Two Things That Define Who I Am Today

Two things that define who I am today (out of many):

I always felt like the chubby kid, ironic how most of the friends who I had were always toothpicks. Once junior high and high school arrived I didn't care much about my weight and naturally I gained weight. One I was a senior I was over 200 lbs. After my second back surgery that caused me to be disabled I gained the most weight in the shortest amount of time ever in my life. Once at my heaviest I was over 300 lbs and into size 26/28. Hitting rock bottom and also after reading books on Buddhism and learning about it that year, I turned my life around. Salads every week and I stopped eating as much meat until by January the next year I didn't crave meat at all and I became vegetarian. Once the next year in February arrived I became a vegan and have been one ever since. I've lost over 120 lbs and am now down to size 8/10/12's. I've never been healthier and more energetic in my life. Truly I can now say that I am happy and only have 35 pounds left in my weight loss till I reach my overall goal. I've noticed that the last 40 have been the most challenging to drop. I never realized I was a source for inspiration until people began telling me that I was and how I inspired them to get healthy and lose weight too. It gives me a since of accomplishment and happiness knowing that not only have I been able to change my life but I have impacted others too.

When I was a child I learned at a very young age that my ability to learn things like other children was different. I could know the subject at school forwards and backwards but when it came to test time I would fail. It wasn't until later in my life that I realized that I had text anxiety. You know what I'm talking about? There you are sitting at your deck with the pencil in your hand writing out the answers and suddenly everything around you begins to move quickly. You can hear the clock seconds tick away, you can hear the sounds of people writing around you and erasing on their paper, everything begins to move so quickly, the most simple strokes of your pencil to the paper seems like they are moving a mile a second and you try to slow yourself down but then you notice that your breathing has quickened and your heart is beating out of your chest. You try to continue but either you can't or if you do continue you know that you're not going to do well. That there was many test taking times for me, except in subjects that didn't worry me that much, I didn't to bad in english, choir, drama, photography, and interestingly enough one of my history classes. When it came to other subjects like math or science I did horribly, even my ACT score was pitiful when I retook it to switch schools in my freshman year of college. My anxiety turned into something worse about nine years ago when I had my first anxiety/panic attack. Difficulty breathing, heart racing, face goes numb and then everything is a blur, begin to breathe quickly like I'm hyperventilating. Sometimes it's like I leave my body for a moment and I'm looking back down at myself. I try to keep myself calm and relaxed most of the time, this especially was made easier when I became disabled cause I was not able to return to work. Working in retail or customer service isn't an easy job. Sometimes I have anxiety attacks at random times when I'm not even expecting it, that has happened a few times in the past nine years. However most of the time it happens when I'm really upset. It's like my body physically reacts terrible to the stress from something and lets me have it. Recently I almost had three anxiety attacks in one day. Now due to that happening I will bring it up at the next doctors office appointment and see what I can do if and when it happens again. I've never been able to take medication for it because it's always happened at random times.