Reverb10: Day 14 – Appreciate

There is no such thing as gratitude unexpressed.  If it is unexpressed, it is plain, old-fashioned ingratitude.
— Robert Brault

So, so busy.  Trying to catch up.  I’m skipping last Sunday’s and Monday’s prompts because they are, respectively, too new-agey and too repetitive for me (you can see all the prompts here to follow along). Last Tuesday’s prompt:

What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it? (Author: Victoria Klein)

Well, I don’t know if I’ve come to appreciate it so much as remember how good I had it, but the thing that first comes to mind (which is kind of the kind of unwritten “rule” of these prompts for me so far – writing about the first thing that occurs to me) is being in shape.  I am decidedly *not* in shape.  I used to be, and not that long ago.  A little more than two years ago, I was in probably the best shape of my life.  I had lost 74 pounds, I worked out regularly, I was training for a 5k, which I subsequently completed.  I looked like this:

Now, I look like this:

Every day when I put on clothes that get tighter and tighter, I feel so angry at myself that I let what I was physically slip away, bit by bit, a pound here, two pounds there, over the course of my relationship with David.  Every day I go to the gym and get my ass kicked by a routine that would have seemed, if not easy, then at least not exhausting, two years ago, I feel angry at myself for letting this happen.  62 pounds.  It gets worse almost every week.  I feel helpless and out of control.

I miss being in shape.  I miss not getting winded walking up two flights of stairs.  I miss not getting hot so easily, especially in the winter.  I miss the way my body looked and felt and moved.  And I feel like it will be nearly impossible to get back to that place.