SPEEDBUMP.

I had a completely unexpected rough day yesterday. It was like someone put a speed bump in the middle of I-15 and I hit it going 80mph. It really seemed to come out of nowhere and got progressively worse.

It all started with going visiting teaching. There was just a lot of talk of babies, natural child births, labor, and general mommy talk and child monitoring. Didn't think I was phased at all but for some reason I started to get all squirmy and uncomfortable like I did a few months ago when I was at the library surrounded by children and then came home and ate a batch of cookie dough.

My typical work out and eating schedule was also thrown off by getting up extra early to see Dan off for work and then driving 30 minutes to teach some lessons that morning. It was just all off but I thought I could get it under control. No biggie.

After finally getting home, I realized it had been about 5 hours since I had eaten my very small breakfast of an egg and an orange. I was starving. I was also a little behind schedule so I just threw back a protein shake with as much good stuff as I could put in it- a little fruit and tons of spinach.

Fast forward to the part of my day when the lunch I packed was disgusting. So disgusting that I couldn't eat it. It was just some cooked chicken with a new spice that was awful. I was able to eat some veggies and an Odwalla Superfood drink, but it didn't feel like much of a lunch.

Pause for a moment for some self reflection.

Yesterday was a wake up call about a few things and since this is my journal this might be a little long.

Right now I am the breadwinner. I am responsible for paying for all of our expenses. My husband is in school full-time and works at a hospital as a psychiatric technician to bring in our cushion money, but sometimes he gets call off from work so we don't always include his income on our budget.

It's a heavy load to carry but I know that it allows my husband to get through school and it's important for me to do this right now. It's a choice I have made but sometimes it's a heavy load. It has taught me more about the pressures men feel to provide for their families than anything else. It makes me a lot more appreciative of my own dad and for the time when my husband will take over that responsibility.

I've decided to be self-employed which can be an equally heavy load to carry.

I usually love what I do, but lately I have felt really frustrated. Turning my joy into a full time business has taken some of the joy out of it. I felt more balanced and joyful when I wasn't teaching 5 days a week and when I was closer to my students. Right now I have taken on about 5 more hours of teaching each week because I felt we needed to earn more money. This means more driving, more hours away from home, and getting home later and later.

I am basically in my car or in someone's living room from the hours of 1-8 everyday. Most people have lunch and or dinner in those hours and so for me I have to rely on portable food that I can eat while I'm driving around. If my food is off or it doesn't taste right, I'm screwed and I just have to go hungry for the rest of the night.

That's what happened yesterday. Long day on an empty stomach. Last night while driving through terrible traffic it hit me how much I hate driving. I have just finished my 3rd week of my new teaching schedule and it's all catching up to me. The extra lessons, the extra driving, the extra time away from home, it's all taking a toll. The driving is really wearing me down.

I feel it's my obligation to continue this until the end of the school year but after that I have to change something about my business. We have some plans for that to happen but I just have to figure out how to manage things until that time comes.

Resume thoughts about the events of yesterday.

While I was driving home I knew I had a 45 minute drive ahead and needed to eat something. I tried to resist fast food but I found myself at the McDonald's drive in ordering a 10 piece chicken McNugget. No fries or drink, just the nuggets. I ate them on auto pilot while I fumed in traffic about how rude the drivers are here.

After the nuggets I wanted more. I wanted something from every fast food restaurant I passed. I was fantasizing about making cookies when I got home, or ordering pizza, or just pigging out on junk food. I even had to talk myself out of going to Ikea to get pizza and cinnamon rolls!

That is why I avoid fast food. It's like a gateway drug. You eat it, you feel sick and under nourished and then feel like you have to make up for it by eating MORE food.

I knew I had to talk myself out of eating all my feelings when I got home. I got home, drank some water, tried to unwind, and not turn to food. I completed my food journal and discovered that even with my nuggets, I had eaten less than 1000 calories for the day. No wonder I wanted to eat everything in sight!

I was feeling uptight but I wasn't going to turn to food. I wasn't going to do it! I made a delicious salad and ate as much delicious salad as I wanted. While doing that I got a call from Dan that his 12 hour work shift just turned into a 14 hour shift because his replacement got in a car accident and they had to find someone else to come into work. Perfect. Just what I needed, more hours home alone feeling like an addict.

I was going to make it though because I am strong. I was browsing facebook and then I saw one of my friends announce that she is having a baby. It stung. It stung really bad. It was such an unexpected sting! It was the feeling when your heart drops after you find out you didn't make the cheer squad or you didn't make it to call backs or your boyfriend dumps you.

The sting was painful but I was still not going to turn to food. I started re-watching the most charming reality series I've ever found on hulu. It's called Southern Belles and I love it. A couple episodes in, one of the girls on the show is discussing her divorce and how she had gone through a miscarriage at 16 weeks and it was a turning point in their marriage. She was talking about how it's so hard to know that you are growing your baby inside and what an amazing feeling it is to create life and then have it all go away.

That was it for me. I cried and cried and cried. It's a terrible thing for a woman to go through and just when I think I'm past my experience, something will trigger deep feelings about it.

It's tough. It's really hard feeling your body change and adjust and even though I never felt that little baby inside of me move,  I was almost 12 weeks when I miscarried so I had definitely gone through the physical changes that take place in the early stages of pregnancy. I felt my groin muscles pull and stretch. I felt the pain of getting out of bed too fast and feeling like you had pulled a muscle in your side. I had felt pregnancy. I had felt life inside of me.

I had also felt it all go away. I never got to see or hold that little baby. It just all ended. It's something that doesn't bother me very often, but when those feelings come up they are really sad for me. Last night was a trigger of those feelings. Being around children and new moms in the morning was probably where the triggers started.

I think last night was a triumph and a failure all at once. It was a triumph because I didn't binge. I didn't eat until I was sick. But I did turn to food. After crying for awhile I got out our stash of frozen sugar cookies that we saved from our last cookie decorating party and frosted 3 of them and then took them to the couch and ate them. They weren't even that good honestly, but they were comforting.

After I ate them I threw all the cookies and frosting away and figured that we can make or buy new frosting and cookies for our next party.

Dan finally got home at about 10:00 and he made everything better. He listened to me, held me, and comforted me. He is such a wonderful person. We talked about all the things that have been stressing me out about teaching and driving. We talked about why being around kids and new moms gives me a lot of anxiety. It brings out a lot of fears about becoming a mom myself, and then makes me go back on my desire to have children, but then when I find out someone is pregnant it makes me so happy for them, but 100% envious it isn't me so then I'm confused about where I'm at with wanting to have children.

We did have a funny moment during the baby discussion where he said, well, you know Steph, it's ok if you're not ready for kids right now, or if you want to wait until I at least have my nursing degree so I can work more and if you don't have your first one until your 30, that's ok. I had to remind him that I am 3.5 years older than him and even if I got pregnant right now, our first baby wouldn't come before my 30th birthday. Sometimes we forget how far apart we are in age. Then we laughed. And both realized that yeah, I'm getting older and it's weird, and it's so strange to wake up and realize that you'll never have a baby in your 20's.

Overall I think I did pretty good to only eat 3 cookies, especially considering my past relationship with baked goods. I was hoping for a day where I could say I didn't eat my feelings, but this is a step in the right direction. I really hate and love days like yesterday. I hate them because they are hard and they expose my weaknesses. I love them because they allow me to honor my emotions and allow me to process things that are weighing me down. Even if I don't have a solution to everything today, I know that things need to change in the future and if I don't change things about my business I'm going to explode.

I don't want to explode, so here's to hoping the end of the school year comes really fast!