Tag: friends

Tread

I tend to tread lightly… both figuratively and literally.

It bothers me when others tread heavily, loudly, noisily… both figuratively and literally.

I tend to take people off-guard by my doing so…

I tread lightly, but with intentionality and casual comfort and ease… yes, both figuratively and literally.

And when I am met with fear, I pause, take a few full breaths, relax, and continue forward, still treading oh-so-lightly…

I tend to read lightly, and I thus feel that I am often not even noticed.

It is who I am, but that doesn’t mean the noise and thunderous clamors of the world around me make it easy to be myself.

The hardest part is always the breathing, for some reason… that’s the part I always seem to forget, and it gets me just a little bit turned around, as though I am looking for the breath I have lost… when I find it, though, it gives me the strength to take my next steps onward and forward… as myself, lightly, intentionally, and confidently so.

Post-a-day 2020

Playing love, not fair

Have you ever come back to something from the past, mostly in a casual comment during a casual conversation, and discovered with surprise that not only are you not over the event but you are actually rather furious about it still? I had that happen tonight while showering. I was considering my struggle to do a workout today, and the friend who helps keep me accountable by my sending her the workouts whenever I finish them. I was imagining a conversation with her, sorting out why I struggle so much to make myself exercise right now, on my own, and determining what was at stake for me, why I want so badly to be so super fit. My motivation, it turns out, has been something along the lines of ‘I’ll show him,’ regarding a guy who judged me strongly, prematurely, and quite unfairly… which, I dare say, even without my recent struggles to exercise easily, I know is not a good enough motivation. I don’t want to have to be that way with anyone. And I don’t want to do things for someone else’s sake, when they really are for my sake. I want to be beautifully fit for me, not for anyone else. Yes, I want others to benefit from my fitness and also the physical beauty of that fitness. No, that is not the reason I want to be fit. And yes, people are granted an opportunity to see what they themselves do not have by not being in a relationship with me, when I am very fit and healthy and well. But none of it matters if I am not happy, myself. And I know I won’t be fit, if I am not happy. And I know being fit for revenge of sorts is no motivator for me – it is mean, shallow, and an easy escape. Rather than deal with any issue at hand for myself, I throw something like revenge out? Not hardly… I know to my deepest core that such an act is not for me, and does not serve me in even the least bit – it only harms and hurts me in the long run, as well as the daily.

And so, I now am re-evaluating two things.

1) What do I need to do to heal and to free myself from the stress regarding this guy who was unfair toward me?

2) What is my true motivation for being fit – why do I actually want what level of fitness?

Those are my tasks for the present, and I look forward with delight to their solutions, but slight fear to the tears I know must be shed to reach such solutions.

Here goes…

Post-a-day 2020

Recuperation

Today, I did a lot of not much all day and evening. In fact, I woke up a few times throughout the morning, either because the dog was shifting around or because I needed to pee. But, every time, I went ahead and went back to sleep. It was overcast enough of a morning, plus the curtains in this room are rather effective, I was able to fall back asleep easily. I went to bed after one in the morning, sure, but getting up for the day at 1:45 in the afternoon is just plain nuts. I haven’t done that in years.

However, yesterday, and the proceeding few days had a whole combination of stressors for me, as well as the added lack of sleep that comes with an uncomfortable situation yet comfortable company (read friends). So, it really makes sense that I slept so much and so hard last night (and today, technically). I knew I was exhausted yesterday, especially since things were really getting to me in a way they only do when I am exhausted. So, even though I physically felt okay, I knew I was close to wiped. Thus the 12+ hours of sleep.

Then, after getting up for the day, I indulged in the candy that tempts from its jars, as well as a Tillamook ice cream bar (which was awesome, by the way) from a freezer filled with desserts. I did eat some real food, too, but the bulk of my calories today was likely the three ice cream bars and the finishing part of a tub of ice cream. However, I think I still ended up under my caloric requirements for the day, so my body gets to use its excess stores to handle the remaining caloric balance for the day.

Basically, I spent the day hanging around, either eating food or watching Disney movies, or even both at once. I took the dog on a training walk-run, and exerted some real physical effort this evening, but mostly just spent the day recuperating. And yes, recuperating is the right word – I wondered why I was so unbelievably uninterested in doing anything else throughout the afternoon and evening, and I realized that it was because I needed this non-effort… I needed the opportunity to readjust and revamp… I needed to spend today in a way that allowed me to re-empower myself, both physically and mentally. So, I slept physically for 12+ hours, and then I rested mentally the rest of the day.

And it did a really great job. I think tomorrow will be a joyful and bouncy day for me, now that I will have rested so much and so well. 🙂

I am grateful for such an opportunity.

Post-a-day 2020

First loves

I found myself thinking again today – after another long conversation with him, that is – of my high school boyfriend. We are certainly clear that we are of no romantic interest to one another anymore, and are fully satisfied in being friends. However, as I explained last night, there is a part of me that is only filled by him, un trou that likely never will be filled fully, as we never will be in a romantic relationship again. And that’s okay with me. What it had me wondering today was about the irony of my not wanting to be like all the world, yet fitting practically perfectly to the stereotype of the adage, “You never forget your first love.”

I never understood that before today, I think. I always wondered why people spoke so fondly of their first loves, yet they had let their first loves get away or disappear from their lives completely – what kind of love is that? Or so I always wondered. I realize now what it likely really is. When we love someone for the first time – even before we might understand what it means to love someone outside of our families – it is exactly the fact that we have never done it before and never experienced it before that it ends up staying with us throughout our lives. Without the opportunity or intention of keeping ourselves safe or preserved or protected, we dive into our first experience of love wholeheartedly, loving with all of our being, however we can find to love. We have no reservations, and no agenda either – we just live purely and truly and openly and fully. We have never lost our love, and so we don’t even try to cling tightly to it, or mistrust our own feelings around it – we simply love.

When the relationship ends, for whatever reason it may be, we have our first lesson in loss. Yet we, after having been so utterly invested in our love, can never hold anything against our first love. No matter how it ended, the experience of the love remains untouched, pure. But the ending of it keeps us forever on our guard, of course. Likely never again will we love in such a way. Never again will we be so reckless with distributing our love, as we may see it. The free love lives forever in that first and only fully free relationship of love, therefore inducing a nostalgic look of longing for yesteryear whenever we find ourselves reminded of our first love. I’m nowhere near old age, but I already experience just that around my first love.

And I am grateful for it.

I have no desire to reestablish that relationship, yet I always will be grateful for the opportunity to love so fully as I did with my first love.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this is a perfect opportunity to consider what value may lie in loving so freely again.

Post-a-day 2020

Today

Two things tonight: trash and holes.

First:

Today, I got to experience a delightful little bit of small town life. No one put out the trash this morning, so, once I was up and finished with tutoring, I handled it myself. There were still trash bins all down the street, and, when I had been doing the running for my workout, I discovered that some really reeked… suggesting that they still had trash in them. In fact, it smelled outside period, because of trash. So, I cleaned out the trash cans throughout the house, added their trash to the kitchen bag, and stuck it in the trash bin. I hugged the bin out to the curb, and headed back inside, out a clean kitchen bag and cleaned the trash can lid, and then washed my hands.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang. After a pause of contemplating the possibilities and likelihoods, I went and opened the door. An older, grayed and balding yet able-bodied man stood on the doorstep. “I hate to have to say it, but the trash man’s already come today.”

His southeast Texas small town accent only increased the endearment of the whole act. Only in small towns, communities that care openly about one another, does this happen. The other week, my mom said that the fat layer on my arms was due to my having been in the boonies for so long – it was just part of living out here. I laughed really hard at the joke, and told her later how grateful I was again and again at her having given me that silly way to look at the unpleasant situation of having gotten fat where I didn’t want it. That was, nonetheless, one of the drawbacks of small town life. This week, I got to have a positive of small town life, and enjoy the super sweet neighborly kindness that this guy gave freely to me. Just lovely. 🙂

Second:

I talked with my old high school boyfriend this afternoon. We have remained friends these past many years, despite the oh-so-different paths our lives have followed. We don’t talk often, but, when we do, we have to be cut off by some activity of some sort, or else we talk for hours. And we do it with ease. We weren’t just a dating couple in high school. We were really good friends for years first.

Talking today, I noticed how there is a piece of me – un trou – that is filled only by him. It sits just behind my ribs, from the center to the right a few inches or so, and it has a bit of depth to it, though not uniform. I could feel it so incredibly clearly today, I am surprised that I hadn’t fully identified its existence before. It had just been one of those subconscious knowings, I suppose, until today. But now I see and feel how that one spot is filled only by J——–, and it makes my heart, somehow, feel more full. By the knowledge of his absence, he somehow goes everywhere with me, whether I realize or pay attention to it or not. It was a kind of fun realization to have.

While we spoke, I could feel an intangible heat stretching inside my ribs, expanding to fill, at least in part, his space within my being.

Whenever I see him next, I can definitely see myself hugging and hanging tightly around his neck for quite a while – he is so important to me. But it is truly out of love through friendship, not romantic love. Frankly, we are so not interested in one another on a day-to-day or dating level – that’s a hard pass for the both of us. But, just because we are not romantically for one another, doesn’t mean that we cannot improve the foundation of our relationship, and stick with that: friendship.

Anyway, I’m losing focus, both visually and mentally, actually. So, I’m going to end here and do my stretches and reading so I can go to sleep now. Goodnight!!

Post-a-day 2020

He is back

Tonight, my cousin – who is back in town again at last – and I played a kind of duet. I played piano chords, and he played the fretless banjo that he made from cherry tree, a gourd, and a roadkill deer hide, and we both sang. It was “You’ll Be Back” by Lin-Manuel Miranda, from Hamilton. It was spectacular, and totally fun for the both of us.

And it was only one piece from a whole delightful chunk of music for the two of us tonight, all for which I am extremely grateful. 🙂

Happy eyes watched me bounce around with delight and freedom, as we listened to the track of “You’ll Be Back”, and warmed ears heard our self-produced music the whole rest of the time, feeling the passion and love through our notes and words. I even played one of my own songs for my cousin to hear for the first time, and it was basically no big deal to me, in terms of nerves – it was awesomely easy for me to do.

Man…

This late-night / early-morning hangout was a solid one, for sure. 🙂

Thank you… gratitude, dearest World… gratitude… 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Gratitude

I shared the song specifically with a sixth person today. She is the one who helped me when I was ready to be helped out of the abuse situation, when my eyes finally could see just enough clear light to be able to take a much- and long-desired step forward, out of the gray cast of clouds that had taken over my space for so many months. And she loved me freely the whole way through the end, which made all the difference in the world. I still remember how, when I opened the front door to her, close to midnight that night, I had been terrified…, but, when I saw her face, that she was smiling with true love, I felt everything melt away – it was going to be okay. I was going to be okay.

And it all was. And I was and am.

She and I laughed so much that night. I also cried a whole bunch, both from sorrow and annoyance and from laughter. I remember how she took a photo of me at one point, my eyes swollen and red and puffy, yet so full of light, you could see how free and full of life I felt myself being again. I think she took the photo to document that light having returned to me. I suppose, in many ways, that is an extremely beautiful photo.

🙂

So, she helped me through such a hard time of moving away from, essentially, evil. And then, years down the road, we don’t even communicate with one another anymore. I guess her having gotten a boyfriend turned fiancé turned husband played a rather large role in that. I’ve been okay without her in my daily life these past several years. However, I have always valued her love and her role in my life during that time of true need – I think I always will be grateful to her for that.

And so, when I wrote this song yesterday, she was someone who didn’t even have to come to mind – she was already there. I contemplated whether I actually wanted to share the song with her or not, and, after sleeping on it, I knew it was okay to do. (I had sent her a message yesterday to see if I still had her correct number. When she replied today, I took it as a sign to send her the song.)

I thanked her for her love and help in my time of need, and said how it was invaluable to have someone care for me and be with me after my having been alone in abuse for so long. And I sent the song. I’m not even sure I said that I wrote it, actually… but she understood that I had written it, I think.

Okay, I just checked. I did tell her that I wrote it and that I wanted to share it with her.

Anyway, after I’d sent it all to her, it occurred to me how unreal such messages must be to the average person – I mean, who sends messages like that and so totally out of the blue and short and direct like I did? I don’t know many people who do anything of the sort. I know honest people, open people, but that directness and the unexpectedness of the message, with no real lead-in… no, I don’t know those people.

Haha

Just myself. 😀

Anyway, I’m glad I sent it to her and expressed gratitude to her. And I think she appreciated it, too. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Ouch

Well, my bum hurts… a lot… (Okay, now I am laughing, because that just sounds so totally charged with sexual innuendo, and get it is absolutely not one bit sexual.) So, the showerhead broke, because it’s actually made of plastic at the part where it screws onto the pipe, and it just kind of split. That means that, despite the double and triple efforts of duct taping the pipe and connection piece, a bunch of water comes out of the duct tape instead of the showerhead itself, making the water flow significantly decreased from usual. To stand under the full water flow – from the showerhead and the leaking part combined – one must stand directly beneath the pipe and showerhead, as opposed to out in front, as would be the place to stand under normal circumstances.

Now, imagine showering in this setting, and dropping a bar of soap. You squat down carefully to pick up the bar, and stand back up at a rather normal standing up speed… only to have your bum suddenly be on fire after hearing a loud clanking and feeling a big bash on your backside – you have just perfectly slammed and scraped your backside upward against and across the large bathtub faucet… the faucet that typically is a couple feet behind you when you’re showering, thereby rendering you shocked and confused at first… but then you recall the leaky water situation, and realize that you had not at all factored that into the squatting and standing back up scenario…

That was, essentially, the portrait of me last night. I now have an inch-long cut, a two point five inch-long red line on either side of it, a few deep red spots around it, and a bruised and lighter red area of about two point five inches by one inch to hold it all together. And it still burns, 24 hours after the incident even happened, let alone the dull pain of the hit’s bruise.

So, yeah, my butt hurts.

I actually couldn’t even put on my underwear all the way for quite a while last night, the skin burned so much from the cut (which had bled a surprising amount, considering so much of the butt is fat and all). And I couldn’t sit normal or lie down either for a long while. Instead of going to bed as I had planned, I stayed up and watched a film on the sofa, sitting on my side, allowing the cut to close up enough safely with the medicine, as well as stop hurting so much that I couldn’t let anything touch it.

Now, it is mostly just a matter of not letting anything rub across the skin there, nor pushing too hard against the area. Otherwise, it is doing rather well, and really just keeps reminding of my other butt injury this year, in which, while fixing a wedgie, my fingernail caught the skin at the base of my spine and top of my butt, right in the middle, and scraped off a whole inch-ish-long chunk. Yes, a chunk. It bled a lot, and all over my underwear – such a weird situation that one was(!).

Basically, I’m just wondering how many more of these absolutely ridiculous butt injuries I am going to be causing myself the rest of this year… or even my life. The last was in January in Japan, and this one is August in Southeast Texas. What will happen in another six-ish months, pray?

😛

…………….

In a totally separate note, I received official word this morning that my gym is closing at the end of this month, permanently. He had too many people drop memberships and all, so it is the safe and smart thing for him to do financially for himself and his family (the owner, I mean). While it is conceptually heartbreaking, I realize that my intense depression last month was very much regarding the fact that, while most everyone else was back at the gym as usual, and I was staying home because it was what we were told was the safest idea for the time besting in our city, I had a feeling that I wasn’t just missing out for now, but that I was missing out for good – that I wouldn’t ever be going back to the gym. Being upset over this idea as being real seemed irrational of me at the time, which only added to the sense of loss and the depression. However, now that I am on the other side of the depression and intense struggle, I have now dealt with the relevant concerns that were at its root…, including the idea of my never going back to that particular gym again. So, while the news is, well, new, I have already gone through the emotional turmoil of not being able to go to the gym ever again, so I don’t feel any need to go through it again – I’ve already handled that one!

Yes, it is sad that the gym is closing – it was a spectacular space filled with love and support that made huge impacts on many lives, mine included. However, it is both a new opportunity for the owner, as well as for me. As “High School Musical” so happily belted out for me tonight, it’s the start of something new – and I can feel it, and I am ready this time. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Working it out

I have been getting back into exercising the past few weeks, thanks to my original exercise buddy (who has now moved to Roanoke, VA).  Originally, we were “attending class” at the same time, she at 5:30pm and I at 4:30pm (though, in my living room or somewhere else not actually at the gym) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  However, I have been able to stick with that, whether she changes her days or not – I have merely needed the pretense – is that the right word? – of our working out at the same time to get myself to follow the schedule and make it happen for myself…  Even if she doesn’t work out then, I am totally okay with it, and I still make myself do the workout, anyway.

Since I’ve been doing so well with that in particular, I’ve been considering how the weekends are really rough for me – going two days without a workout is too much when I’m only working out three days a week in the first place.  It was already hard enough when I was going to the gym four weekdays out of five, to take two days off on the weekend.  But Saturday mornings are hard for me, and the class is always at 9am or 10am, which means I’d have to be getting out of bed a long while before then…, which just doesn’t often happen, since the weekend is typically the only time I get to stay up late and sleep in in the morning.

That being said, I’m strongly considering doing M-W-F-Sun one week, and T-Th-Sat the following week, and just going back and forth each week.  Essentially, it is just working out every other day period.  But it helps mentally to have it framed the first way each week.

Yeah… so, that’s where I am with things on the workout schedule right now.  I’m still not at ease with it all enough to return to my previous schedule (MTWFSat), but doing every other day would be an appreciated step forward… much appreciated.  Plus, if I want to get to that 200 workouts in my second year at the gym, I need to up my game, and fast.  Slowing things down so much during this stay-at-home stuff has really messed with my numbers so far.  Fortunately, though, I still have another seven and a half months to sort it out… I think I’ve done around 30…??? That’s really just a wild guess here…So, that leaves an approximate 170 workouts, to be managed in around 32 weeks, making it five workouts a week I’d have to do going forward from today.  I’m definitely not there yet.  However, I can get there again in, hopefully, another few weeks.  I did two-a-days every so often in the past, so I can definitely start dong those again, too, to help manage the numbers better.  Anyway, the point it that I can do this, and I am moving forward towards it once again.  🙂

I bid you a good night, because I am extremely sleepy right now, and I want to go to sleep.  🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Ugh…

What is my story right now? Well, I spend my days hanging around, only doing a workout three times a week, and living vicariously through film and shows, while completely alone in the house.

It’s kind of a weird place to be, really – I feel like so much is close to happening in my life, but it also feels so difficult to do anything these days, with nothing really happening already, and no one even to see on any given day…

Ugh… and Benedict Cumberbatch does a spectacular job of making me want a partner in my life – he plays the adorable, slightly crazy, genius smart-ass quite well, and it really makes me want to have my own. 😀

Anyway… the show actually kind of gives me nightmares, so I can’t watch it after dark, and must pointedly watch something happy before bed, so the Sherlock stories don’t get to me too much at bedtime…. As I said before, I think I might be able five years old, sometimes. 😛

Post-a-day 2020