Sophie’s Progress

And I don’t like holiday season. I think the dislike started when my mom died and has just never left. I can count on 1 hand the number of times a Christmas tree has been put up in the 11 years since my mom died. I just saw no need to do so, and it wasn’t done.

I guess holiday season wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t always so focused on family. Even when mom was alive, I wasn’t thrilled with holiday season. I’ve never had a normal family, even if I don’t count the abuse. It’s never been a time to get together with family or anything like that.

I remember wishing I had a normal family when I was younger. A family that loved each other and got together on holidays or whatever it is normal families do. By now, I no longer wish for a normal family and don’t really know why I ever did. It’s not like I once had a normal family so I missed something. I never had it and you can’t miss something you never had.

So, the official start of holiday season is tomorrow, at least in my mind. I will be home, with Scott, who is like the dad I never had. There will be no Thanksgiving meal or anything like that. I’ll call my great aunt who raised me and we’ll chat. I’ll wish I had a home gym so I could work out.

I should have written this Friday, but just didn’t think of it.

Thursday, I met my 2009 goal of deadlifting 200 lbs. I didn’t think I would make it since I didn’t make any increases until June and started at 155 lbs. The hooks have been a huge help and slowly but surely the ganglion cyst seems to be getting better.

Friday morning I took the ACSM Certified Personal Trainer exam and passed. This was a HUGE relief and there was no way I could afford to take the retest anytime soon. I am now in the process of working out pricing for my business. I have a business name and am excited about getting started in 6-8 weeks when I get the paperwork.

So, I was hoping that exercising more would help with the depression, but it’s not. It seems like the more I do, the harder the crash. I cannot tolerate the crashes so I’m not sure what I’m going to end up doing.

One thing that keeps going through my mind is why didn’t my abusers/family/traffickers just kill me? I’ve been wondering that for years.

It seems everyone else has a blog entry about who they are, where they are coming from, etc. Maybe I had one before I deleted all of my entries and started over. But, since I currently don’t have one, I thought I should.

My mom had AIDS and this being so, I didn’t live with her. I lived with my great aunt, grandpa, and grandma. There were custody battles all through my childhood until I was 11, which is when my mom died. This was the second death of a close family member as my grandma died when I was 7.

After my grandma died, my aunt and uncle in New York, (my mom’s sister and her husband) wanted custody of me, as did my great aunt that I’d been living with. My great aunt got custody but I had to spend seven week each summer in New York with my family and then another two weeks each summer with mom, sometimes which we spent in New York.

My aunt and uncle in NY were the main abusers. I saw them every summer, except for one, from the ages of ~6-10. They would rent me out to people. “You can do anything to her for a price” was their saying. I was trafficked to Prague. I still have scars from some of the beatings and I have mobility issues in my back because it was fractured and didn’t heal correctly.

Eating caused flashbacks so I didn’t eat in order to stop the flashbacks, but that spiraled out of control once my weight got too low. My therapist told me my weight was fine and I weighed too much to be anorexic. My Dr. at the time was telling her my healthy weight was between 95-100 lbs. I’m 5′1 and was very athletic; in dance and baton.

I was getting worried about my weight the summer after I graduated high school and kept telling her that. I’d get brushed off because my weight wasn’t low enough to be anorexic according to my doctor. So, the day before a session I fasted, no food, no liquid. Walked 3 miles there in the heat. The weight she saw must have worried her. She told me to find a specialist who then told me I needed to be hospitalized and should have been a long time ago. I was hospitalized the summer of 2005 for anorexia. I had gotten down to 86 lbs. and had maintained that weight for almost a year. It wasn’t until the specialist said it was too low that I was taken seriously.

I did, eventually get therapy for the trauma. It was an intensive trauma out patient program. I went for a total of 10 days and received 70 hours of 1-on-1 therapy during that time. It was amazing. The flashbacks stopped, eating no longer triggered flashbacks, I no longer had nightmares. It was like night and day.

I still struggle with low self esteem and depression. I have VERY negative thoughts about myself. I have difficultly believing I deserve to happy or that I wasn’t somehow the cause of the abuse. I struggle with self care activities and have the hardest time allowing myself to have down time.

Weight lifting, and exercise in general, has been a life saver. I don’t know where I would be if I didn’t have baton and dance to take up my time in elementary and high school and weight lifting ever since. Not only is exercise the only thing I’ve found that helps with depression, and I’ve been on a ton of different medications starting at the age of 14, but it keeps me distracted and focusing on here and now and the future, not the past.

So, this is who I am and where I am coming from.

As the title says, depression has been getting the better of me. While I’ve continued to make some gains, they have slowed and my interest isn’t there like it was before either. I’m trying to turn things around. I was so close to hitting my goal of a 200 lbs deadlift this year and I WILL make it.

The mini-bulk lasted longer than I would have liked as I just didn’t care. I’m now going in to my third week of cutting and have ~6 weeks until the cruise. I’m looking to get to a lean 120 lbs. I’ve been off the Anabolic Diet for too long and am going to try to get back on board.

I am now lifting 6 days a week again, pull/legs/push repeat. I do HIIT on Monday or Tuesday and Thursday or Friday outside. I sprint the length of the parking lot (~50 yards) then walk back. I do this 10 times. This week I am adding in some Insanity workouts on the two days I don’t do HIIT so Wednesday and Saturday will be the only days I don’t do some form of cardio. Hopefully this helps counter the depression.

Onward and upward!

ETA: I guess I should also say this time of year is always rough for me. October 20 was the 11 year anniversary of my mom’s death. She’s been dead for half my life now. She died when I was 11.

October 28 is the 15 year anniversary of my grandma’s death. She died when I was 7 and was my legal guardian and caretaker at the time.

Then you go into holiday season which focuses heavily on family, and I don’t really have a family. Mom is dead, dad never claimed me and I don’t know anyone on his side of the family, grandma and grandpa on my mom’s side are dead. My mom’s brothers and sister’s were my abusers. Blah blah blah.

It usually subsides in January or February.