Wednesday, May 31, 2017

My Life In Scales: Part 4, Rock bottom is not a comfortable place to be.

2016 was a really shitty year.

I think we can all agree to that. I know I was not the only one who cried their eyes out on the morning of November 9th.

Social and political negativity aside, last year was a terrible year for me personally. Through out this piece I have been writing, I have been making correlations between my work and my weight. This was mostly to illustrate how sedentary I really was, not to say that I was fat because because of what I do for a living. I also did this because I spend 8+ hours a day at work, and most of my time is taken up with work, so yes - I feel that if I am doing a job that does not require me to move around, it will start to take an effect on my body. Since starting work at the bank, my lifestyle did not change much, and I was able to stay at a steady weight after gaining initially.

After years of being happily put in one place, and in one position I decided it was time for me to move on up. I literally have no idea what I was thinking to be honest. I felt ready, but intellectually I wasn't sure if I was ready to take the next career step into an Assistant Manager position. I did it anyway, thinking of an old quote I saw on someone's Facebook with like, a thousand pixels - don't regret the things you did, regret the things you didn't do. I didn't want to forever be wondering "should I have?".

I still had reservations. The commute would be 45 minutes. There was no manager currently at the branch, so it would be just me running the show until they hired someone. The staff was reportedly a notoriously difficult staff to work with. The branch was also smack dab in the middle of an immigrant community, an extremely insular and tight-knit community. I have zero language skills to speak of, so I know I would have to work through translators to help with some of the customers. Not only that, but the customers were also described as "rough" and could be very demanding. To put the cherry on top of this shit sundae, the branch was also in operational shambles - things were not getting done, and there had been quite a few incidences that made my eyebrows go up. I should also mention here that I never found any of this out until after I accepted the position and was settled in.

Thus started one of the worst years of my life. Being an exempt employee, I ended up having to work 50 hours a week, no overtime. I thought this would change when we got a branch manager, but it did not. She expected me to be there, while she swanned in and out as she pleased, under the guise of "appointments". There were nights when I had to be there until 9:00pm, because of some disaster or another. Most other days I didn't get home until around 7pm or 8pm. I worked every Saturday, with no other days off except for Sundays. All the operational work was put on to me, all the conference calls and other managerial duties were also placed on me. I truly did end up with a bad manager, and upper management were deaf to my complaints. She was needlessly cruel to me, nitpicking on things I could not possibly manage to do, and when I asked for help, she never gave it. She made me sign "coaching documents" that I did not feel comfortable signing as these documents never told my side of the story - only that in her view I was not doing my job. I felt she was terribly abusive and manipulative, because she could also be so very sweet - she loved to be affectionate, and she would smile at you and say your hair looked good. In the next moment she would be tearing you down.

All of this took a harsh toll on my mental health. The bad situation coupled with the hopelessness of first not having my concerns heard and the second of not being able to find a way out spun me into a depression. I stopped doing things I loved to do, I was moody and tired all the time. I snapped at my husband, and took my bad days out on him. I would burst out into tears randomly, and when I wasn't doing that, I started to have anxiety attacks. My heart would start to pound and my throat would feel like it was closing up and I couldn't breathe. I ended up going on anti-depressants, which really helped control most of what I was experiencing but it was not a solution.

Of course, along with depression, I gained weight. My eating habits were really god-awful. And because I was feeling so low about myself I could not care less about what was going into my mouth. Since my time outside of work was so limited, I was resorting to grab-and-go meals most of the time. And when I did cook, comfort food was the rule of the day - I felt I needed it to feel better. I won't lie and say that tucking into a pile of creamy diced potatoes au gratin didn't feel good, satisfying and helped lift my spirits. Because it did, but only for a short period of time and this behavior became quite constant. My snacking got out of hand too, as bags of gummy worms became my favorite thing to eat ever, no shame. My morning routine changed, gone were the days of being able to cook up an egg with some toast and fruit - I now resorted to stopping at Dunkin Donuts for a rather large sweet iced tea, a bagel with butter and a chocolate frosted doughnut. It was a quick and easy breakfast I could eat while in the car. I was packing more calories into a body that was already large to begin with, and I knew it.

I continued on like this for some months,feeling like I was fending off the dragon of my depression with a toothpick. During this time, my husband was a goddamn hero. He did so much to help make me feel better, to help accommodate my shit schedule, and just make sure he was there for me. The support he gave me was incredible, a real testament to how how far love can go. At times I felt like I was hanging on a precipice of  despair as work nearly took over my life. Ed was what kept me from falling completely over. I will forever love him for that, for the extreme kindness, and tender affection he gave me when I was just at my most low. He also never once mentioned how much I was eating, or that my clothes were getting larger, and my old clothes would stop fitting. He just kept on loving me.

In September of 2016 I couldn't hold out any longer. My one champion in my office had made her decision to escape, and I knew I had to do the same. I knew there was a Lead Teller position at a branch close to my home, and I knew I had to take it if I was going to keep my employment with the bank. I knew the wicked witch was gunning for me, and I was not going to let a 7 year career get destroyed by a bitchy interloper. I called the manager of the branch and told her my plans, she let out an audible gasp and said "I think I just won the lottery!". I smiled, for the first time in a long time at work, and I even shed a few tears. I knew I was making the right choice. As it turns out, I really did. I got out of a bad situation, and I landed in a much happier one. I loved my new job, my new branch and my new staff. It was a different job, but not completely unfamiliar. And slowly, but surely, I felt like I was coming back to life.

 There was one interesting facet to all this. Even though I was so much happier, and feeling better my eating and activity level literally did not change. I ate to celebrate life, and not to try and heal wounds. My kids, (which is what my assistant and I called my staff of mainly 20 and 21 year olds) were quite an active bunch. They went to the gym and were constantly watching what they ate. Good kids, really. I used to laugh, and make stupid jokes about how I like tacos and wine more than the gym. And they laughed along with me. And while I laughed, I still had this stupid niggling sensation that I was just ignoring the problem, once again.

The end of that year was a good one. Christmas was fun, and New Years was spent quietly with my husband, just the two of us and a pot of homemade fondue. And it was fucking delicious. There was also a lot of alcohol consumed between the two of us. This is also not even including the indulgences of the holiday season. Cookies, cake, roast beef, mashed potatoes, buffalo chicken egg rolls, and so much wine. So. Much. Wine. So much drunk. But, gosh it was fun. And when it was finally all over and January 1st finally dawned, I did something I had never done before.

I made a New Years Resolution.

I was going to finally, really truly lose weight.



-GG









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