Miles from Fenway: Time To Get Myself Right

Every day life is a great tool to get away from ourselves. We throw our attention into our work, our social lives, our hobbies. We can safely avoid thinking about the things we don't want to admit, or don't want to dwell on by simply crowding our brains with appointments, plans, and frivolous details.

In the last three weeks I've had what everyone always seems to want and no one seems to have. Time. Loads of it, in fact. So much that I've begun begging friends to give me freelance work, not because I desperately need the money, but because I desperately need something to do.

With no relationship to speak of, no job on the horizon, I'm left to deal with all those issues I never wanted to face. I'm left alone with me.

And the conclusion I've come to is this: I've abused myself for far too long. Case in point, until this week, I hadn't been to the eye doctor in about three years. For someone who wears contacts and has required corrective lenses since I was six, this is a very very bad thing. My prescription had changed drastically, my glasses were five years old, and the contacts supply that should have lasted me a year I had somehow stretched to three. I was sleeping in my contacts, not washing them as often as I should, hardly EVER wearing my glasses. I was creating so much wear and tear on my eyes that they became oxygen deprived and I was forced by my optometrist to discontinue use of my contacts for a week. Which in turn forced me to buy a new pair of glasses that weren't completely warped and actually allowed me to see correctly.

The entire situation was brought about because I was scared. See, doctors have never been the kind of place where I got good news. When I was a kid there was a myriad of physical ailments. I required special exercises for my eyes, surgery to repair my jaw, physical therapy for my back, ointment for my psoriasis, the list keeps going. When I was finally old enough to deal with all of this on my own, well, I didn't. Instead I kept putting it off and putting it off. And now I'm sitting here almost $500 poorer for the error.

Doctors aren't the only thing that scare me. And my physical abuse of myself doesn't end at not making regular check-up appointments. My eating habits are dreadful. I don't exercise. I smoke, I drink, I put myself at risk every day with the way I live my life.

And if we're being honest it's not even simply a physical thing. I abuse myself emotionally too. I put so much pressure on myself to succeed that I end up burning out. I procrastinate with my writing for fear of rejection. I ignore the important things in favor of the trivial. And I won't even start on what I've realized I do in relationships.

It stops now. The eye doctor was just the beginning. I've spent so much of my life trying to make other people happy, it's time for me to be selfish for a little while. To concentrate on getting myself right. It's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be quick. But I would never allow anyone to treat me the way I've treated myself, and there should not be a double standard like that.

So look out world. Meegan was right, this is going to be the year of Finy. I'm going to make sure of it.

Labels: self-improvement

posted by FINY @ Friday, January 26, 2007

1 Comments:

At 1/27/2007, Anonymous said…

I read something like this and I feel inspired...and then I realize....I'm totally too far gone :)

I can't wait to read about the year of the Finy. *smoootch*