I was cleaning up some things on my laptop (I’m so disorganized on my laptops), putting files and pictures where they belong, shit like that… and I happened to notice something.

Ever since the beginning of last year, I’ve watched, unhappily, as I began putting on more and more weight, watched as my hair refused to grow back after a haircut, became thiner and had become more curly. All were not changes I wanted, obviously. I’d seen doctors, specialists, had all sorts of tests done… And even though some of my levels were so up and down it was as if they were fucking yo-yos, they all said I was fine (not the ER doctor, he was concerned by this). Never mind that I’ve gained a shit ton of weight, that my hair is falling out and won’t grow, that I’m cold in the middle of a hot, humid summer and that’s not normal for me. I fit inside the “cookie cutter” result levels. And never mind the fact that my calorie intake and activity levels are just as low as they always have been… If my levels were fine by the generic standards, I was fine.

But when you look at this comparison… Well… I had been gaining weight for about four months in the bottom picture. I felt fat… But when you compare it to the top picture, taken last month (a year and three months later), you can see that I gained a lot of weight. I’m currently the heaviest I’ve been in my entire life and still gaining… I’m so disgusted and ashamed of how I look at no one wants to listen to what I’m telling them. This is not just a case of overeating or lack of exercise. If it was, my hair wouldn’t have changed as much as it has. You’d think it would look better because of better nourishment. But what the fuck do I know…

To make things worse, my weight gain has added to my depression…

So I’m currently listening to a really depressing song because that’s what I do… You’d think that I’d listen to things that improve my mood, but I don’t. I actually listen to things that match my current mood to help me get out the things that I’m feeling. This song —-> pretty much sums up how I’ve been feeling lately. Give it a listen, you’ll know what I mean… Not only has this weight gain gotten me down, but I’ve been putting way too much thought lately into exactly how much time I’ve got left. And it’s not just me; I have friends my age that are having the same thoughts. There’s more time behind you than ahead and what have you to show for it? Maybe you have some great accomplishments, maybe you had every intention of doing great things but life happened. You thought it was okay because there was plenty of time to do these things. But then, one day, you wake up and more than half (or less) of your life is gone already and you don’t know when the fuck it happened. Now there’s either no time left to do what you wanted or it’s just counterproductive to try… What do you do…? Well, if you’re me, you sit back, listen to a relevant song and contemplate how badly your life has been fucked up and you don’t exactly see an improvement in your latter years. Wow, that’s depressing…

See this girl, the really skinny one in this grainy ass picture…? Yeah, that’s me, back in 1992.. I was 19…

Let’s forget for a moment that I was incredibly thin with a shape like an old Barbie doll (before someone had a moment about her supposedly unachievable figure). I’m not so delusional that I think I can have this figure again at 52… Age and menopause, psych meds and other medical issues have caused my metabolism to crash. I’d like to be thin again, but I’ll never be this 118 pound girl again and I don’t think I’d want to be. I was 5’9″ at the time and that was too skinny…

But this girl, the one with the Barbie doll figure, nice thick hair and overly large sunglasses… I hardly recognize her anymore. She had the looks, the big dreams and the determination to go after them and make them a reality. She was a happy-go-lucky, free spirit that had everything in front of her. She didn’t give much thought to aging, didn’t have anxieties about the future and saw nothing but promise ahead. She lived her life day by day, knowing the world was hers for the asking. All she had to do was answer that call…

There’s a reason I don’t recognize her anymore… She “died” a long time ago…

Life and circumstances took their toll… All the time in the world seemed to pass in the blink of an eye until now there’s little time left (in the big scheme of things). The face I see in the mirror is old, sad, regretful… That’s the girl I recognize, the one that became an old woman somewhere between when I was this girl and now. When I see old pictures like this or ones from when I was a smiling little girl, I’d say 99% of the time, I can’t recognize myself. Too much has changed and not necessarily for the better. I never got to pursue any of the hopes and dreams that girl had. I feel like I let her down… I can’t honestly say I didn’t… When I look at myself today, I can safely say that this was so not what I wanted for her… Literally nothing is what I wished for that girl when I was her…

I was about 22 here…

Yes, those are 101 Dalmatians sheets gracing that ancient mattress and boxspring, hahahaa… I still have some of the things in this picture. I think I even still have the sheets…

This girl had some lovely dreams of the future… She knew what she wanted and, though she’d been damaged, she was more than willing to grab that brass ring on the merry-go-round of life. She was happy, content (for the time being) and knew what she wanted. I don’t know where things went so wrong… Life just got in the way, I suppose. Back then, I thought there was time for everything…

Now it’s heading into the twilight years…

Maybe I’m overthinking things, one of my worst habits… The older I got, I began looking more into the past and how things went wrong instead of looking forward. At this age, it’s not likely that I have anything terribly spectacular to look forward to, so I suppose it’s normal that I look back… I’m just sad that I feel like I wasted that time I had. Now I’m a fat, old, 18 years post menopausal woman filled with regret. If that girl from long ago, the girl I don’t recognize, knew then that this would be her life, I’m sure she would have gone out of her way to make sure this didn’t happen. I wish I could go back in time and tell her so…

My apologies, dear readers, to any of you who read this all the way through. It was depressing as all fuck… I was just thinking out loud, more for myself than anyone else. And this was how I decided to celebrate now 12 years with WordPress, by depressing the fuck out of myself and all of you reading it. Happy fucking anniversary, right? Yeah well… What can you do…