Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

After writing my post on anxieties, in which I detail the tide of ridiculous fears that has plagued me in the past few months, there was a flurry of comments and emails asking the same question: Do you think you are also afraid to lose weight?

Well, no.

I’ve heard a million psycho-babble reasons why people gain and maintain weight, but I think most of them are bullshit. Now, am I afraid of the changes that may occur when I lose the weight? Am I afraid of leaving my comfort zone of fatness, of overpriced ugly clothing, and of sleeping in on the weekends? Am I afraid of the effort it may take to get there? The cost? The sacrifices?

Kinda.

More than anything, I’m afraid of The Great Unknown.

What I mean to say is that I am no more afraid to lose weight than I am afraid to start a new job. In fact, it seems, suddenly and quite dramatically, that I might be getting a job offer in the next few weeks. The new job would bring a significant pay increase and an even more significant stress decrease. There is almost nothing bad to be said about taking this new job.

But does it still worry me? Yes. Am I afraid of the new job? No. I’m afraid of The Great Unknown. I’m afraid of the realization that I don’t know where to stash my bottles of water. I’m afraid of the moment when I have to make a copy and I don’t know where the machine is. I’m afraid of looking stupid. I’m afraid of having to explain myself to new colleagues. Even when The Great Unknown is packaged up with positive life changes, it still provokes anxiety.

Listen.

When I was in my first year of grad school, I lived in a 250-square-foot studio apartment. This, friends, is a very small apartment. I lived there with my dog, my futon, and about a thousand pounds of art supplies.

This apartment was in a very sketchy neighborhood. The first month I lived there, I learned of “The Westchester Rapist,” who had claimed victims in my apartment complex, the complex to the south, and the complex to the east of mine. For 8 months I attended Neighborhood Watch meetings dedicated to finding this man and arresting him. (We eventually did.)

I had to take my dog across the street and down the block to a small strip of grass 3-5 times a day for him to relieve himself. I had to do this, rain or shine. I had to do this before they caught the rapist. I had to get up and get dressed in the morning before I could use the bathroom myself. I still can’t believe I did that.

To top things off, the studio was less than half a mile from the LAX runway. Every 8 minutes, we had a flyby. Every 8 minutes. 24 hours a day. We. Got. Buzzed. It was deafening. It was practically debilitating. It was weird. The windows would rattle. The door would shake. You couldn’t leave anything cylindrical lying about or it would roll off onto the floor. I liked to watch out the window and see which carriers were landing at rush hour, at lunch hour, at 3:00 in the morning.

My next door neighbor was a Hertz Rental Car. When my parents came to visit, they took the Hertz shuttle and snuck through the gate and over to my apartment. Free ride! When my brothers visited, I took a photograph of them flying over my head by standing on the balcony. You can clearly read the model number on the plane’s tires in this photograph. Hell, you can practically make out the color of my brother’s watch as he waved out the window.

I lived close enough to the airport that I could tune my radio to the airport station and hear, on a 6.3-minute loop, the check-in instructions for each of the terminals, the security announcements about not leaving your bags unattended, and the rules for dropping off passengers without being arrested by airport security.

At the end of the year, I decided to go to Mexico and paint for the summer. I made arrangements to put my belongings in storage and planned to find a new apartment when I returned. It was a simple enough idea: move out. Paint. Find a new place to live. Period.

And then, the strangest thing happened.

Before I even began packing up, I got nostalgic. I began photographing the apartment in intimate detail. I painted blueprints of the studio all over my art journals. I obsessed about neighborhood features that had become the landmarks of my days. I made a collage of photographs I took of my parking space. I sighed when planes flew overhead, thinking how much I would miss the rattle and jolt. I began to mourn the loss of this… place. This… home. This…

This SHITTY ASS HELLHOLE OF AN APARTMENT.

Are you kidding me???

Would I ever consider moving back there? HELL NO. I know now that there are much better options out there, and with far fewer sacrifices of health and sanity. At the time, though, it was comfortable. It was Known. I was only afraid of The Great Unknown.

I told my dad the other night about how afraid and nervous I felt about starting this new job. “But, why?” he asked.

“I don’t know… it’s just a big change. I am so bad at change.”

He laughed.

“Have you taken even a moment to look back over your life? You don’t fear change. You embrace change. You’ve lived in the Middle East. In Europe. In Boston. In New York. You’ve traveled the world by yourself, been locked into all sorts of crazy places, eaten foods that have un-pronounce-able names. You are a risk taker. You are a stretcher and a grower. You’re seriously going to let a little comfort zone keep you from happiness?”

No, I’m not. This is me, stepping into The Great Unknown.