How differently can someone feel in one day? 24 hours really shouldn’t make that much of a difference, right? Wrong.

Last night I went home and I cooked some more.

I made some broccoli with chopped garlic.

I cooked all of my thin cut steaks.

I danced around in only my pants, bra, and apron.

Awesome.

I went out for my weekly glass on wine with my mom.

We talked about “what next?”

What next, indeed. Suddenly I feel like I’m at the end of one road and the start of another. It’s just one of those feelings, you know? Inexplicable, slightly annoying, and usually profoundly correct; my intuition seems to be tapping on my shoulder and trying to tell me something.

Hey, wait, this isn’t what I was going to write about today.

I wanted to tell you about how in one day I’m feeling more comfortable in my own skin again, how the bloating has gone away, and how I already have that old energy back.

I was going to make jokes about how I ran today… for two blocks to get back to work on time after my break, but, whatever, it felt amazing to do so.

I was supposed to be all la dee da, I can do this again and weight loss is amazing and I’m probably going to lose a bajillion pounds this week and all that jazz.

Instead, I’m feeling introspective, hopeful, and slightly confused.

I mean, that’s good too, it just didn’t happen to be my intent.

I try to deal with tangible things that I can actually grasp and explain. It’s kind of ridiculous to try and write about things that I don’t know how to articulate.

Let’s just say that I feel a change in the winds and I’m no longer downwind from the dumpster in the alley near my apartment.

I think that a lot of this feeling actually stems from a conversation I had with my mom this weekend. She’s in grad school, learning how to play with people’s heads.

Naturally, she uses me as a guinea pig.

For the record, she’s actually studying Organizational Systems Renewal which is a new fangled term for “how to help people work better with other people and hate themselves less.” It’s not like she’s trying to do straight up therapy on me, that would be unethical and a conflict of interest since everyone bitches to their therapist about their mother anyway.

We went through this exercise she recently learned where we look at patterns. She asks a series of questions, I get annoyed and tell her to answer them herself, she makes me answer them, I stop being a brat and get honest, we go off on a few tangents that we think might be the root before we discover that we’re wrong, we get back on track, and suddenly be come up with a bottom line that makes me start crying.

Oh, I think we’re on to something.

We discovered that I don’t value myself. I rely too much on the validation of others to feel wanted and important. It’s really not that surprising, really, but seeing how many problems in my life stem from that issue, well, that was surprising.

Acknowledgement is empowering. In just the realization of the thing I feel so much better. If there’s a real problem then there’s also a real solution. I’m not sure what that solution is yet, I mean, how does a person just find that intrinsic value? I don’t know.

It’s a starting place, though. While I may not know what the solution is, I am pretty good at finding out these things. Overall, it’s a heartening thought. I have a new task to take on and it feels like a bit on an adventure.

So, here’s the point where I get to the end of my chain of thought and realize that I just came full circle and answered my own question. That new road? It’s finding that sense of value. That feeling? It’s knowing that I will.