Now I run like an 8 year old girl

So it’s the 24th January.  It’s exactly 1 year today where my life completely started to change.

I’ve been surprisingly overwhelmed in the lead up to this date.  It’s the anniversary of a day that started off so normal, ended so awfully, and was the initial catalyst for the most amazing, challenging and rollercoaster year of my life.  It's not my 'fit' or 'weight loss' anniversary, that's another 5 months away.  It's instead an anniversary for everything else.  I felt this intense desire to mark today in some way.  So I pierced my ears.  As you do!  It’s weird I know, feeling the need to stab holes in my body to remind me of the year that has been!  #freak!  But I guess…

I got my ears pierced on my 13th birthday, when I became a teenager.

I got my 2nd holes done for my 21st birthday, when I became an adult.

And today I got 3rd holes done – I guess to mark the year I became….well, me.

Yeah, ok, it’s still weird isn't it.  But I’m just riding with it, like I have done with my whole year.

Where I am tonight and where I was a year ago are polar opposites and I’ve been thinking so much about the changes that have happened for me – in mind, body, spirit, and basically everything in my life.  Tonight I listened to some Coldplay with my colleague while we worked, then I jogged to my car in the rain.  Nice and normal, nothing dramatic.  This time last year I was shell shocked in the back of an ambulance, unsure if I could maybe die.  I didn’t realise at the time just how much that experience would change me. What’s been important – and necessary – has been the journey – there were a million little steps in between getting from that ambulance to jogging in the rain tonight.  I must be really stubborn if it took truck after truck reversing over me interspersed with 16 more hospital visits to make me wake up and listen.

Everything has changed for me.  At some points those changes were so difficult to cope with that I didn’t think I could.  But I did.

I am a completely different person.  I haven’t changed though – I’ve just become the person who I was all along.

I felt the need to blog  - or to write something, today.  I know this is a weight loss blog and that’s all that I mainly talk about but there is so much more.  The 24th January didn’t directly lead to me losing weight – however that ended up being a marker of a series of events that chained together and totally changed my life.  The weight loss is just a small part of it.



My pierced ears!

I’ve sat/laid/walked/fallen/been pushed/crawled/flew/climbed/danced/piggy-backed/straddled/moon walked/ran/hopped/been carried/sailed………..in running events/in work bathrooms/above the clouds/in my car by the river/on army cargo nets/on the floor of pitch black forests/on stage/in dark back streets/in machines/across bridges/in wheelchairs/underwater/up mountains.

I noticed last week that since #theprincessaccident that I now feel like I run like an 8 year old girl.  Maybe I don’t – but I feel like I do.  Because I couldn’t use my foot for so long, I think my body’s had to learn to run again and I just feel a bit un-co and, well, like an 8 year old girl when I do.  It just looks a little different – I’m sure I’ll settle back into how I used to run. Just like with everything. The year has changed me so much that I couldn't even begin to describe. However one thing has remained the same, I am still the same person inside. I look different, I think different, I feel different, I act different, but the person making those changes? Yeah, that's me. Always was. That's the point of the whole year. I guess I just had to realise that.

I spoke to my Mum on the phone earlier and it made me smile.  As we were discussing birthday cakes.  I'll never forget just how different the conversation was that I had with her this day last year.  Most difficult phone call of my life.  But now we're chatting about chocolate vs fruit.  The best frivolous conversation ever.  I used to talk about how Hope is the most important thing.  Whenever times were low for me in the past, I would hold steadfast onto Hope.  And I still do.  But sometimes when things get so rock bottom, you also have to Believe.  I believed like I had never believed before, that things would be ok.  I had to do that.  I hate to say it, but sometimes Hope is not enough.  You have to actually Believe things will improve.  Even when you really don't.  It's kind of like a critical Russian Roulette version of "Fake it till you make it."  The fire deep, deep within you is definitely the brightest.

I may have looked like an 8 year old girl running to my car in the rain tonight, but it was actually a very strong 31 year old, who knows who she is.  Farewell, insane year.  It's all over now.  And hello to who I really am.  "Go out and grab the rest of your life."