“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.” - Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Have you ever made a decision to change something pretty big, and then been beseiged by things that seem to make your decision feel like a bad one? Moving forward and away from bad habits can feel like the freedom of flight, once achieved, however, in the beginning, it can feel like those bricks mentioned in the above quote; heavy and rough.
Bricks aren’t soft. They’re not cuddly. They aren’t fluffy like clouds. They are hard, stationary, and aren’t able to fly.
Losing weight can feel like you’re hauling bricks up several flights of stairs. In my case, three. I live on the third floor. My sister has given up elevators entirely. Great idea, that. Maybe I should do the same thing, you think? Right now, I’m hauling about 60lbs of extra brick weight up all those stairs. Every day. Mutltiple times.Ugh.
You know WHY it feels like bricks? Because each pound of that extra weight, I’ve placed there, one by one to feel better; to hide from dealing more intimately with men; to section myself off from every belief that things could be better, was a pound of that wall I was building.
Today, I felt it even more, as I thought about each unhealthy and stagnating relationship I’ve held on to or SETTLED for in the last three to five years. Each time I’ve accepted that I don’t deserve love; that in order to get the affection I crave, I have to compromise my core sense of values; that in order to have someone consistently in my life, I have to shut off my own desires for something real, because they may run away from me otherwise; that the only way a man of any true and real calibre can love me, is if he is far away and MARRIED…and that somehow that is enough for me. Pretty heavy bricks, don’t you think?
Taking your life back from something that has controlled and ruled your life for so long is a very challenging thing. There will be immediate obstacles and usually after the initial high of “I can do this”, comes the insecure reality that changing this will hurt and be hard, most likely. Suddenly, the hills to climb seem larger and higher.
Truth is, they are. They are higher than you realized because you’ve been in denial about those walls you’ve built, and it will take time to tear them down. But the really cool thing is, it CAN be done. It can.
And I’m resolved to do it, starting today. Facing down the demons one by one until those bricks my poor back and legs have carried all this time, will get lighter. Starting today. No matter the turmoil, I’m letting go of those #@!*&! bricks.
