Post ImageI am quite literally turning my back on Fat Me. I don't want to be Fat Me any more, I want to be slim and healthy me. I want to be toned, not flabby, fit, not exhausted and dragging my bahookey behind me.


POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE - PMA!


That's what we need, I tell you. PMA! Sick sick SICK of all the negativity on the 5+ board at the moment - it's enough to make a depressive spiral downwards at the minute, it really is. And yes, I would know, thank you very much! (She says, belatedly remembering to take the tablets.)


Honestly, life's too short to wallow in misery. Excrement occurs. As AuntieAli rightly said in a reply today, everyone has excrement to deal with, some more than others. I will tell you for nothing, life goes on all around us while we are dealing with our own excrement, and while we are losing weight. Some excrement you can affect through your own efforts, some you can't. What you can always control is how YOU choose to react to IT. (Or sh!t, if you prefer.)


That, Gentle Reader, is the secret to PMA. Whatever life may throw at me, 99% of the time I can cope with. I have bad days; everyone has bad days. My bad days are few and far between, and they aren't so bad as they once were. I've weathered the deaths of both parents, three grandparents (I only had three to start with as my paternal grandfather died in 1956), an abusive relationship with a protracted ending, the worst kind of bullying at work that resulted in me being dragged through disciplinary proceedings when I a) fought back (verbally) and b) lost the plot slightly on a phone call to another professional (I shouted at her. I may have said 'What the bloody Hell were you thinking?!'; I rather think I did...) - and look, still here! 


I've been skint. I've been beyond skint, in debt up to my eyeballs thanks to student and graduate loans and with only temporary work from week to week to keep me going, pay the rent and the bills and the debts. I've struggled to get a career off the ground, kept it going, and been made redundant twice. I was actually glad to walk away from it after the trouble referred to above. (Last thing that colleague had to say to me before she left? "Why don't you f*** off back to Germany and stay there - that's if your f***ing pensioner will have you." She was on the way down two flights of stairs at the time, they heard her on all three floors of the building and in reception.)


(Pauses for a deep breath.)


You can see why I prefer not to think about all of that!


We only get the one roll of the dice, unless you believe in reincarnation (my mind is fairly open on that front, I've had a very strange experience to say the least; maybe I will bore you all with that one day. There's a Halloween story and a half in that, at least!) This is it, guys. Life is what you make it. Do you choose to be happy and content, or do you choose to be unhappy and discontented and wishing you could change things.


You can change things. You can start by changing the way you see the world. It can be so bloody hard to keep on putting one foot in front of the other. I know that, believe me. But you have to just keep on trying. 


Know your own worth. Believe in you, because if you don't, the rest of the world surely will have trouble doing so. Don't harbour regret; it just makes you sad and angry at what might have been. The past cannot be undone, but you can make the present and the future a brighter place to be.


So, come on, everyone - onwards and downwards! Pin on that grin, fake it till you make it, and SMILE!