Bear with me while I work through some thoughts that have been swirling around in my head for five months now. I'm tired of these thoughts taking up space and maybe if I write it out I can evict them for good. So I'll write my post and hope it helps. If not or if you have some words of wisdom for me I am ALL ears!
Of all the lessons I have learned in the last three years the most important one has been to ask for help when I need it.Yes I get mired in the darkness and it feels like it will never be light again, but I hang on. When and if the time comes that my grip is slipping and I don't want to hang on I have people I can contact. That time is not now.
I'm human. Life isn't fair. People you think would NEVER betray you do so and then move on as if everything is normal. All lessons I've learned many times over. Lessons I sincerely wish would stop coming up. I got the message loud and clear, can I move on to a new lesson?
I've been thinking a lot about toughness, resilience and persistence since I read that Robin Williams committed suicide. This blog isn't about celebrities and I don't want to speculate on something I know nothing about. Suffice it to say it made me think.
What does it mean to be tough?
Am I tough if I plaster a smile on my face, slap on a mask and pretend to the world that nothing is wrong when my world has been rocked to the core?
Am I tough if I admit when I'm lost and afraid and ask for help?
Is toughness admitting the foundations of my world were shaken and I haven't quite gotten past that yet?
Am I tough if I confront the person who betrayed me and let him or her know I don't appreciate being thrown under the bus and I will never forget it?
Would I be tougher if I forgave the betrayal, took the lesson to heart and moved on with life?
How about toughness being purely physical? If I can deadlift 315 pounds, flip a 525 pound tire and complete two Tough Mudders does that make me tough?
Or is toughness some secret combination of all of the above?
Yeah, living in my head is a joy ride. I can obsess with the best of them. I don't want to obsess, I want to be "normal". Sadly, normal is a setting on my washer, not a state of being. I think I mentioned I'm human, so I'm also flawed. Some days way more flawed than others.
You know what I really want toughness to be? The ability to be invisible. An administrator once told me I had a knack for being invisible. He just never thought of me as one of his staff because I went out of my way not to stand out. At the time I found the words rude and insensitive (which they absolutely were), but the man had a point. I did go out of my way not to rock the boat, to be as average as I possibly could be and never question anything I was told to do.
Something happened to that invisibility about three years ago. I lost interest in being average. I don't know that I would call myself outstanding in any way, shape or form, but I've heard the term used in reference to my ability to do my job. I disagree with that statement, but that's a whole other rant...maybe next time. I am doing my job to the best of my ability, really there is nothing outstanding in that.
So I guess I'm not destined to be invisible anymore. If I can't be invisible I want to be tough. I want to be able to get knocked down and climb back to my feet and keep going. I don't want to get to a place in my life that I can't fathom the idea of one more day. I don't want to wallow in the darkness so long it sucks the joy out of life. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt as the saying goes.
How am I going to define toughness for myself? I suppose to me being tough means I take the lesson, forgive the pain and move forward. I can't change the past no matter how long I obsess on it: it's done, it's over. I can only change my attitude and perspective and realize that there is so much more to me and my life than that pain.
I say this now...I intend to live it, but come 3 am tomorrow morning I bet I'm right back to obsessing.
There...rant ended. Maybe in my next post I'll have more to report on box jumps. I did discover last Saturday morning that I might be able to think about a box jump, but put a tire in front of me and I'm right back at square one. In my defense, there was a big hole in the middle of that tire and there were 2 other people trying to do push ups on it. Given my uneasy truce with gravity I saw great potential for disaster and injuries to innocent people if I tried a tire jump. Besides: tractor tires are for flipping, not jumping on.
Thanks for reading.
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