Dear Diary...

Thoughts on not losing weight, on the tax of being female, on expected death, all that jazz

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I missed the weigh in this week. Part of me thought, after weighing in 12 hours late and being a little sad at what I saw, though not in any way surprised, that I would just ignore this week and not post on here at all. But then the silence became deafening to me.

I’ve never been good at not saying something. Whenever there’s a tricky situation that requires maybe keeping my mouth shut, perhaps just walking away head held high, well I find that hard. Even in the initial moments, with my lips clamped tight, I can feel the words trying to fight their way out whilst my internal, more poised version of myself says quietly, through gritted teeth ‘shut the f*ck up’. But I rarely do.

This has gotten me into trouble over the years. Grave and expensive trouble at times. I am far enough away from the initial litigation of my divorce to reflect that perhaps if I hadn’t been so hasty in emailing my ex about blended family relations, perhaps if I’d ignored some of the more irritating things that happened, perhaps if I’d just been a little more submissive, then there’s a chance I wouldn’t have ended up with a mild form of PTSD from years of deeply unpleasant solicitors letters, emails, court hearings etc. (I am smirking as I type this as I know some readers were literally by my side throughout those years and are raising an eyebrow to say ‘erm no, nothing would have stopped that juggernaut from landing Holly’). But we’ll never know, will we? A girl can dream.

Which brings me back to the less serious subject of my weight loss on MJ. Tuesday was spent in the Cotswolds taking a member of the family to see someone about back issues. I won’t go into all the details, they’re not mine to give, but what I will say is that I suspect I paid a heavy tax for being female. In the initial phone call to book the appointment I gave details of the X rays, diagnosis and daily related pain and was told that the person in question should not be experiencing that level of pain with that set of X rays. Okay.

Now you may well be thinking, why on earth did you book an appointment with someone who was so unbelieving? Well, annoyingly they’re a specialist in a type of physical therapy where there are only THREE in the UK. And the other two are in London, and well, London clinics have London prices. So I booked in and we agreed the session might take up to 3 hours with the initial consultation and then a couple of hours of tuition in the daily exercises needed.

We drove for almost 3 hours and I knew straight away, as the door opened, that he thought we were charlatans. He took a verbal history and essentially said the X rays were clear that there’s barely any issue. I did my best holding my tongue I have ever done. Then the actual examination took place and as my sidekick for the day said ‘he changed his tune after that didn’t he?’. He was incredulous at just how much of a problem the seemingly small anomaly was causing. He kept saying how remarkable this was. (I have never really liked men who say ‘remarkable’ just as I don’t much like women who say ‘super’, unless they’re royalty that is).

So after much exclaiming about remarkability, I asked what the plan was. And he said we needed to come back for a longer session. Now at this point I had two options, either suck it up and say okay and get out my diary, or lose my sh*t and say that we agreed this was exactly what this appointment was for, that we were driving almost 6 hours in ONE DAY for this and that he was a remarkable pr*ck for not honouring the agreement on the phone.

You’ll be pleased to know I chose the former option. I think I might be growing up. Maybe even maturing a little. (Steady on).

So we’re going back and I can’t help but feel that this tax on my literal money and time is partly down to what I have in my pants, or rather what I don’t have. When I mentioned in the appointment my boyfriend had studied sports science and was extremely good at teaching others how to activate muscles using their thoughts (sounds woo woo - is real, promise), he perked up and wanted to know where he’d studied, what he did now etc. I sometimes hate being female. I hate that I have to fawn to these kind of men just to get what I need. In my younger years I swore to do something about it. I was angry and a bit of a crusader. These days I’m tired and a bit fed up of it all and every time I come across this kind of BS I just want to have a nap. It’s been going on for too long.

One of my sons almost lost an eye because of this nonsense. Back when he was just two years old he had an infection in his eye. I kept taking him to the GP and kept being told he was fine. It was suggested that I might have issues with anxiety and might need some medication for this. And then that poor boy needed an ambulance and emergency surgery two days before Christmas and now has a huge scar on one eye. He’s lucky apparently… his sight wasn’t compromised. Seriously.

Now at this point I’m at one of those shut your mouth crossroads. I have so many examples of being ignored or not believed due to my gender, an awful lot in the medical arena, but also I know that’s not why you’re here. You want the gossip.

So all of this is a long way of telling you that we ended up having lunch in a restaurant after the appointment and I ate badly (as in quite oily food that wasn’t even delicious) and when I weighed in I’d put on 0.2lb in the last week. And I was annoyed. And I blame the remarkable man because it feels good to point the finger at someone else.

Since Tuesday I have gotten back on the wagon and a weigh in this morning showed I have now lost 1/2lb compared to last week. On a positive note, what this episode has taught me is that when I come off MJ I will have to be careful. My body wants to be bigger for sure. I’m not in the mood to be told what to do though. Not any more.

I’m a little all over the place at the moment about something else - I’ve been wrestling with whether or not to pause this substack for a few weeks this summer. I’d like to say it’s for the wholesome reason of spending more time with my kids, but it’s not, it’s because, ahem, (sounds the klaxon marked ‘tickets on herself’) I want to try and write a book.

I have been trying to write a book since I was about 8. I have started so many with good intentions and then just run out of steam. The simple fact is that my ideas weren’t very good. But now, now I have an idea. I don’t know if it’s good, but I do know that I have proper bones for it. I feel an urge to flesh it out. I have a week where all the boys are away with my parents and I also have two weeks where the older boys are with their Dad, so I have some time to crack on, albeit 14 days of this just in the evenings. And I am wondering if by writing it here it might be enough of a push to make me do it. I’m scared. It’s frightening to state an intention isn’t it? What if it’s awful? What if the idea doesn’t have legs? What if, what if, what if…

Anyway, other things I wanted to tell you today include that my uncle died yesterday. This is sad for his kids and grandkids etc but I don’t personally feel upset. I haven’t seen him since my grandmother’s funeral in 2007, and he only lived 25 minutes away in the car, so you could say we’re not close on that side of the family. He had a ‘good innings’; he was just shy of 80 years old, worked part time until about 3 months ago when he was diagnosed with cancer, smoked for 70 years of his 79 (not a typo, yep he started at 9… amazing) and was what people refer to as ‘a character’. He lived a full life, was sometimes badly behaved and well, had a lot of fun.

We only found out he was very unwell from a school dad whose mum happened to work with him. Thank goodness he called me to break the news otherwise my uncle and his siblings might never have reconnected before he died. Sometimes saying something IS the right thing to do. Knew it.