Change In The House of The Chuy

You often hear, at least I do anyway, that saying, "People never change...".  

That idea terrified me.  No wait, that is a lie.  Not terrified.

Terrifies. 

Besides mice, nothing scares me more.  

Its a crutch that I have used my entire life to stop myself from developing myself .  I knew that, in my case, my life and the way that I looked, were a direct result of the choices I made and the attitudes I held about the world around me -- I just didn't want to admit it.  Instead of realizing I was the reason I was who I was, I chose to ignore that fact.  I made myself a victim.  Things happened to me, never because of me.

Whenever I would hear that saying, "People never change...", it would make me quiver.  Every time, what I heard was, "You live life how you live it because this is what you want.  You will never put the effort into being happy, into living the life you want.  You will always be this way because people never change."  For a fleeting second, that is what I would hear, regardless of the context it was said.  Like the flash on a camera, it would blind me for a second, and then I would dismiss it. 

You see,  I knew that it would take a lot of hard fucking work.  The hardest work I had ever done in my life, to correct the mistakes I had made which resulted in me being who I was.  I had to take responsibility for my actions and realize that I looked how I did, and felt how I did, because I wasn't willing to put in the work to be happy.  (For the record, being happy is hard fucking work.  For some of us anyway.  It doesn't come natural to me, and it is something that I have to develop, have been developing for quite some time now.)

"People never change..."  also left me hopeless, at times, when it came to how I dealt with people.  Understand that as a human, I have made mistakes.  Many mistakes.  Like a lot of stupid fucking stupid mistakes.  I have said and done things to people, that I care a great deal about, that I know were horrible, hurtful, mean things.

I am human.

Seemed like the right thing to do at the time'n'all that...

As I have grown and matured. Lived.  I have seen the mistakes of the past and learned from them.  Told myself that I needed to address certain things in a different manner.  Adjust my perception of certain situations.

Change.

Then I would remember...."People never change..." and I would get scared.  Frustrated.  What good was changing if people actually believed this.  If I changed, but no one else thought that I had, did I really?   Would people ever see me different.  I would know that I changed, but in the eyes of some else, I never would.  That sucked.  It didn't seem fair.

And then, one day, about 5 weeks ago...I changed.  Well started to change.  

For the better.

Forever.

And now "People never change..."  scares the shit out of me for a completely different reason.

Five weeks ago, when this all began, for the first time in my life, I decided that I was ready.  That I needed to take the reins of my life and take control and put in some hard fucking work and change things.  My mom was gone, there was nothing I could do about that.  I needed to move on.  I was severely out of shape.  I  could control that and I wasn't.  I needed to move on.  I was fucking broke.  I needed to put more effort into getting a better job, work more.  I needed to move on.

I needed to change all of those feelings and emotions.  I needed to channel those emotions into positive outlets, and work towards living the life I always thought was being deprived of.

I am doing that.  I can prove it. 

See that picture to the right?  I look pretty sharp, right?  (Well except for the face I am making.  For some reason, I hate my smile, so whenever I take a picture, I make this stupid face that is really just saying "Umm, I dunno what the fuck to do with my face here, so um, here is a stupid face instead.  Bah.)  But yea, I look sharp.

If you took a picture of me, 5 years ago, it would look exactly the same.  

I wore that shirt, and those pants, in that body, at that weight for three years.  I did.  Its what I wore when I was a property manager, and its what I weighed back then.

The thing is, while the body maybe the same.  The mind has changed.

I feel so different.  I feel so happy.  Not all of the time, mind you, but a lot of it. I looked at that picture and I was amazed.  The same image, taken 5 years apart can be completely different.  It can change. 

So now when I hear "People never change..." it scares me because if it is true, than this is just a flash in the pan.  Something that I am doing for now, but that eventually I will fuck up.  What if I haven't changed at all.

Today, at the weigh in, I found that I lost another 2 lbs.  That brings the total up to 24 lbs lost in the last 5 weeks.  I weighed 313 lbs.  I weigh 289 lbs.  

My body has changed.  However, I dont think that my body would have changed, if I hadn't changed too.  I'll find out soon enough.  

After all, you know what they say...