now that it is quiet

About a year ago, Alicia and I were watching a very intense episode of "Ruby" where the girls all went to fat camp and went thru intense therapy to try to find the reason for their weight problems.  All of the girls there put their weight back to something that happened with their dad.  I didn't think that really applied to me but I wanted to find out when my weight did start to be a problem, and son of a gun, it did start with something with my dad when I was a teenager.  I have been working on this problem for a year and unfortunately, my father died while I was in the middle of figuring it out.  Some of my family are very angry at me because I hadn't been close to my father in the last year as he was dying.  I figured this thing in my head needed to be puzzled out and my anger would pass - and I never discussed it with him, of course, he wasn't one to puzzle through emotions.  with him, things were or they weren't - there was no emotion and there was no puzzle.

Anyway, so he goes and dies right while I'm in the midst of figuring out this major life problem that has plagued me for the past 40 years and I kind of just checked out mentally when he died - living for the past few months mostly in my imagination and in a mild medicated state...  stuck because what little insight I had hoped to gain from him was obviously now on the other side of the veil.

Then I came across a friend of his from 40 years ago on Facebook and one of the final pieces of my puzzle fell right into place.  It is funny to reconnect with people on Facebook.  There are people that have influenced your life without knowing it and sometimes, they don't even remember you, but you remember them.  This isn't the only friend from 40 years ago that I have reconnected with that has helped put my fractured soul back together, but this one came along right when I needed the memory that he carried.  He holds other keys to my inner turmoils that I'm sure he doesn't know he carries, but for now I'll let them rest. 

The thing I learned this week is that I had options.  That is a big thing for me to realize.  My mom always says I only see things in black and white - I get stuck and can't see that I have options.  For many years I have blamed my father for what I went through in those years - he was too big and too strong for me to fight against.  But from here, I can see that I could have gone around him, but I think the methods to go around him would not have been entirely honorable; they were against the ways I had been taught and raised.  Maybe being raised in such a strict religious way does close off your options, maybe I was completely bound by my raising to see the options that I had.  Obviously, I was so bound that I did not go around him or the way he had raised me......  but could I have ?  Could that strength to tackle life be inside of me, hiding behind my religion and my upbringing and what would people think ?   I lost almost 5 pounds this week, so we'll see if the answer is here - if I have the strength and the ability to get out of this mold my father put me in.