Breaking up is hard to do...sometimes.

And sometimes breaking up is really easy. Remember the person you dated in, say, junior high or high school, before you really knew how to start a relationship, or how to end a relationship (or any of the stuff that comes in between that isn't driven by raging hormones)? So you putzed along without really liking that person but were too chicken to actually end it...until you HATED them?

 I've been reading a lot of break-up stories lately. Letters to old friends, stale romantic interests, etc., etc. where at the end of the letter or story the writer reveals to the audience that the dump-ee is actually a previous version of themselves that they no longer identify with, or a pair of skinny jeans, or whatever. Getting rid of stuff (trimming the fat, so to speak) has sort of been a theme in my corner lately so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and give it a try. Here goes:

Dear Bathroom Scale, 

Fuck you.

Most Sincerely,

Hannah

Whoa, that was a load off! Definitely very cathartic. Excuse me a moment while I actually go and throw the bathroom scale in the garbage.

 Yeah!! Alright buddies, I no longer have a bathroom scale in my house. It doesn't really matter all that much because I HATE weighing myself; it ALWAYS ruins my day. So I never do it. I keep reading articles though, that claim that people who weigh themselves daily are statistically happier and healthier and richer and have nicer teeth than people who don't (actually I made up some of those descriptors but not the healthier bit) and I end up thinking, "hmm, maybe instead of doing it LESS I should get on the scale every day and just grow a thicker skin" but you know what? For me that isn't going to work. So instead of trying to cram the square scale into my round life, I have elected to stick the square scale into the round garbage pail and that's that. If I need a metric with which to measure progress, I can use a measuring tape instead, which is a way better indicator and has the added bonus of not making me hate myself.

This is fun! I love getting rid of stuff. Where once upon another life I loved to shop and bring stuff home, now I get way more satisfaction from pitching stuff out the door. Sometimes I find it sad -I mean, ten years ago a good retail therapy session used to fix just about anything, and when the fire was cooling in that relationship (can I even call it a relationship if it was inside my head?) I'd go to the mall and wander around and wonder why it wasn't helping. And now? Now going to the mall just ticks me right off if I haven't actually spent time mentally preparing for the onslaught of bullshit that is the inevitable experience of shopping for anything except groceries. But I digress.

Sometimes though, in the pursuit of making life manageable, it's necessary to say goodbye to something that's not so easy to get rid of...and that happened this week too. It was a total bummer and I'm still wrestling with the aftermath of that decision, even though it really was the only logical choice under the circumstances. This week I officially put off testing for my taekwondo black belt and withdrew from classes. I have to keep telling myself that hey, there are only 24 hours in the day and with building a new clientele at a new workplace, finishing existing courses in time to go back to school in January, breathing some life into my music career, and the usual household management-type duties, there just isn't room for anything else. Which doesn't help it suck less, but unfortunately Oprah was right...

So for now my favorite sport has to go, but it'll make me appreciate it more when (not if) I go back.