Desires

"What do you desire right now?"

Ohhhh how I just love this question (please note the sarcasm).  My initial response is always, "I don't know." But I must. Let's break it down. I want to know what I want. How's that for starters? Gotta start somewhere right? That statement makes me smile, brings joy into my heart. What do I desire? Makes me want to ask, in what aspect of my life? It's simple. Things are always much more simpler than we believe they are, it is our experiences, fears, & egos that make it all so much more than it is.  What do I desire right now? At this moment? Mexican food. My classmate said it earlier, and I've wanted it ever since. I want get full and come home and go to sleep so I can get up at 4am to take the Uncle to the airport.. okay seriously. I'm going off on a tangent distracted myself, like so many of us so easily do when we wish to avoid the truth. Am I afraid of what I really want? Do I fear that if I admit to myself what I want, then I'm opening myself up for disappointment if I don't get it? I don't know. An unacceptable answer. We always know. Somewhere inside of us, we know.  We know the best action to take, we know there is a resolution, we KNOW that WE KNOW.  So what do I want? What are my hearts true desires. It's simple. I keep hearing that in my head, it's so simple. To feel joy, freedom, & Love. To connect with others. To be in the moment. Ah I remember now, I want to live more in the moment. To be in the moment. To stop wanting to dig so deep, looking for something that may or may not be there. Some pain, that I've yet to discover. As if I'm confused. So used to going down within the depths of my soul and coming out with arm fulls of pain & suffering that I need to sift through. Beliefs that aren't true & experiences that never happened. That's what I'm used to. I've been coming up empty handed lately, and I"m not so sure what to do about that. Like that weird feeling when you clean out your purse, and it just feels like something is missing, but everything is there. My eye itches, lol ;) -- just a side note, lol. I've been asking myself what it feels like, whatever it is that I'm feeling. Where in my body to I feel it, and what does it feel like. Approaching whatever feeling I'm feeling with what Geneen Roth calls, "Curiosity & kindness."

I sat with myself today, as is. No special reason. Not because I was hurting, or angry and needed to explore that, but simply to sit with myself as I was in that moment. Which was, calm, curious, & open. I prayed that if there were something that needed to come into my awareness that it come and I accept it with grace. If not, I prayed that I knew when it was time to come out of my quiet space and accept that too, with grace. I simply made myself available to the universe; I sat with stillness, I sat with God.

Just now I realize just before I took my seat  I was standing in front of the refrigerator picking at cucumber salad, I asked myself what I really wanted in that moment, because it wasn't the cucumber salad. I know this because when I took a deep breath with it in my mouth, I became a tad nauseated. I shut the door and thought, "I want to stop wanting." That thought was so far from my mind until I typed "I sat with God" in sitting with myself as I was, my desires were fulfilled. Desires I was barely even aware of & almost quieted with food.

"Because when you evoke curiosity and openness with a lack of judgement, you align yourself with beauty & delight & love-- for their own sake. You become the benevolence of God in action." - Geneen Roth

Love & Light
Dottie

Pulling It Together

"Why am I doing the things I'm doing?"

Fear. Excitement. Moments of peace. Moments of knowing. Scattered thoughts of envy, greed, bitterness. Control. Surrender. Breath. Meditation. Feelings. Questions. Reflections. Love. Lust. Discernment. Distractions, from what? From whom? Which one? Which parts of me are enacted right now? How okay am I with it? What now? Sit with it, allow it to swell, consume me so I surrender in exhaustion at my attempts to make sense of it all? Take a step back. I've been here before. I wasn't ready then. I'm praying for the willingness to be ready now. Breathe. Pray that I find some reprieve in my fight to figure it all out. A letting go. It's like I forget how to do it sometimes. I've done it before, but with no explanation to "how" so "how" do I do it again? Wait. Patience. Nothing has ever been, or ever will be black & white. There is the balance. Some situations call for a fight from deep within you that calls upon parts of yourself you didn't know existed, others are in need of your total and complete surrender, acceptance. Sometimes give, sometimes we take. Ah sweet discernment. Breathe. Stillness. Silence. What am I doing? What am I hiding from? What is rising to the surface like an infection which has laid dormant for sometime, but now coming to the surface to be freed, cleansed, and no longer affecting the those parts of me I cannot see? My question to myself... let it fester? Grow? Slowly seep from the depths of my soul only to be cleansed and no longer inside of me? or do I walk away. Do I call it quits, knowing much of this is of my own creation, and thus up to me to disperse? Until I find out... I'm just going to breathe. Slow, deep, cleansing breathes. With a knowing that all is just as it should be, and really my only job is to hold onto the faith that all will end in Love & healing.

Love & Light
Dottie

My Mother's Footsteps

I've learned more about love & relationships since January of this year, than I've learned in my entire life. A life accumulation of various lessons where now put to good use.  Since I was 12, I watched my mother fall in love with men who didn't want to be with her, who only came to her when it was convienant for them, while they had freedom to do, come, and go as they pleased. It was acceptable to bring men home from the bar, and send them home the next day. It was normal to talk about your sex life around the grill with Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and friends. The first time I followed in my mother's footsteps I was 13. I loved him as much as a 13 yr old could love someone. With a feverish passion that edged on obsession. I wanted to be his girlfriend more than anything in the entire world, but when he didn't want that, I took whatever I could get. That's what I was taught to do. I spent the next 10 years of my life loving him as much as a 13 yr old girl could love someone, even though I was 22. I open this blog with that, because I believe that relatinship to be of the most significant of them all. The dynamics had changed a handful of times, yet always ended the same. Us not talking. I've spent the last 12 making repeated mistakes, trying to hard, clinging, pushing away, crying, humiliating myself.

So this is what I've learned... being honest with mysef & not supressing my urges to be who I am is the absolute best thing for me to do. Men, relationships, love, lust... it's all going to come and go. It is exciting & fun if I don't cling to that which is already right here, right now. Something better is always on it's way. My attempts at pushing for something somone is not willing to give me rob me of my serenity, and ignite addict tendencies. I control nothing. Attempting to do so wrecks havoc on my serenity.

-I do not owe any man, any thing. I'm not obligated to do shit.
-It's okay to get angry, and it's okay to tell them you're angry. I'm a woman, and I get hormonal.
-Trying to find out what they want/are looking for and being THAT, or revealing only my qualities that support that while supressing the others will get me nowhere.
-I have wants & needs. I have every right to express those, and if he (whoever that is at the moment) cannot or does not fulfill those, there is someone else who will.
-Patience is powerful. They almost always come back somewhere down the line.

It has taken me 13 years to unlearn so much of what I was taught in my young adolesence in regards to relationships. It has been a marvelous un-raveling of pain, denial, control, & fear. For me, the best thing I can do is

Pain & Suffering

    I awoke about 45min ago, and laid there. Maybe it was the pain. The soreness had begun to set in. I hurt from armpit to armpit. I smiled, and turned over. I couldn't go back to sleep though. I thought of the gym & running. I reflected upon the workout with Burkey the day before & conversations with a new friend. People who share in, what I perceive to be a very unique outlook on fitness, I don't even want to call it fitness. But what the hell else would I call it? So, here I am, 5:44am. I kept hearing myself ask the question, "What do I want?" & the answer was always, "More." It made me nervous. A typical addict statement. More. More is never enough. I relentless pursuit of that which will never satiate. I spent almost two hours at the gym yesterday. Training for an hour, then decided it wasn't enough so I hoped on the treadmill & ran. I came home and showered only to find myself wanting a "leisurely barefooted walk" about 3 hours later, which turned into a barefooted run. When I woke up this morning, all I thought about was bench pressing. Yesterday was the first time we did real bench pressing stuff and several times I wasn't sure if I was gonna get that bar up, and told Burkey through gritted teeth not to touch it. A "safety net" if you will, somehow has a way of making people not push themselves as hard as they could. Fuck that safety net, I didn't want him to touch my bar. I was going to get it up. Believe it or not, weight lifting is never an isolated muscle exercise, if it is your doing it wrong & cheating yourself. I did fail at getting that weight up at least 3 times. I wanted to push myself into & through failure. The thing that finally got that bar up had nothing to do with strength, but a change in my breathing. It made all the difference. Utilization of the energetic life force. A deep breathe along with a pause as I held the bar above my chest, holding the breath on the way down, and breathing out while pushing the weight away from my body. Where I had failed  to get it up even a second time, I got it up three times. And I laughed. A joy. I loved it. As if I was pushing back against every emotion that had pushed on me for the last 10 years. It was payback. I fought back against whatever it was that had so often fueled those days & nights of self-destruction. Breathing & pushing that hard make you go places inside yourself you haven't been in years. I don't mind going there these days, in fact I welcome it. I've built a positive relationship with pain & suffering... in that way, in eradicates itself. If the relationship is positive, and I find joy within it; then where is the pain & suffering?

Love & Light
Dottie

Growing Passion

"There are few things I enjoy more than training hard."

 - My thought Monday after working out with Burkey.  As if I had been denying that fact, ashamed of what people would think if they knew how much I really loved to put my body through rigorous physical training... dammit I can't find the quote but something along the line of a drive to push one's self which borders on psychosis. < I've been there. We laugh joking about how sick we are & how much we love it. There have been surreal moments this week. Surprised by what I could do and was doing.  Secretly admiring the blood blisters on my hands, and bruises on my shins... that bar has no empathy. Smiling with every sore movement of my body for days afterward. My hidden pride, knowing what I can do in that that station, wanting only more. To push more, to lift more, to see what kind of internal dialogue pops up after holding a 15ft slosh pipe over your head for 3 min slowly loosing feeling in your arms becoming aware of the phantom sensation of water trickling down my forearms. What is said in my head, says a lot about me... and I want to know what that is. People watch, and you breathe. Because there comes a point when it takes all you have to simply do that, just breathe. Speaking of watching, that's what I'm doing. Watching a passion for training grow inside me like my passion for personal growth, which I guess they could go hand in hand. Inspired by those who train on a level many would consider "crazy"... yet I see it as honesty, willingness, & humility. I see it as part of an intricate matrix of who I am. Physical, mental, & spiritual. Allegory. A word I didn't even know the meaning to until a few days ago, unaware I didn't know the meaning until a comment was made standing outside Anytime Fitness holding my station 515 shirt. I wasn't gonna wear that shirt until I knew wtf allegory meant, lol. Powerful. Strong. Humble. Scared. Courageous. Willing. Proud. Honest.... just a a few of the things I feel when I drop that bar, scream out because it hurts, or express how much I FUCKING HATE whatever I'm about to do, but do it anyway. What am I passionate about? A question I ask myself from time to time. I'm passionate about personal growth on all levels. Allowing the physical, mental, & spiritual to dance within a beautiful balance of every feeling, emotion, & action or non-action. I'm passionate about being as tough as I am delicate, as feminine as I am masculine, & as healed as I was broken. Reminding myself of the importance of rest with drive. Inspired. Passionately inspired. I love this shit. I want more, like any good addict, I want more. But today, that which I pursue leads me down a path of self-discovery. "Know they self." I'm no longer afraid of who I am. When you have consciously & willingly exposed yourself to pain your threshold increases. What is there to fear, if you've already experienced more pain that what is coming? Whether it by choice or chance? Once you've been there, your less afraid to go back. So go first willingly. Allegory.

Love & Light
Dottie

My Body, Artfully Crafted

"Just think about that beach body"

    What a joke, I thought. I laughed & shook my head. There was a picture of a beach with a fake sun just above those words. I thought of how terrible it must be to hate every minute of self-improvement. To wish to be ANYWHERE but right there, earning the body you have. Because that's the truth, we have earned whatever body we have. Our bodies are simply a physical manifestation of thoughts, experience, feelings, effort, work, etc. "Be with your body" - I heard that too in yoga yesterday. Be with my body. This beautiful piece of art that I've watched morph over the past 2 years due to an unwavering faith, a willingness to do whatever it takes, going to places within myself I was terrified to go. My body is a canvas of which you can see where I've been & who I am at any given moment, because my body will always carry remnants of 319 lbs, and that's okay. That's my story. There will forever be self-induced scars on my thighs & calves, a portal for my pain when I knew no other outlet, and that's okay. Along with small tell-tell signs of anxiety induced picking at my face and upper arms, because that was the safest thing I could do at that moment. My shoddy nail beds and slightly aged skin are fragments of years spent desperately trying to get others to perceive me as pretty with acrylic nails and year round tanning, because I allowed what others thought of me to carry entirely to much weight, and if they thought I was pretty, and told me enough, maybe I would believe it too. Hmm, interesting isn't it? I spent the first 22 years of my life reaching for an outward solution to my inward problems. Today,  I am building myself anew from the inside out both figuratively & literally. I address the real issues, the inner issues, whatever they may be and watch as the outside changes as a result of this.. I watch my leg muscles naturally chisel themselves out, my collar bones dominate my upper chest, and know that although I can't see them yet... there HAS to be a six pack under what's left of my slowly fading armor of fat I've carried for years. My hair cannot get short enough, and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE that I can dead life 295lbs, which is more than my body weight. Yoga keeps me feminine & flexible. I run physically now so I don't have to run emotionally. I may not ever have the "beach body" so many of us think about when we see signs like the one I saw in the gym today, but I'm going to have MY body. I'm going to know good, bad, or indifferent, I earned that body, and I'm gonna wear it proudly.

 Did I do this alone any of it, the destruction and rebuilding of who I am? Absolutely not. We cannot function alone. We are not here to be alone, to face life alone. I am so grateful for the people who have been part of this process. It's not about that beach body, I couldn't give a fuck about that beach body. It's about the process of getting to where you are, right now. It's bout knowing yourself, loving yourself, forgiving yourself. It's about knowing it's okay to be mad at yourself sometimes, and really, no, you don't know who you are. No one knows who they are. I am whatever kind of person you perceive me to be, to you that is. I wouldn't be able to convince you otherwise. My perceptions of me, are no no less bias than yours. Because guess what, even we don't know everything about ourselves, we hide things from ourselves. So who are you? You don't know. I know who I perceive me to be. What do you THINK about yourself should be a more appropriate question. Because that's what really matters, what you think of yourself effects every moment of your life. Every decision, every relationship, failure, success, EVERYTHING. So what do you think about yourself? It matters. Whether this person or that person agrees or not, doesn't matter. Whether it's "true" or not doesn't matter. What do you think of yourself? I asked myself that question today. And if there is something about yourself that you don't like, or is hindering your goals & aspirations, then change it, but you can't fix what you don't know is broken. I've spent years trying to answer the question who am I? And couldn't come up with an answer. I was asking the wrong question. How do I see myself? Is what I was suppose to be asking myself. And replying honestly, no matter how much I may not have wanted to admit it. At the very least, admit it to yourself. There will be some things I may not like about myself, but how do I perceive me? It's imperative that I know this. Along with the truth that this perception will change, I will change, & other's perception will change. Everything changes, and thank God for that.

It's amazing how when we are there it doesn't seem "that bad" but yet as we recover from self-destruction it becomes so much more clear how much we really hated ourselves. This is my recovery.

Love & Light
Dottie

Flashback

       I decided I needed a day to do nothing but lounge. That's exactly what I'm doing, other than my hour on the elliptical. It's amazing to me how that has become part of a day where I do nothing but "lounge." A day when even a shower is arbitrary. About 45 min in, rocking out to Pandora I noticed a sign with a beach and fake sun that said, "Just think about that beach body". I thought, "What a fucking joke" & laughed. I looked to my left and say a whole row of empty precors, treadmills, & ellipticals. In that instant I smiled, a tear rolled down my cheek and I felt a sense of accomplishment & overwhelming gratitude. That moment took me back about 3 and a half years ago just before I got sober. I was sitting the bar I came to pretty much every night, good & buzzed, over 300 lbs, on my second pack of smokes, seriously considering letting the guy to my left take me home... when I looked down the row of people I had seen every other night I come here, old... like life had chewed them up and spit them out and thought, "WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING HERE?" I knew this was not the life I wanted to live. I was dying, I was killing myself slowly, trying to hid from myself. Today, words couldn't describe how I felt when that moment flashed through my mind and the reality of where I was then came back into focus. All I could do was smile & cry. Yes, right there on the elliptical in the middle of Anytime Fitness.

Love & Light
Dottie