I’ve Come A Long Way

I was looking back over some of my journal entries and came across this one written on 9-26-2015. I’ve come so far from where my mindset was during that time and well, God is good! Take from it what you will (which I hope is a lesson) and most of all, happy reading!

9-26-2015
In the last few months I’ve been forced to acknowledge something that has apparently always been a factor in my relationships: I have a lot of relationships in my life that are not give and take, but seem to be more one sided. In addition to acknowledging this, it also led me to look deeper as to WHY this is and then it came to me: it can be traced back to my own issues and dysfunctions.

Let me tell you what kicked this whole thing off. A few months ago I made plans with my besty  to go over his house and just geek out like we used to do but hadn’t in a long time. Before I go on, let me say that he’s in a very dysfunctional relationship where his girlfriend is so insecure that she accuses him of being involved with everything from the bathroom mirror to other men behind her back and he’s never even given her a reason to think such outrageous things, hence her own issues and dysfunctions come into play here, and at the same time, so does my besty’s for putting up with it and not drawing boundaries. Anyway, having not seen him for a while, having dragged a ton of my devices with me and looking forward to us hanging out, I got about 60 seconds from his gate, text to let him know this and what was his response? That his girlfriend was there! Apparently she had just dropped by only a few minutes prior to me texting him my ETA (which in my opinion, was ample time to send a short text informing me of this)and at the end of the day, what this meant was that it was a no go on the geeking out, let alone me even stopping by for a hot minute to say hi! Remember she has unfounded “suspicions” and “jealousy” issues.

I can say that I was pretty much sent into an internal rage! I personalized it as I do most things that involve other people and their behavior towards me. The first thing that came to my mind was that he didn’t value our friendship enough to at least defend it to her if I came over for just 90 seconds. Then I thought about how he didn’t value ME as a person to initiate a text or call to let me know not to come – even if I had one foot in the gate, so to speak. After I calmed down, or is it more accurate to say that WHAT calmed me down came next and that was realizing that my feelings about how the situation was handled and how I personalized it was a direct result of my OWN issues. Issues that I’m in the process of addressing and trying to heal from that originate in childhood. Issues of feeling disregarded. Never being chosen because I never felt good enough. Issues of not feeling not important to anyone when it comes down to it because EVERY ONE else was better or more valued than me.

Once I saw the situation from this perspective, I realized a few things that can be applied to a lot more interactions that I have in my life: 1. I usually place way more value on my relationships than the other person does and as a result I’ve had to reevaluate if each relationship is worth continuing to be that unbalanced or is it time to withdraw a little bit 2. Although I have a ways to go, the fact that I made that connection so quickly and was able to pretty much take my anger level down twenty notches proves that I have made progress on my journey to heal and 3. I won’t take ownership for my besty’s unhealthy choices. He chooses to be in a relationship like this where he has to sacrifice others in order to appease her and keep the drama down. Although I strongly disagree with that method, sometimes we just have to go through things before wet get to certain points.

At the end of the day, even though I was able to take ownership of MY emotions and MY reaction to the situation, process it in a healthy way so that I didn’t get stuck in that old familiar ‘what’s wrong with ME’ mental broken record and not take on the choices he made personally, he still needed to know that the WAY he went about it was NOT ok! So, instinctively I didn’t communicate with him for weeks, even though I really wasn’t mad at him. I guess that was my way of coming to the conclusion that after weighing out our 14 year friendship, it was clear that I either valued the friendship just a little more than he did or probably what is closer to the truth is that I just have a better sense of self awareness and ability to confront things head on than he does. Either way, I considered that situation one of the many revelations I’ve had about myself over the last few years that have been part of my healing journey.

And yes, me and my besty are still friends, although I don’t place as much emphasis on trying to hang out with him anymore and it’s still all good.

Healing

I want to take the time to do a short blog (a mini blog, if you will) on the power of healing. Not healing from “boo-boos” when you scrape yourself. Not healing from major surgery or the like. But healing from what is essentially self-inflicted emotional wounds. For so many people, myself included, when we’re hurt we put up walls and come up with ways to protect ourselves from allowing that person to further inflict pain upon us. I call it self-inflicted because at the end of the day, these walls, these negative attitudes towards them, the grudges, the resentment etc. is not hurting anybody except us.

Well, I was in that situation and had even convinced myself and wholeheartedly believed that in order for me to deal with a particular person was, in essence, NOT to deal with them because i knew that any mention of their name, the mere sight of their face or anything related to them would send me into a downward spiral of nothingness and believe me when i say, because ive kept track, it would take a minimum of 3-4 days to recover and rejoin the living but then i literally had a ‘divine revelation’ that “wait a minute….this is not healthy for me. Im not getting anywhere and its definitely doing me more harm than it isnt them!” I realized i needed to let it go and come up with another solution. So thats what i did – i let go and let God. Meaning that through prayer, prayer and more prayer, i was able to shift the focus from those negative feelings to working on what i needed to work on in order to move forward. By doing that, i can honestly say that the next time i actually SAW this person, feelings of hatred, resentment, hostility and every other negative emotion that gets conjured up from the depths of hell no longer ruled me. I ruled them. I was able interact with this person as if we were friends and their wasnt an ounce of bad history between us.

Moral of the story my friends: its true what they say about forgiveness, doing it for you and not for them and holding on to grudges. That other person is going on with their life and you’re sitting around reaping the consequences. You’re drinking the poison that’s meant for them! So for those of you who are in similar situations, find your inner being and higher power, combine the two and let it all go!! You’ll find that you move forward a lot faster than if you didnt.

Connections

Sooo…here I am again. Blogging. Finally doing what I’ve been wanting to get back to doing and my long list of blog topics that I’ve made over the last few months is my testimony to that desire. Why I didn’t start again until now is a different blog, different day, different time. Anyway, my INTENTIONS are to make this short but I know how that goes!

Where to start? Well, to begin with I’m pretty much a social network junkie, techno nerd, gadget geek – true, their are way more deserving of those titles because they eat, sleep and drink that lifestyle 24/7 but even though I’m not at that point, YET, I can definitely tell you about the impact it has on me and my life. Im a loner. A loner by nature. A loner by choice. Always have been since I was a kid. Yes, I have “friends” but it never seems to fail that at any given time period, I’m either attached at the hip to only one or I’m once again, by myself. Lately, I’ve dove head on into the Twitter pool. Prior to that it was non-stop on Facebook (embarrassing to admit). Not to toot my own horn but on both networks, even though my intentions are to stay quietly in the background, I always end up “forming relationships” to some extent or another. While this is good, and I cherish every one of them (@rupertcheek, @superheroswife), I’ve recently finally figured out what that uneasy feeling is that I get when these “formings” occur and why I subconsciously/unintentionally tend to withdraw from them. The answer was as simple as this: while I like my solitude, my “lonerism”, and while I’m also ok interacting with people and for the most part don’t have any hangups when it comes to feeling like I can conversate in an intelligent manner or keep a decent dialogue, the fact still remains is that when I finally do go head on into the social arena, meet some really cool people (see above referenced as just part of the many) and make some kind of connection, it rattles me because in the back of my mind, I’m constantly reminded of what is missing in my life. I know it probably sounds weird or contradictory because I just got done saying that im content with my loner lifestyle. And I am. But that’s not to say that their are times that I do want more friendship connections. People I have chemistry with and can plan to do things with. People that are on the same page as me. People that are half way intelligent, can hold a conversation, and above anything else (well, right up there with) can make me laugh! People I get along with!

Socializing forces me, EVERY TIME, to look at and analyze my being. My choices. My current situation. I’m forced to recognize and acknowledge to myself that my life IS missing that certain puzzle piece that could perhaps add to it in a positive way and in pondering these things, it does somewhat, for lack of better words, bring an element of sadness. Or maybe it’s also that it knocks me off my high horse in Lonerville and opens my eyes to the realization that if making connections with other people, no matter how real or virtual they may be, gets me this stirred up, that it might be time to reconsider my choices and start making an effort to be more people-friendly. If that’s a journey that I decide to embark on, then I will definitely make sure to journal it in my blog!

A Very OFF Day

Today was one of those days where I “just wasnt feeling it”! Ever have one (or more, lol) of those? I’m the type of person that can be overruled by emotions sometimes – only when it comes to certain issues mind you – which is kind of ironic since most people tend to see me as someone that rarely gets excited about anything or tends to stay calm unless you’ve really pushed my buttons. In general though, I live my life by the “what’s done is done and if you can do something about it, then do it – if not, don’t waste negative energy on it” motto. Now going back to today and why I just wasn’t feeling it, which happens to be directly related to one of those “certain issues” I mentioned above. Let me start from the beginning – or at least close to it……

I’ve been in the fitness industry for 14 years now as a fitness trainer. I obviously have a passion for it because I’ve stuck to it this long and have even seen lots and lots of turnover in the gyms because of so-called “trainers” who got into this business for the wrong reasons. Now, 14 years ago would make me younger, thinner, way more athletic and even a little (lots, lol) more active. With it though also came, at that time, an unhealthy obsession with body image (perpetrated by the need to look a certain way because of the work environment I was in which ultimately led to my eating disorder going into hyperdrive), an imbalance between work and family (a ratio that looked something like this: family < work), and the overwhelming NEED to make sure I was burning three billion calories a day, seven days a week even if it meant ultimate injury! Well, I’d like to think that I’ve overcome all these things through growth over the years. I’ve learned to TRY not to be so hard on myself when I don’t feel like hiking those 14.5 miles at Mt Tam or doing those six hours at Pt Reyes like i used to do faithfully every weekend but instead accept that I’ve grown into a different, wiser person that now has the option of taking a mini two hour flat hike and enjoying it just as much as i would when and if I choose to do a more intense one. I’d like to think that I’m still working on accepting that im not going to nor do I HAVE to look like the person I used to look like 14 years ago and that I’m in the process of creating a new me. So now fast forwarding to today when all these negative feelings and thoughts reared its ugly head during Yoga class.

I had a wake up call. I practiced Yoga for a total of 3 years several years ago and although the moves are very familiar, even the technical names of the poses are ingrained in to my memory, today was a real challenge because I could hardly hold the pose for more than five seconds let alone without feeling a strain here or a discomfort there! Talk about discouragement. Well, one thing led to another….the strains and pose holding micro seconds led to frustration, frustration led to digust with the fact that I’ve let myself get to the point of such low strength and endurance and this led to me allowing my emotions to overrule everything I’ve fought so hard to keep in check these past years: feeling like an unworthy fitness professional who can talk the talk EXTREMELY WELL but obviously has stopped walking the walk and it ultimately led to me leaving Yoga the last 30 minutes of class IN TEARS! Yes, life happens but when it comes to health and fitness aren’t I suppose to have the upper hand because of my experience, knowledge and education? Shouldn’t I have been able to nip MY OWN health and fitness in the bud so that it didn’t get this bad? This is one of the imbalances ive struggled with the last 14 years and I guess today was a reminder that I need to reevaluate some things concerning this. For those 2.16 persons who have my blog site address and those 1.67 of them that actually bother to come and read it, I’d love it if you have any feedback you’d like to share! 🙂

A Short Lesson On Appreciating The NOW

As I was getting in my daily 5 mile walk yesterday, I was also emailing a friend of mine. We both have had some of the same struggles in life weight wise in terms of gaining and losing, being and staying motivated, doing and not doing things that aren’t necessarily “healthy” for ourselves etc. and JSB, if you’re reading this, you know exactly what I’m talking about, lol!

The conversation topic was me renewing my subscription to the Bodybugg program and commenting on her joining weight watchers. Both weight management programs. I mentioned how although I complained about my body back in 1998-2000, when I was in the best shape I’ve ever been in (definition of that is eating right, working out regularly, actively doing the recreational things I love doing, etc.), I would KILL (or die) to get that back! To be the weight I was and have the body fat percentage I had then because now, I’m much heavier, my workouts are scattered and I have to work harder to get and stay motivated. Sucks, yes it does!

The lesson to be learned here is this: learn to find balance between wanting to improve who you are now and being appreciative that you aren’t worse off because six months from now you could be 50 pounds heavier with high blood pressure, diabetes or some disease that could have been prevented through lifestyle change and you’ll be thinking back to the heavy you’re so dissatisfied with today wishing you could go back to it.

Funny how life has a way of teaching lessons via retrospect. It’s up to us as to whether we choose to apply them.