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I had my first workout with my new personal trainer yesterday. It went really well. Our session began with a bit of an assessment to record my baselines and to help her get an idea of how my body moves and behaves. She helped identify some of my areas of weakness and we're going to work on improving them together, which I am pretty stoked about. We used the rest of our time to get a full body workout in. I am aching in its aftermath today.
My legs and butt screamed at me this morning when I *attempted* to bend down and feed the cats their breakfast. Cooking human breakfast wasn't that much easier. I grunt every time I have to sit or stand. I'm essentially dying. Not moving helps. If only I could just remain perfectly still...
I'll write about that.
I've been working on my main questline for a while now. Sixteen months to be precise. Most recently I got to the part where I accept that life, as my friend the Buddha says, is suffering. I realize I've been spending all of my mental bandwidth on avoiding pain and suffering for the entirety of my adult existence. I developed unhealthy coping mechanisms that I used to disconnect from the world. Forever distracting myself from reality. Forever chasing physical pleasures. Forever sleepwalking through life. It's been a thing.
The past ten years of my life have been like this, which I now know is totally alright. I didn't know any other way, I was just doing the best that I could. But now, with the help of my wonderful coach, my husband, new friends, old religion, some nutritionists, and now a personal trainer, I'm moving forward. It's a whole support system just for me. One designed to keep me from remaining perfectly still.
Every day, sometimes every few minutes, I have to fight through these cravings/impulses that come up. I constantly need to remind myself not to fall back into habits I've been conditioned into doing for years. It's not easy; in fact, I'd say it's very difficult to keep up. I'm not perfect. It takes a ton of my energy, and my mood tends to drop very low when I deny myself what I'm wanting in the moment. I am actively working through unprocessed childhood trauma. I don't even have the words to justly describe how difficult that is. Sometimes if I've got a therapy session scheduled the only responsibility I can manage afterwards is bathing myself. But it's great, because I did the hard thing. I'm getting shredded mentally.
So I'm ready to start adding a physical element to it all. I'm going to be in the gym every week with my new trainer, and eventually I'll be in there by myself in between sessions. I'm proud of me.
“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.” - Dan Millman, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior
Until next time!