Falling in Love Again

I know this isn't shocking to anyone, but (like so many millions) I love Adele.  Her music is what we listen to when we need to cry, when we need to let it out.  I listened to her new song once and had to stop, but today I read a new interpretation of the song, that Adele is not signing to an ex boyfriend and trying to reconnect with him at all.  It's about Adele trying to reconnect with herself after a breakup. 

Relationships are wonderful and terrible and so hard.  When you are like me, and have been single for a while it's hard to balance friends with a new love and with family.  Like a typical 15 year old (or again all of us) I dropped everything for B. I tried to still keep a toe into my friends and family but with only getting to see him every other weekend and one of us traveling, our time together was sacred so, in a way, I stepped out of my life.  I was sitting at my cousin Aaron's football game today and realized that I don't get invited to things anymore.  Once you've said no or I’m busy too often then people stop asking. 

I feel like I need to make up with myself, learn to fall in love with my life and myself again.  It feels familiar to be disconnected though, I used to travel a lot for work and I missed so much that I have been disconnected for a while.  If you read the lyrics with the spin towards Adele talking to herself it's exactly what I’m feeling. 

Hello, it's me

I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet

To go over everything

They say that time's supposed to heal ya, but I ain't done much healing

Hello, can you hear me?

I'm in California dreaming about who we used to be

When we were younger and free

I've forgotten how it felt before the world fell at our feet-Adele

This is what we do, we give all to a relationship and when that rug is yanked from our feet we stumble, we crash to the floor and we fall apart.  A friend was asking what she could do to help, how could she make me feel better and it hit me, I've drifted so far from my center that I just don't know.  I can't tell her, I have no idea what will help.  Stupid time will, but that's about all I know.

I've been thinking a lot lately about falling in love and what we do when we start to fall.  If you really stop and think about it, when we fall in love with someone, all we want is to be with them and learn everything we can.  How often have you said we finish each other's sentences? We can communicate with a single look? He knows me inside out? I know I've said and felt all of those things, they are true. I'm not even on the same planet as being ready to feel that for someone else again.  But  maybe I want to feel that about myself? What if I want to fall in love with myself?  I think I've started in the right direction. I'm writing again and I started painting, watercolors are really fun.  And tomorrow is another exciting adventure, I signed up with a personal trainer.

This blog will get back to some of what I'd originally pictured it as, me being super cranky about having to work out.  The creative side of me is being nurtured and cared for, my actual job is a going well so now I want to work on getting physically stronger. 

What can you do to fall in love a little bit with yourself?

I am enough

It's been an interesting journey the past few months, and interesting is being kind. I talked to Mike last night about this feeling of sadness, this sneaky quiet feeling of emptiness and loneliness.  Mike asked me a question about how this feels, does this feel any better or different.  Let me just warn you that being best friends with a journalist is painful.  Mike always knows what to ask and because he knows me, he knows exactly how to ask. 

When your heart is first broken, when the feelings are raw and you are still reeling from the betrayal and disappointment it is overwhelming and sharp and constant.  And then suddenly it isn't constant and it's a bit duller.  You realize you can get up and start to handle life again and maybe you feel a little cocky. I've got this you think, I did this the right way and now it's done and as you are patting yourself on the back for doing so well, you get sucker punched again. FREAKING AGAIN.

I don't know why it hit me so hard this week, I don't understand what happened to bring it all down around me again. It's not like when he first broke us up, it's not so sharp, it's more dull waves that come and go.  There are reminders and I still flip off Kansas drivers whenever I see them, but it's different.  Tom pointed out that I’m living in it-not dwelling but living in it.  I am willing to talk, I'm willing to be honest and talk about how much this all hurts and throws you off your orbit.  My hope is still that my stories help someone else and help me to make sense of all this.

I find that I am talking to myself in trite hallmark sentiments that inspire rage when I hear them from other people. I think a lot about how I will come through this so much stronger than I was before. I know that he will regret quitting on  us for the rest of his life, that he will be lesser for losing me and I'll move on to find a true partner in life, not a quitter. I'm learning so much about myself right now and that's a new level of fitness for me. Get to really know myself, do what I can to help myself feel better or at least not feel worse.  My painting class ends tomorrow night, it's been fun playing with color and water.  I have an idea of what's next for me, it's time to get back to the gym.

I emailed a couple of trainers this week to setup interviews to find my own Jillian Michaels or Bob Harper.  I keep thinking that with the breakup I have done things differently and that's worked out for me, or so people are telling me.  So why not go to the next level with working out, hire someone to inspire me and push me.  All that will happen in 6 months is I'll either still be frustrated with my progress or I could have a whole new body, either way I'll be a year older.  I think I'd like to be a year older and a few sizes smaller and so much stronger.

Strength will win, courage will win.  From Rising Strong from Brene Brown:  "No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It's going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am brave and worthy of love and belonging."

Winning

First…hahaha I mad you think of Charlie Sheen, and if you didn't now you are.

This week I've been thinking about social media and breakups. In the past when we'd break up with someone the most we could do was to drive by their house or call and hang up hoping he wouldn't just so you could hear his voice on the answering machine.  Now there is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a million different ways to keep putting a hand in the fire and hurting ourselves.  Unlike drive bys and answering machines, online stalking is so much more anonymous. I don't know how relationships work in this new digital age, it seems so much more painful than what we used to go through, can you ever really disconnect completely from your past?

Mindy and I had a long overdue breakfast and, as happens with close friends, I cannot help but tell her the truth of what's going on. I try to hide it and pretend, but one look and the full stories spill out with I'm ok but not great, etc, blah, blah, blah.  She's knows the whole ins and outs of what B and I had been through to get together  and wanted to hear I was really ok now that he'd ended us so abruptly.

She's in a relationship but divorced a few years ago and, like we all do, made some mistakes. One of her mistakes will email her once a quarter or every six months to check in, he keeps trying to weasel his way back.  We talked about why she doesn't just ignore him and it clicked with me. By him reaching out and not her being the one to instigate, I pointed out that she's winning.  And that's what it is she wins the breakup. And that's why we don't block them, it's a staring contest, last one to blink wins.  And by not blocking them we can keep that line out there and keep tempting ourselves again and again.  I have a couple of those mistakes in my past too and it is beyond tempting to reach out but then again I don't want to be the one who blinks.

B and I weren't friends on FB, but we have people in common, he's popped up here and there on comments and as a FB friend suggestion, but I don't  pull the trigger, I don't block him-not sure that would stop me from seeing his comment on a mutual friend's post, but I can't do it. I haven't gone and searched him either.  And yet as I’m typing this I can't help but wonder does he check up on me too? He originally encouraged me to blog and was my biggest cheerleader.  He knows it's out there but has he read the blog recently and seen my very public musings on getting my heart broken? Does he feel horrible even though he fell in love with Candi with a fucking i? Why do I even care? It's because I'm keeping score in my heart and I'm not the one winning, at least not yet.  And that's the thing I have an issue with, I want this to be done, I want to be past all of this, I want this to be finished. Like B, I want to have moved on.  And that stops me from being here today, like a petulant child wishing away every day so I can be grown up, I'm wishing today away.

I just read a post from Daily Zen: Loving the present moment isn’t complicated. In fact, it’s remarkably simple. The issue is that we’ve been conditioned to do everything the hard way. We take the path of least resistance, which is, ironically, the most difficult path. The path with the fewest obstacles is the least valuable path. It doesn’t teach us anything. It’s easy to make peace the present moment when there aren’t any obstacles in your way. It’s more difficult to do when you experience obstacles, and when you perceive obstacles as problems. If we can make peace with the present even when it’s testing our patience, we can exist in peace under any circumstance. (http://www.thedailyzen.org/2015/10/10/how-to-love-where-you-are/)

What is Dating Fitness?

When I started the blog, it was all about how much I dislike working out and the journey of investing into my 80's but it's morphed into more holistic views of fitness.  I asked a few weeks ago on my Facebook if I should change the name to something else and someone pointed out that fitness is more than just physical. Fitness is mental, it's emotional, it's spiritual, it's financial and that's the direction I want to turn, fit in all things.  And the dating part, that's because I want to try lots of different things before I commit to any one thing. I want to see what works for me in working out or in figuring out my future. I want to explore different options for who I want to be.

That’s the interesting thing about all of this, who we think we are at 18 and 25 is very different than who we are at 30 and 35.  Where I am now, it's all about saying yes and trying new things.  That's what dating is, trying and finding out what you like, who you like.  That's what I'm doing now, the cliché of the newly single, I'm dating myself.  Even typing that simultaneously makes me cringe and laugh. 

I spent the past four days in Las Vegas with some of the most wonderful people on the planet, I love being so quickly welcomed and included into a family. Originally B and I were going to fly out early on Wednesday and spend the day together, he wanted to show me his Vegas (lived there for a decade or so) but then we broke up and I had a whole day to myself before everyone got in.  I texted with a friend, was staggered at how sad I was to be there without him.  But even saying that out loud helped, it wasn't a secret, it was out of my head. 

So I had a day to myself in a city that is overwhelming, I had options.  I looked at skydiving but at $300 it was a bit too pricy for what I wanted to spend.  I considered zip line on Fremont street but that seemed too touristy and really would rather have had someone with me. Ultimately I spent the day at the pool reading and enjoying cocktails and texting, getting the sad out of my system (thank you J).

I spent three days not making a decision, I was able to follow the purple sweater and just say yes to everything. I tried gambling-real gambling not just the slots. I played roulette, craps and blackjack. I watched people who truly know how to play cards. We wandered around the hotel and up and down the strip. It's hard not to be overwhelmed by the people and the noise.  And I have reinforced that my own tolerance for Vegas is 4 days, just like Manhattan, eventually there are too many people and so much noise. But I'd go back again, it is like being on another planet.

So what does this have to do with dating myself? I have no idea but then again we all have those dates that we have no idea about until much later.  This week I'll continue on my dating adventures in the fourth week of my painting class which I love.

I think that this idea of dating fitness is something each of us can do, we can know ourselves a bit better, we can strive for more in this life.