Have you ever felt completely lost? I don’t mean in the sense of not knowing if you should turn left or right and need the assistance of google maps. I mean in who you are. For a long time now, I have looked at myself both figuratively and literally and didn’t feel like I knew the person staring back at me. I mentioned in one of my previous posts how I’d become my own worst enemy, berating myself at every turn. As I started to try to change, I realized it was just a result of my frustration. It was tough love I guess. I wanted the old me back. She was lost but I had no idea when it happened or where she, I mean I, was.

Where was the old me? Where was the chick who jumped out of bed almost every morning ready to work out? Where was the person that ate healthy most of the time and liked how they looked in their clothes? Where was the person who called herself an athlete? Where had she gone? How long has she been missing? Why was she gone? What could I do to get her back? I tried everything I could think of. I even started to do pretty well on occasion. I thought maybe I just needed to set hard goals and the old me would come out of the shadows and crush them.

I was wrong. Goal after goal, failure after failure. I wanted to love triathlon again. I mean, it didn’t do anything to me to cause me to hate it. Why didn’t I love it anymore? Same with healthy foods. They made me feel good! Why does the thought of them make me feel bleh. Where is the old me?!! I was so frustrated and starting to get depressed over it. I felt helpless and yet I know that it’s me that has to do something about it. No one else could help me find the old me. No one else even really knew she was missing. How could anyone help, when it was me that lost her? 

The more I thought about the old me, the more perfect she became in my mind.  In my mind, she got up every morning at 5:00am ready to start the day. There was no snooze in her vocabulary.  She never missed a workout. I remember once she went 40+ days straight and then took a day scheduled off. She weighed less and looked better. She was fearless and strong. I practically pictured the old me with six pack abs, eating nothing but kale and drinking a gallon of water a day.  I kept thinking “Old me would so beat my ass right now”. 

I love data, so I wanted to get the stats. What was my weight? What was I eating? What was my routine?  I went back through a bunch of old blog posts, photos, and journal entries,  trying to see if I could tell when I stopped loving the things I loved.  When I stopped loving me.  There it was, in the data, staring me right in the face. I weighed less, though not as much as I thought. I trained more. I was fitter. All that, and at that time, it still wasn’t good enough in my mind. I wanted to weigh less and do more back then too. I wasn’t fearless, I cried almost every open water swim. I missed workouts. I didn’t always get up on time or eat clean. The old me, that  3-4 year ago me, wasn’t happy with herself back then either!

I can’t remember a time when I was really happy with how I looked, or felt.  I’ve never been one of those people who says they “love themselves”.  I’ve always wanted to be “better” somehow.  I was never good enough just as I was.  Are we ever truly happy with ourselves? Maybe some people are, maybe no one is. I don’t know. All I know is that I was spending way too much energy chasing an illusion of what I thought I was. That is when I decided to stop chasing her. I decided to spend that energy on trying to change how I view myself. Even if I did the same things she did, I would still never be her, and something clicked. I no longer wanted to be. So much has happened between then and now that has changed me. Some for the better, some for the worse, but I wouldn’t change any of it.  I’m exactly where I am supposed to be. The current me. The me that still strives to be better, but is learning to be more encouraging in that. The me that has stopped comparing myself to anyone, including my old self. The me that is focused on finding joy in the little things and being grateful every day.

It took some time, but I found what I needed, even if it wasn’t what I lost.