Losses

This is not the blog post I anticipated it would be. For months I planned that when I finally lost 100 lbs., I would write a celebratory post that would look back at my weight loss journey thus far and look ahead toward future goals. I thought it would focus on new possibilities, the realization of dreams I had given up on and a newfound hope for happiness. Instead, I am sitting here typing this – yes, having lost 102 lbs., yes, having gone from a size 24 pants to a size 10, and yes, proud of myself for reaching a goal that often seemed insurmountable – but I am also sitting here with tears in my eyes, shaking hands that are having trouble with the keyboard and never-ending noise all around me. I thought I was about to start a new chapter of my life but as my husband said, “Who would have thought it would be a chapter that could have been written by Stephen King?”

So much of life is a nightmare and I don’t know how to wake up from it. Don’t get me wrong; I am grateful for so many things and am fully aware of the blessings I have: my supportive and loving husband, my dogs who could always get me to smile no matter what, my career, my ever-improving health, and a very small bunch of people that I can count on. I know there are people starving, homeless, dying but that doesn’t make my pain any less real, does it? I have fought for years to fix what others broke in me, to move from wanting to die to not wanting to die to actually wanting to live. I have learned to not blame myself for the mistakes of others, no matter what they say, and I have come to believe that I deserve more, I deserve better, I deserve (dare I say it?) happiness. So why do the hits just keep on coming?

Three years ago, I died. In a sense. I thought I lost everything: my mother, my nephew, my health, my ability to walk and go to work, and most importantly, my angel, Poochie. I have spent the past three years trapped in a prison, existing on only the most superficial level, unable to truly mourn and unable to move on. I’ve been a ghost, walking through life as if on another plane of existence, performing for those who had the ability to see me. But no one could really see ME. Only Tom knew that the ME I was had disappeared. Oh, she poked her head out sometimes and he caught glimpses of the Rhea that laughed, the Rhea whose eyes sparkled, the Rhea he fell in love with. Then, as he said, my “eyes would cloud over” and I was back to being a shell of my old self.

So we decided to start over, find a new place to live where I could be free of my physical prison and maybe, begin to heal. We saved what money we could and we dreamed of living somewhere quiet, where I could relax, concentrate on my work again, feel safe and perhaps, start to live again. We looked at places; we told realtors that our top priority was quiet especially since I do most of my work from home. We were shown this apartment. It was big, pretty, modern and it even had the extra room for what Tom and I always wanted: a library/den. It had a huge kitchen so I could finally have space to create my vegan dishes (cooking had become therapeutic for me). The neighborhood was nice, our bedroom windows looked out over the Bronx River and the woods, the train to work was a 5 minute walk away and most enticing to me, it was a short trip to the pet cemetery which meant I could visit my angel anytime I wanted. The rent was more than double what we were paying but we calculated that if we tightened our budgets (less eating out, buy less books), we could handle it. We visited the apartment at least 4 times and each time, it was tomb-silent.

So we moved and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I should have expected it. Moving is at the top of the stress scale, right up there with losing a spouse. What I didn’t expect was that moving from my home was going to careen me back in time to three years ago and make me relive all of my losses. Now I was leaving the area where I was born and had grown up, I was leaving my family (even though they had already left me), I was leaving the only home Poochie had ever known and where all my memories of her lived. It felt like I died all over again, like I lost everything yet again except this time, I also lost my home. Only one person I spoke to seemed to understand that. Change is hard but that new chapter was awaiting me so I figured I would make the transition and get through it.

Except the realtor lied to us. He said the tenant downstairs was a single woman. He neglected to tell us she has a child that she lets run up and down the hallways for hours until 2 in the morning (apparently, her attempt to bribe her into bed with sugar cookies doesn’t work, imagine?!). Or that she has loud company and music every single weekend until the morning hours. He didn’t tell us that the couple upstairs walk like elephants (one of the very things we told him was a problem in our old place) or that the husband worked from home (like me) so there would never be one moment of silence in the apartment. He didn’t tell us that every single tenant slams their apartment door, the elevator door and the stairwell door whether it’s 6 in the morning or midnight.

We weren’t here one week before we were knocking on our neighbors’ doors asking them to keep it down. But they don’t. The guy upstairs said, “That’s apartment life. Everyone lives their life.” Except we can’t live our lives. We cannot choose what time to go to sleep because they drag their furniture (I don’t know; don’t ask me) across bare hardwood floors after midnight and we cannot choose when to wake up because they roll other furniture and walk in heels on the hardwood floors at 7 in the morning. There is a rule in the lease about rugs; they were the first things we bought but I guess everyone doesn’t follow the rules.

The realtor, who lives in the building, avoids us and doesn’t want to hear our complaints. The super talked to the neighbors but it has done no good. I can’t concentrate to do my work. I’ve let my blog slide. I haven’t cooked, even though I now have counter space. All I do is cry and pace and wonder how this happened. Now we are stuck because we spent all our savings moving here so there is no way we can move again right now. I’ve asked for extra shifts at work just to get out of here but I hate leaving Benny alone so much. I am still in prison; just a prettier, more expensive one. I look at the big kitchen and the wonderful view and keep telling myself this is temporary, like a bad vacation place, because I cannot get attached to the physical surroundings. The place I thought would help me heal is causing more pain than ever and I’m lost for answers. I miss my family, I miss Poochie, I miss me.

The only bright spots in my life have been losing the 102 lbs. and having my health story posted on Christina Pirello’s new web site, Christina Cooks (www.christinacooks.com/well_being_rhea). It is a great honor that Christina asked for my story for her inaugural posting as I consider her a mentor, the woman who most motivated me to get healthier and become a vegan. It is a great story of improved physical health; I only wish my mental health was going in the same direction.

I don’t know what the future holds; sometimes it feels like the struggle is just to ensure there is a future. I would gladly trade the weight loss for just one day of quiet; I would go up a pants size in exchange for peace of mind. Right now, I’m just so tired and the banging in my head beats in time to the footsteps upstairs. These are not the kinds of losses I anticipated focusing on. No, this isn’t the post I had planned to write.