Improvements

It is very easy to become depressed when you're unemployed. I can only imagine how it would be if I'd lost my job, because it's depressing enough when you're unemployed because of your own will (sort of). For the past two months, I have struggled with issues from having no job. I made really good friends at my last job -- friends I still keep in touch with and still miss. So leaving them was really tough. When Z didn't start his job until a month after he should have, I felt a ton of pressure on me to find a job. It was (cliche warning) sort of hard to get out of bed in the mornings. I'm the type of girl who doesn't leave the house without her makeup on and her hair fixed, but I started wondering why I even bothered when all I did was sit around the apartment all day cooking or cleaning or generally feeling like a loser. Some days I didn't even change out of pajamas. That really starts to get a person down.

But all of that is changing now. Z has finally started his job, the bar exam will be over soon, tomorrow is his last night class, and yesterday we joined the YMCA. During college, I took a series of yoga, pilates, and aerobics classes, and joined that with walking with my friends almost every morning. During those 3 or 4 semesters (the time I met and became best friends with Z) I lost tons of weight. To the point where my family didn't like it and told me I was too skinny. After I graduated though, I lived in one town after another where I wanted to find a class, but it was always one inconvenience after another. And I gained weight. And I started planning a wedding and got totally stressed and got married and had financial problems, and supported my husband when his schoolwork was more important than him having a job, and had to quit my job and move when neither one of us wanted to. I gained weight. I started to hate looking at myself in the mirror, clothes shopping, or even getting dressed in the morning. My self esteem just got completely zapped and I knew that hating myself was the next step if I didn't do something.

Z feels sort of the same way about himself (although he's not a girl, so there's probably not the same self-loathing involved), and we both just want to feel better and look better. So we'd discussed joining the Y for a while, even before we moved here. It's just so expensive, initially. The monthly cost is not that much, but there's a start-up fee of $100, plus the first month. Anyway, we figured that unless we made a financial commitment, we wouldn't stick to a plan.

So, yesterday afternoon, after church and lunch, we toured the Y and picked up an application. We sat in the car, filled it out, returned it and worked out that evening. Then we came home, showered, etc., and after dinner we went to Wal-Mart for various things. While there, I got new nail polish, blush, and lipstick. It hit me that I'd never ever purchased lipstick. I have lip gloss of course, but never lipstick. Maybe it's shallow, but this morning when I put on my makeup, even though I had nowhere to go, I felt better about myself.

This evening, while I was cleaning up the kitchen after cooking dinner (parmesan oven-fried chicken -- very good), Z called and said his class had gotten out early and we'd have time to go work out together. We made it there around 9:00 and I did 2 miles on the treadmill. Tomorrow I'm going to take a pilates class.

I feel better already.