Since I just posted those 6 dream dresses, I wanted to take a second to talk about my goals.
As a lot of you reading this know, I was on different anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications for about 5 years of my life. From the middle of high school to the middle of college, I was medicated through my 'coming of age.'
Those years were both a blessing and a curse to my life. Before going on meds, I was so nervous and irrationally paranoid about being negatively judged by any given person I interacted with that I ended up pushing people away and spending most of my time alone in my room, moping or crying or trying to calm my always nervous stomach.
The pills made me able to ignore the intense, irrational feelings that come with social anxiety, allowing me to get closer to my then boyfriend/now fiance, as well as the girls who became my very best friends. Even with all the drawbacks from the pills (which I will go on to explain), the relationships I have now make everything worth it. I know that with the utmost certainty.
With all that negativity washed away, and with Joe and my friends at my side, I was able to find my personality. I turned from a quiet and bookwormish honor student/teachers pet into sassy and boisterous joker who is unafraid to voice her opinions.
Those were the blessings.
The curse was weight gain and loss of motivation. I had never gotten below a B in all my time as a student ... until I started on my medications. The pills gave me relief from the pressure of trying to be accepted. As a kid who was always scared of being judged, I knew that doing well with my school work would result in positive reinforcement from teachers and parents. It was something that made me feel good about myself, so I made it a priority to always, always get good grades. Once I got on the pills, however, I found happiness in so many other things that being the best at school seemed unimportant. In fact, a lot of things seemed unimportant.
Two of the side effects of most anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications is weight gain and a general sense of carelessness towards some things that would normally be bothersome. Weight gain is basically always bad, and adding that to carelessness was a disastrous mix when it came to the state of my body. I watched myself gain more than 100 pounds over the course of two years, ignoring the problem all along the way. I went from a size 16 to a size 26. Luckily I stayed that size and didn't get any bigger.
Plateauing at a size 26 by the end of year 2, I tried a handful of times over the next 3 years of being on the meds to try to lose weight, but each attempt only lasted a week or so. I would diet, work out three or four times, then decide I was content with myself. The same thing happened with my college courses as well. I would do well for a couple weeks, then decide the whole class wasn't important. Even know I'm amazed at how easy it was for me to convince myself how unimportant my body and my school work were at that point in my life.
I'm not sure at what moment exactly I figured out that I was wasting time, but I slowly weened myself off my medication, and stopped taking pills completely around January of this year. I got two A's and a B through this last semester, and have been consistently losing weight since late March. Although once in a while I'll get scared, anxious feelings around large groups of people, and sometimes feel a strong aversion to parties and bars, I am able to rationalize with myself when my feelings get too intense. I'm able to talk myself out of feeling like I'm being judged and criticized (most of the time) and have goals for my future instead of just feeling a general sense of apathy about my life.
Now, onto a couple of my goals.
I want to lose a certain amount of weight that I'm not comfortable sharing yet because it would reveal an idea of how much I actually weigh right now. I know, it's silly, but I want to keep that information to myself until after I lose it all.
Anyway, I plan to give a gift to myself for losing this huge amount of weight, and that gift is going to be my dream wedding dress. Let me tell you, dream dresses are not cheap. Four of the ones I posted cost over 5,000 dollars, one of them costs between 1,500 and 3,000 dollars, and the last one costs between 600 and 1,500 dollars. The site only lists price ranges, not actual prices, for each dress.
I decided that my price limit for the dream dress is $1, 500.
I plan to both lose my weight and save up the dress money over the next 18 months. My wedding is in 24 months, but on average wedding dresses need to be purchased 6 months before the wedding to allow time for alterations. My weight needs to be lost by January of 2010, then I need to maintain that same weight until my wedding day ... and hopefully through the rest of my life.
You're probably thinking I'm crazy for wanting to spend so much money on one dress, especially because I'm generally a pretty practical, non-extravagant person, but this dress is going to have so much more meaning to me than just being the dress I get married in. The term "Dream Dress" is a loaded one.
Getting married is important and beautiful enough to warrant a special dress, especially because I am marrying my best friend and true love ... but this dress is also about me becoming the person I know I can be. Someone who can accomplish something. A person who loves herself and values herself. Someone who is taking steps to improve herself not so that people won't judge her, but because she knows it is important to be her best self. A person who understands that things which seem unattainable and not worth fighting for are actually fully within her reach and worth the fight. Someone who can wake up the emotion and motivation that has been asleep inside of her for years and actually use them to make her life worthwhile. Someone who DOES instead of someone who thinks about doing. That is the person I want to be on my wedding day. I want to be my dream self before taking that step.
The dream dress means a lot, so I added it to my list of 'things that will happen because I will make them happen.' Crossing it off will feel pretty good, I think.
SO, it's been about 5 months since I've updated, and there have been some new developments on the wedding front.
That's my little inspiration board, which is pretty strikingly similar to one I made a year and a half ago, only this one involves darker, richer forest greens instead of bright, bold limey greens. I think for a winter evening wedding, these images are perfect. I imagine myself carrying the purple calla lilies with whisps of pine or fern, and then the bridesmaids would be in dark purple with the white bunch of flowers. Purple tablecloths on squre tables, with square shallow vases and large white peonies with greenery and tea lights sets the perfect mood, I think. I've even sold Joe on wearing a similar tux :)
