Pulling Myself Up

Sometimes I write blog entries in my head throughout the day, thinking through what I did and what I want to say about it and trying to make sense of it all.  When I sit to write, it is somewhere between a journal and a letter to a friend.  Maybe none of it matters in the long run, but it helps me sort my thoughts and sleep better.  So I'm grateful for a space to do this, and grateful for the people I've met along the way.
I haven't meditated in a few weeks now, not with any success at least, so trying to meditate after a long break from it feels like starting over from the first time I've ever tried.  It feels a bit like trying to hypnotize yourself, foreign and making you question if you are even doing it right, or doing anything at all.  But now that I have had a few good experiences with meditation, I can say that I typically get at least one little morsel of information even if it isn't a very productive session.  And when I am really not able to meditate I think it is often a sign that things are either too congested or too vague and I need to pin them down in writing before I can free up head space.
The message I got from my meditation is that I can just fight for what I want once, or for a short time, but that I have to keep reminding myself what I want every day.  I got a really clear image of my family and I hiking way up on a huge mountain edge.  The weather was absolutely perfect, a beautiful blue sky with a few puffy clouds and a sharp, clean sun above.   During our mountain hike, we came to a spot where the mountain split, leaving a huge 4 foot gap between one wall of the mountain and the next, with a gap that lead straight to certain death.  My family had all cleared the gap easily and were prodding me, cheering me, even slightly annoyed at my hesitation.  As I tried to jump, I came up short and was left trying to cling to a smooth rock on the other side where my family was, clawing at me trying to save me.  I knew I didn't have the strength to save myself and that I would certainly fall to my death, but the overwhelming sense of guilt washed over me.  I felt bad that I was weak, that I hadn't made myself stronger but allowed myself to become soft and weak.  I felt helpless, and feeling that way made me feel like a compete burden.  I felt ashamed of myself.
While I realize this was an extreme way of my mind trying to make sense of what is bubbling beneath the surface, I took the message in.  Feeling helpless may have been a normal part of being a kid, but as an adult, I am not helpless.  Helplessness and strength are options we have, and we choose them with our actions.  I have been acting helpless lately and I am not.  I have been acting unaffected lately and I am not.  I have been silent, I have been guarded.  I am slowly turning away from myself in seek of comfort from places where it has never been.  I am more aware that I am trying to give up on myself and I am fighting it harder this time than in past attempts.  I want to make sense of all of this so I can stop yo-yoing all over the place.  I am not back to where I started, but the patterns I am sliding into tell me it won't be long, if I keep up what I've been doing.  I have stopped moving more than I have to and started to let unhealthy food creep in more than it should.  I know better.  My knee feels aweful today, part of that was the walking and climbing I did over the weekend on a beautiful island with my family, but part of it is eating out, the salt and sugar that I'd been cutting back on recently.  My body is sending me signs and I am ignoring them.  That needs to stop.
I went for a little micro-walk with my son tonight.  It was so short and slow that it doesn't qualify as cardio for me, but he needed that walk more than I did and I felt good that I could do that for him.  I will try to get things back on track with exercise this week.  I miss having the drive to get out and get moving, sometimes you just have to create that from the inside, change the motivator and focus on it, use it to drive you when it feels like everything has gone off course.  For me, I don't want to be helpless or weak.  I want to fight for physical strength.  That way, should I ever find myself dangling from a mountainside, I'll simply just pull myself back up and enjoy the view.

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