A Wasted Life

Many years ago I watched one of those television news programs, like Dateline, that focused on a man that had had been considered MIA during the Vietnam War. Basically, he went AWOL and never returned home to his wife and two young children. Everyone assumed that he was dead, except his wife, who had thoughts that he might have run off and started a new life somewhere. When this man's son was in his early thirties, he decided to pursue his mother's theory and hired a private investigator to see if he could find him. After several months of searching, the father was found in Australia, where he had created a different life for himself. When they interviewed the man, he said that he had been damaged by the war and just could not cope with the idea of returning home to a family and those types of responsibilities. So instead of returning to his post after an R&R, he decided to hop a flight to Australia and just disappear. He said that he lived with the guilt every day of leaving his family behind (his mother had died thinking that he was dead). He was living with a woman, working in some sort of labor-type profession, and had never had anymore children. This man seemed worn-down, ashamed, and unhappy. I remember commenting to someone at the time that it was so sad that he had had to live his life the way he did -- he only got one life and he lived his in the shadows.

Why do I bring this up? Because not a day goes by that I don't wish that I was different. I beat myself up constantly that I don't look how I wish I would look and am angry that I haven't been able to achieve a goal in this area. I feel like I have been living my life in the shadows. I wonder if I were thinner would I have more friends? Would I be out doing more things? It's not just my weight, but I am also starting to feel like I am getting so old. I'm not the young one anymore. Being at home has really compounded my feelings of feeling frumpy and boring. It is a struggle to fix my hair everyday and wear something that isn't stretchy.

I've come to the realization this week -- something I really didn't get while I was working -- that if I don't make time to make myself important, nobody is going to do it for me. Nobody is going to make a dentist appointment for me and make sure I'm going to get there; nobody is going to take me to get a haircut or buy me a new pair of tennis shoes or a new bra. Nobody is going to see that I get rest or eat a good meal. Nobody is going to make sure that I exercise regularly or go to bed at a decent time. I take care of all of these things for my family, and I need to take care of these things for myself too, as if I were my own child. I hope I don't sound Oprah-ish, although I'm sure I do, I just wanted to share some of the thoughts I have had this week. I don't want to be a frumpy, unhappy hermit, and if I want something different than that, I have to make a choice to take care of myself because nobody else is going to do it for me. I don't want to disappear.

Amy