of herself than the reality  - due to her physical and mental illnesses she’s an adult who never really grew up and learned to be independant.  I know so many like her.  Heck, I was her. Like me, she’s probably angry at herself for not working things out like most people our age have.

 Yet still she refuses to acknowledge her limitations and she puts herself in situations where she can’t win, because you’ve gotta love a girl for trying, haven’t you?

Ummmm…no.  Like I said, I can’t blame Ali for her hardship, but I can blame her for creating drama.  Now, let’s think back to that slide show from the lovely folks at college humour.  I would change one thing on their presentation to suit my circumstances, on slide three.

“You make my friend angry with your bull**** shenanigans.”

“then I have to deal with him.”

More like,

“You make my friend worry with your bull**** shenanigans.”

“Then I have to deal with him.  Not.  Cool.”

I suppose I should address the ‘allegedly’ I put on the list of Ali’s ailments.

I think she’s…well, not lying.  I believe she’s exaggerating within believable limits, if you will, to make some of her issues sound more serious.  If I didn’t have a medical background - and have some of these problems myself – I probably wouldn’t pick it up.  Although the fact that most of her problems seem to be self diagnosed should tip my friend off that Ali’s biggest health issue is her hypochondria (or Munchausen syndrome, I can’t tell at this point.)

But the BFF eats this all up and worries about her.  Then I have to listen to him worry.  Again, not.  Cool.

Later, I took the time to think about my feelings, and to figure out if my rising distaste for this girl was fair.  Was it just jealousy that I have to ‘share’ BFF with her?  Are my standards for a suitable girl for him just too high?  Or am I intimidated by her, that she openly and eagerly talks about her mental health battle, yet I don’t feel as though I can (and should) share mine?

I don’t know what our other friends think, and I’m too afraid to ask in case I am just being petty.  But one thing is for sure – I have to deal with her somehow, in a constructive way that doesn’t create tension with her or BFF.

Now, if I could just figure out how to be constructive.

Voyager

Thoughts on an Aspergian friend - Limited by ourselves

Recently my Mum ran into the mother of a friend from school.  I hadn’t seen her for awhile, but at the time we and our parents had bonded over the fact that we were both on the spectrum.

We were similar in a lot of ways.  We had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome around the same time in year seven.  Both of us were gifted academically but struggled with our concentration and motivation.  We had no idea how to deal other teenagers, and were each others only friend, ostracised and bullied by all other students and teachers.  Then from about year nine onward, we drifted apart.  Personality wise, we were chalk and cheese.  She was happy to languish in her anxiety and depression problems.  She never wanted to go out, talk about positive things or put effort in her schoolwork or relationships.  She saw no reason to be giving back to the world that had hurt her so much.  As for me, I wanted to try and fit in, learn how to study properly and create a network of neurotypical friends.  She saw my foray into the world of ‘normal’ people as a betrayal and I thought she was being a coward.  After high school, we lost contact.

I knew that we graduated from our respective university degrees at the same time, and I was worried about her.  I can’t see her having the presence of mind to search for jobs, practice for interviews or take the time to write a professional looking resume.  It doesn’t help that she has graduated from a program that has very few jobs available, and I just don’t know how she would handle the corporate world.

As Mum relayed back to me what her mum had said, it seemed my fears were accurate.  Turns out her lack of pro-activity was not just a phase.  Seven months out of the degree, she is unemployed, living at her parents’ house, with no car, no money of her own, and no friends.  The problem, her mum lamented, is that she really isn’t qualified for her dream job.  Her grades were not good enough to get into the post graduate program that she needs.  But she won’t consider another direction, or get a lower position to work her way up.  She did take a counselling job, but she kept getting in trouble for discussing her own mental health problems with clients.  She was told to adhere to the guidelines set out for her, she refused and they let her go.  Her view of life is just too rigid.  Modifying her behaviour would help her out of her rut but she won’t change.  If I’m a Voyager, she’s more of a Houseboat.

Let’s look at where I am comparatively for a minute.  While I feel like I’ve learned some life lessons that she has yet to realise, I would not say I’m faring a whole lot better than her.  Since my early teens I’ve tried denying I had a problem, desperate to live the ‘neurotypical dream.’  The result was a breakdown in which I was forced to face the reality of my disability, and get realistic about my future.  The Houseboat – yes, I’m making that stick – needs to start thinking this way too, hopefully sans nervous breakdown

Having Asperger syndrome might have seemed quirky and subtle while we were at school but both of our futures are in question now.  All of the other kids with AS that I know are still in school, so I can’t compare any further.  In the meantime, I worry.  We may be intelligent, and certainly capable of being valuable employees.  But are our impaired social skills preventing this intelligence from being applied to finding and keeping a job?

I want to change to become easily communicative.  I want to change her so she wants to change her outlook.  But longing to be normal has done no good for me in the past.  All I can do is hope that somehow, someday, we’ll find a way to be ok.

Voyager