My Glow Up Diary, Part 3: Change is Hard

If it were easy, everyone would do it.

Is there a 12-step program for overhauling your life, otherwise known as a Glow Up?

Somewhere in the process it goes from “fuck, yeah!” to “I’m going to eat a large bag of chips and worry about this tomorrow”.

Today was the latter. Specifically, two party-sized bags of barbecue chips. My intestinal tract feels like garbage.

For some people, a glow up is physical. I’m already lean and can slap on makeup to look decent. Most of this glow up is from the inside out; eating healthy and getting in a good head space. Two areas neglected for over forty years.

I still struggle with the divorce. I don’t miss my ex-husband but I miss having a family. Joseph was never around but I had my kids full-time and I was part of a unit. I downgraded myself to a part-time mom, which makes me feel inferior. I was a “real” parent before. Now I pretend to be one fifty percent of the time.

It’s not like everything is zen when I get my kids. I can’t do the things I used to do on weekends with them because there are times when a Divide-and-Conquer method was needed to get the kids to various places. Now it’s All-or-Nothing. I’m all for making kids suck it up when it’s necessary to drag them to events that they don’t want to go but it’s not fun when it’s the default.

Do I want to take my daughter skating? Yes, but that means my son is sitting outside the cold rink at a table by himself with a tablet. Do I want to take my son to pickleball classes with me? Yes, but that means my daughter is sitting on a bench by herself with a tablet.

Plus, it’s expensive when you’ve got two kids but one income.

It’s hard to glow up when you feel devastatingly lonely without your children. It’s been two years and I still cry every weekend I don’t have them. The silence is deafening.

Here in the US, it’s Memorial Day weekend. For myself and my kids, that’s four days of no work and no school. Joseph has them this weekend though, so now I’ve got even more time alone. It’s not that I don’t have things to keep me busy. I have a To Do list long enough to warrant a staff to help.

Being alone means that I think. And think some more. My overthinking often leads me down a bad path. Lately, that trajectory leans towards my desperate need for love. I didn’t have it in my marriage but I had my kids full-time, so it filled the void.

Growing up without it, I didn’t realize how much I needed it until after my divorce. Falling in love with a guy who ultimately wanted to date others crushed me while making me realize that dammit…I want love. I grew up with parents that never once told me they loved me (but had loads of emotional and physical abuse) and my marriage was doomed before it began.

It makes me angry. I’ve done my time in emotional purgatory, teetering on the edge of almost experiencing raw and honest love but never getting there. I’m in my mid-forties and the only real love I’ve experienced is with my kids.

Before anyone comes for me about loving myself first blah blah blah, spare me. Humans are social creatures and it’s about connection.

This glow up means I need to finally work through these emotions, once and for all. The amount I’ve spent on therapy over decades would equal one lobotomy, thus solving this entire problem.

I’m getting better with the negative self-talk. After eating two bags of chips while wasting my time watching a Netflix fluff movie I’d already seen before (“Do Revenge” is fun and dark), I looked up my new gym’s closing time. Despite feeling like garbage, I forced myself to go so that I could at least learn how to use the Smith Machine if it wasn’t in its usual state of high demand.

While doing lunges in front of the mirror, my stomach stuck out, poofy from the chips and water retention from Diet Pepsi. I felt awful. I looked awful. But at least I tried. In the past I would have stayed on the couch, crying and eating more garbage to soothe my emotions.

Having an anthem helps during a glow up. Some songs are upbeat and happy. I needed a song to make myself feel like a cool badass.

This glow up doesn’t need a toolkit to make happen. It needs a Home Depot-sized arsenal of mental hacks to get me to the other side.