The Gym is Still My Sanctuary

I did not want to go to the gym today.

I stood in my office re-opening dresser drawers and skimming through coat hangers looking for a pair of capris I could comfortably run or jump in if I had too. I knew I was going to be late. I was already running late and standing pant-less in my office/dressing room changing my outfit for the fifth time. All while running through excuse-filled conversations that hadn't happened yet. 

It's been a weird week. Astrologically, Mercury went into retrograde affecting all forms of communication. Two of my favorite astrologers foretold of things hiding in the darkness finally coming to Light. I could feel it. I didn't even know Mercury was in retrograde until after I had admitted my raw and tender feelings surfacing, masked by bitchiness. So there, it wasn't the power of suggestion.

I left fifteen minutes late and listened to Lana Del Ray all the way there. Her raw and conscious lyrics validated the surfacing feelings of anger, tenderness, and surrender. My mind took me back to 2014, when I was power-lifting; back to my station days when processing my pounds of unresolved shit in a gray and iron filled warehouse was second only to nursing school. I was taken back to times when I didn't quit. When I didn't give in because it was hard. Times I would let the literal tears, sweat, and blood fall where they may and keep moving. I revisited a place inside of me I forgot existed. It's memory so vague, I questioned the likelihood of finding my way back to it. I thought of those who walked with me before and those with me now. I just kept driving. I didn't want to go, but as I tell my three year old - "sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do." 

I met my trainer at the door - late, emotionally delicate with a sense of acquiescence. I shared my thoughts, less humorously than what he's probably used to from me. I stood there stretching, tired of where I was in my head but cognizant of my current position. I missed that part of me that left it all there on the floor, that part that gave every last drop of myself. After a few minutes of settling-in and warming-up, I felt my emotional-self stabilizing until he mentioned twenty burpees being the center of my work-out. I wanted to rage; I reminded him of my hatred of the full-bodied, oxygen consuming, jumping-back, planking-out, and jumping-up combo. I almost got out of them until I mocked his capitulation.

I pushed myself today. I gave it all I had, and that was the first thing I said to him when that clocked stopped beeping. I couldn't tell you the last time I felt that way. He said he knew. Each time I stepped away to catch my breath, I started again before I thought I was ready, before he expected me to - maybe that's how he knew. Maybe it was my mockery and regaining of the burpees, because let's be honest, I wanted them back or I wouldn't have talked shit. The fact was, I didn't want to whine my way out of an another opportunity to re-build my long lost mental toughness I used to feast on. I finished that work-out today with pride and gratitude. I showed up and did the work with more integrity than I've been able to muster in a few years. Had I been standing against that rig alone, the tears would have fallen. I could feel them welling up behind my eyes pushed by sweet surrender and gracious exhaustion. I think those who have witnessed my climb to the top and slow descent back down the mountain would have been proud today; I was.

With Grace & Gratitude...

My Coming About

To be able to sit here in silence and peace within myself feels amazing, a most welcome change from where I was a couple years ago. Being able to sit here next to the window of my choosing with enough battery to sustain my thoughts feels even better. It's a more immediate pleasure. I've wanted to be here for a long time, both within myself and at this precipice of writing an un-bridled piece without editorial staff awaiting it's arrival. I'm staring at my front porch Christmas tree and leg lamp my mother gave me. It's a good view, there's also snow in the background. It's very picturesque. I am, however, a little torn on whether or not I should get more tea. I drank it all at the desk, patiently waiting for batteries to charge and writing about things past. But now, I am here - the present. And thank you God, because it feels incredible - liberating, joyful, and grounding.

I have spent the last two months looking in depth at my compulsive eating habits and the emotions that give rise to those habits. I also haven't drank in those few months, at all. Since my leaving the alcoholics anonymous, I drank twice before leaving the Detroit area and since moving to St. John's I have drank periodically - a glass or two of wine maybe a couple times a month. On at-least two occasions I did find myself drunk, once throwing up in a friends bed. Had my life become unmanageable? No. Did I use it to take the edge off what I was feeling at the time? That would be true, sometimes. I don't want to do that anymore, at all. I did not die from "going back out", but on a very deep level, my embodiment of the 12 steps never allowed a single sip to feel true to who I am. So, let me own that first. Second, let me accept the fifty pounds I watched come back onto my body, as a means to start again.

To say I lost myself in the 3.5 years just after I moved to the Lansing area would be gross understatement. I lost site of my dreams, I stopped doing everything that brought me joy, adventure, and ignited a sense of passion within myself, and I pulled myself away from friends and family. My writing was full of anger and secrets. Reading that, it's obvious to me why I felt so alone and lifeless. I often said I felt as though the light inside of me was being snuffed out, slowly, and it was. I had wanted out for a long time before it happened, before one of our several break-ups actually produced enough disconnect to sever what we needed to finally pull our lives apart.

It has been a year and a half since my wife walked into my life, unexpectedly and without summoning. She literally walked through a doorway, into an office full of charts and asked if I needed help with my work. I turned around to have a flame take fire in my gut without warning like a gas burning stove catching it's match. A very real sense of shock, fear, and truth washed over me. I knew she was the affair I felt coming when I started that job. And it wasn't like this was the first time I had seen her. We knew each other, we had chatted and considered ourselves friends. That day was different though, something moved out of the way and her soul breathed light back into my deepest essence. I slid her over some nursing care plans and told her what I needed her to write.

The rest isn't history, it's right here. Within the walls of our home we share, the sacred vows we offered each other, and the tumultuous path we traveled those first few months to get here. We broke hearts and lives. We also broke walls that had contained us for years and beliefs that kept us stuck. Neither one of us wanted to be that person; we just wanted to be free. We wanted to honor our own truths and get back to our most authentic selves. There was a palpable connection that superseded our human understanding, one that felt physically painful to remove, so we stayed with it. She is one of my most cherished gifts in this world.

Winter always has a way of stilling my soul and slowing my heart to give way to being present. What I feel more than anything these days is a deep sense of gratitude for the re-connections I feel to God, myself, and the people in my life whom I love, not to mention the family and life I watch unfold in front of me everyday. Finally, I feel I have returned to myself on so many levels - mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Grateful, so very grateful. I have no other words for it.

With grace & gratitude...

Cleansed & Set Free

"It's going to be what it's going to be."

I always hated that saying. It always felt like a poor excuse to not create a better reality for ourselves. I have written for some time about an anger I have carried hidden beneath the surface of an outwardly successful and happy demeanor. I don't remember if I felt this way just before moving to Lansing, but I do remember carrying it pretty well for the time I spent here and during most of my adolescence. I was angry about everything---angry I left Detroit, my gym, my yoga, my whole life. I was angry I was here in a relationship that was far from what I wanted. I was angry at myself for the decision I had made and staying.

Recently, I looked around my life and searched my heart and asked what did I really have to be angry about? Why did I carry a miniature scowl on my face, a barely furrowed brow? What would happen if I made a conscious decision to relax it? All of it?  What would it be like if I relaxed into my life, exactly as it is? I can tell you. I don't think I ever remember being this happy.

I was done being angry at everything and everyone. Mostly, my father, the weight I gained and the self I lost over a three year period, and myself for staying in a relationship I didn't belong. I didn't want to be angry anymore. I wanted to be free. And free I became, almost instantly, with the decision to be so. I would classify this as one of the more miraculous moments in my life, when finally, unexpectedly, I let go of years of anger. With it's exit, it took years of fear and anxiety with it. I tasted a freedom I forgot existed, as I was so entrenched in this unrealistic reality. I've watched this repressed anger manifest as bitching about small stuff, freaking out on the cat for peeing on the carpet, judging and gossiping about others, and making big deals out of small things. I feel as if I have come full circle. Back around to the self I left, only smarter and stronger. Isn't that the way it goes though? I turned 30 last year. As I stood in the setting sun with lake Michigan kissing my feet, I asked to be cleansed and set free. I am grateful. So grateful.

Opening Your Heart to the World Doesn't Feel Good, at First.

I have spent the majority of my last several weeks opening my eyes. For most of my life, I have been an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of person. The world, was too much for me to take in. As much as I talked about focusing on love, and love being the only thing thing that's real, I, on some level, only saw sadness when I looked out into the world, although that realization was a slow coming to consciousness.

Being open is raw. It's sad, utterly heartbreaking at times. To finally look up from my own adversities, my own story, and those closest to me, to see the world around me, is sobering. And this is just the beginning. This is through the lens of the computer screen. I have not even seen half of these things up close. I have not seen a 3 year old girl free herself from the hand of sex traffickers, watched women get castrated, animals tortured and beaten to death, children starving, adults freezing to death, or someone beaten do death due to their skin color or sexual orientation. I've not sat next to a women in an abortion clinic as she bleeds into an open pad, where thousands have sat before. Nor have I seen modern day enslavement. But these things exist, all these things.

There are days I feel inspired and others I wish to hide. To crawl back into my hole, and put my blinders on. There are days I fill my head and my day with busy work and claim to not have enough time to read, write, to investigate and ask the hard questions. But that doesn't eradicate the knowledge that is now part of my awareness database, it does not stop the effects it has on my subconscious to do something. It only adds to the restlessness that will manifest itself irresponsibly and dramatically if I do not take a moment to listen. Listening is hard sometimes, and I don't mean that superficially or humorously. It's hard because sometimes peoples experiences invoke so much emotion, I physically and emotionally feel I cannot handle it. I can't process and absorb the words being shared. There was one particular piece about a woman's experience in an abortion clinic that took 3 breaks for me to get through. The tears poured; I sobbed. And I've never even had an abortion! She wrote her experience so well, I not only felt I was walking in her shoes, I felt as if I owned them.

So here I am.

Sitting in my favorite Biggby cafe, with four tabs open on my web browser, debating a second cinnamon spice latte and where I can be most helpful in creating positive change in our world.

"What breaks your heart about the world? Act on that." ~ Angela Maiers

With Grace & Gratitude...

To All the You's

I'm feeling slightly aphotic today. I woke up like this. Emotional, antsy, fearful. But I'm sitting here aside my abnormally large living room window staring at fresh snow and watching a kitten play with the string on the window blinds. Tears still want to well up in my eyes. It doesn't feel so much like a sadness as it does a sensitivity, a rawness. I don't know if it's my lack of sleep or the Marianne Williamson that has been playing in my ears the last couple days, talking about why we really choose to carry extra weight on our bodies.  The "writing prompt" about "what was the most difficult thing, person, idea, dream, you've ever had to let go of" probably didn't help either. But it's probably way more beautiful than all of that. I'm opening again. I can feel it. My heart is nestling in with another. There is a palpable readiness and desire to start and experience a life with her. To love her forever, at our best, at our worst. To finally be half of a whole.

This has not been able to take place without releasing all of you at various times in my life, those who have come before her. Those of you who have added to the artistic tapestry of my life. My blogs, my journals, they will hold so many names in infinitude, as each of you came through and touched my life one by one.

I wrote about you today, the hardest person I ever had to let go of. I described it as an "unrealistic devastation" and how I carried you into the first two years of my following relationship. I still remember what your heart looked like, the way I described it to you, with lights and carousels. I honestly thought I'd carry you forever, that I'd never let you go. But I did. The nights what if's, of driving, wondering, and yearning to feel your heart out there in the world, have dissipated.

And you, it's been almost six months. Six months since we ended our three and a half year relationship. My mother said to give it six months, and I would be okay. She put a time line on it. The infinite pain and fear and guilt I felt seemed to radiate without limits. But she gave me a timeline, a goal, something I could focus on and keep moving. That was the most profound and simple piece of advice anyone gave me after our separation.

So, this is to all the you's, that helped escort me here to her. Who brought me home. Those who weren't able, weren't willing, or simply didn't want it. She has been brave and steadfast in her declaration of love for me. I have looked at her with fearful trembling eyes and wondered if I could ever love her the way she loves me. The answer to that is yes, a resounding yes. She is the one. I'm not sure I've ever told her that. I write better than I speak. I can finally understand the sentiment of being grateful for all potential lovers who didn't choose me or left me.. They were simply paving the road for her to find me. For us to find each other. Every heartache was worth it. I have never met someone so much my equal, someone who is my most exciting companion, even at our quietest and most simple moments. I've never met someone who can swim with me so easily in the space of being and passion.

With Grace & Gratitude...