Tag Archives: journey

Again

I was on the track walking and then I began to pick it up and jog. I heard myself breathe. Hard. Nothing polite about it. I always realize how much I miss this feeling when I start over again. And again.

To give you some background, in the early 2000’s I lost 70lbs. I ran 3-4 miles a day and I eventually became a vegetarian for two years. After a period of loneliness and depression post-undergrad, I gained all the weight back plus more. I have been fighting this battle ever since then. I have been on tons of diets, adopted a myriad of short-term lifestyle changes, only to let the old habits slide back in again. One thing I have never done or even allowed myself to think is this:

I am just going to give up. This is how I am suppose to be.

20170721_172708-1
In 2004 with my Mom.
Outside on the track
2017-Outside on the track

And when my face and body started to flake, peel and scar and the dreaded fibroids were found in my body, I began to pay less attention to numbers on a scale and more to the quality of what I was eating and imbibing. It has been an imperfect journey to say the least but I know one thing for sure. I am never giving up. I am saying yes to the whole foods, the sun, the joy that writing brings me, and hearing myself breathe hard.

Again.

And without a doubt, I hold dear the memories I have of myself in my early twenties. But that Kristina had her moment in the sun.

It’s my turn now.

 

Epiphany

I was invited to their inner sanctum, a darkened dance studio with poles and lush fabric cascading down from the ceiling. I sat on a leather couch, An Untamed State lying in my lap. For two hours, I watched as a group of women twisted and flexed their bodies to pop and trap, swung their figures to melody and bass. I observed women opening and closing their palms, clap clap. Lifting each other up, there was no collapse.

I spied the sinewy, willowy, muscled, curvy Beautiful slick with sweat move in and out of time.  And then my eyes burned and there were tears edging its way out of the corners of my eyes and gliding down my cheeks.

And it wasn’t about them. I think this had been coming on for a while, the tide coming in. I felt it coming when I walked out of my sister’s house and kept moving for an hour drowning the world out, even the wind whistling through the trees. And then when I held my nephew’s basketball in my hands, palms covering the leather and I raised my arms and shot over and over again.

I missed doing something just for me and my body knew it before I did. The ache went deep and as those things tend to do, it arrived on the surface.

I welcome anything else my body has to tell me as I continue on this journey.