Hello! The Unleashed One here. It is hard to believe that it is the last day of 2021. I don't know about you, but for me, the first half of the year goes by so slowly then accelerates toward the end.
What was your theme for 2021? Can you sum it up in one word? For me, it wasn't just one word. I believe that it was actually three:
Acceptance
Clarity
Transformation
Not necessarily in that order, per se, but if you notice, the 1st letter of each word spells another word: ACT. I want to tie ACTion into those three things. My actions. What I did in the face of them.
Acceptance
I accepted that certain things happened the way they did for a reason.
My empath believes that all people have the propensity to change if they are willing to do their part to facilitate healing. The scientist in me, sometimes, gets caught up in the why of someone's actions, and if other variables changed, if things could be different.
It bothered me that I was portrayed as the villain in this person's narrative. That the entire reason that he could not prosper in life was because of ME. But, in hindsight, he needed a fall person to prevent himself from accepting that he chose to wait for a result that I told him would never come into fruition.
Although I was open to civility, even attempting friendship, he always read it as a gateway into something more.
I know myself. I don't play with people.
He made me realize that my decision to disconnect continuously wasn't solely based on my trauma in these past few years. Initially, I believed that my trauma was ruling my decision-making since he kept telling me of his changes and that he was different than he was in high school. I wanted to believe him ... to be in that minority that can have a toxic-free relationship with one of the first people who brought blunt force injuries to my mind, spirit, and heart. The person who was my first abusive relationship.
It was my intuition telling me this individual didn't need me. He needed spiritual and medical intervention to tackle his stagnation. He wanted to continue our over the two-decade toxic cycle with the hope of achieving his goal.
Since he continued to read my reemergence as hope, I made up my mind to step away for good. To not ignore my intuition. To not try and change the pattern anymore.
I am not mad at this individual. I want him to find happiness and accept we were never good together, and I cannot go backward. Returning back to that pattern was a regression from the type of individual I want to be, the type of people I want to surround myself around, and the peaceful life I want for myself.
Moral of this experience: When Spirit delivers you from a situation, it's best not to question it, or even worse, walk right back into the danger.
Clarity
I realized that I had not taken time to mourn over losses (in real-time and in past time).
I am going to do the best I can to put this as an example, and I hope that some of you can relate to this.
You receive a piece of furniture to put together but it doesn't have an instruction manual. An older person demonstrates how to put it together and by following their lead, you put the piece of furniture together. You spend your life putting furniture together in this way, even in situations where one may have the instruction manual inside demonstrating a different method.
I spent my life dealing with disappointment, pain, and loss in the only way that was shown to me through life:
One downplays how bad you have it; someone out there has it worse.
One does not talk about suffering. That person does not care. Another person has it worse.
If one talks about troubles to anyone outside of family, (re: strangers getting in one's business), that's an absolute no-no.
Crying is a weakness. Expressing emotion signifies weakness.
One deals with tough times in silence, then presses forward.
Give all the problems to (insert Higher Power or belief system here). Religion is smarter and heals better than any science out there.
Be strong. Stay strong. Stay strong for everyone.
On the surface, it sounds like good advice. To all the people giving that to me, they were just doing what they were taught and what was best. Through my journey of self-healing, I've learned just because it was best for them doesn't mean that all of it was (and is) applicable to me.
My life was a flux of emotional turmoil. It's torture when someone who was born an empath doesn't have the freedom to be an empath. It's even worse when that gift is dismissed to the point where I labeled it a curse that I tried to suppress.
Most who grew up with me may wonder how can that be. I was that individual who looked like she had everything together. Wearing camouflage, iron, and masks, in the face of travesty and adversity, became my Superpower. So much so, it became a mechanism that I could shut on and off, then morphed into an ability that stayed on all the time.
It chipped away at my humanity until I felt inhuman.
It was only in this year that I was able to mourn over the patterns that left me stagnant. That I was able to apologize to my empath for making her the villain in my development. For not understanding her. For using medication to numb her when she was trying to communicate with me.
It was in this year when I recognized the significance of my now ex-husband. How I felt as if I not only lost a romantic partner but also a friend. How it hurt because we could never be friends again ... how finitely that bridge was burned.
It was this year when I realized that my narrative of what beauty and my body should look like has to switch. I spent time being upset that my body was still changing this year. I wanted it to stay still, in an image that I thought was beautiful. Yet, all through life, I've never been about just staying inactive. So, why in the name of champagne did I ever think my body would be the exception?
Transformation
Transformation is a necessity. It's the constant cycle of death and life. Death of the old brings life to the new. In the midst of the changes, take time to celebrate the accomplishments, great and small.
This is a continuation of my last statement on clarity. The narrative of what I thought my body should look like after my health journey.
You see, I don't like deeming this a weight-loss journey because it promotes the idea that I was dissatisfied with my weight. I was not dissatisfied with my weight, but I did want to reach a goal of having a low enough A1C to get off of my diabetes medication. The pathway to do that was by eating healthier and increasing my physical activity, which would lead to me losing weight.
In the picture taken in 2016, I had gotten to a comfortable place with my weight. I even accepted that I probably was not going to get any smaller because the diabetes medication was proving to be ineffective and my weight had plateaued.
When I got sick with the Super Flu in 2018, as you have already read about, things changed. Once I was finally matched with an endocrinologist that decided that my diabetes medication was not working and changed it, he set goals for me that I became determined to meet. That was when I returned to the gym.
In 2018 and 2019, I was still thrilled with how I looked. I still had the elements of the old me I previously accepted, just in a smaller form that was beneficial to my goals.
In early 2020, the start of the pandemic happened. I had a small setback and put on a little weight. I was trying to figure out how to still make progress while the gyms were closed, which took some time.
However, there were more changes going on with my body. I noticed that the loose skin of my breasts increased as well as in my abdomen area. No amount of anything was firming up that area, and the bras I had purchased the prior year no longer fit properly.
There was one instance (once the gym opened back up) that I was mistaken for a man. I am sure the guy didn't mean anything by it, but it did add to the anxiety that I was losing some semblance of my femininity.
Some people expressed to me that perhaps I was losing too much weight. I had packed on too much muscle. I was losing some of my curves. It was just giving more weight to the dysmorphia that was developing.
This year, I joined a Facebook group. The target audience was women of color who wanted to put on muscle. Beautiful, strong women. Women who were going through the same challenges as me, trying to hold on to their femininity against an outdated narrative. Women at the start of their weight lifting journey. Women at the pinnacle of the journey. Women helping other women navigate through fitness.
Although I'd physically been doing my fitness journey alone almost all of 2021, I didn't feel as emotionally and mentally alone anymore once I joined the group.
I can love the old images of me. I can mourn for them, but I can lovingly let them go, so I can appreciate where I am now.
The most active women in the group conveyed the message to celebrate your achievements and to not get so tunnel-visioned to get to the next goal.
In the whole time I've been on this journey, I've rarely, if ever stopped, to celebrate.
I have celebrated academic achievements, even professional moves. But rarely when I've hit a new endurance level on cardio. A new intensity or interval on a machine. A higher weight on a machine or free weights. Being able to do more repetitions. Hitting my step counts consistently.
The greatness isn't mainly at the beginning and the end. Similar to a book, all of the best bits are in the middle. I now see myself as a book, and since I am the author of the book, I dictate how it's going to end.
Speaking of the end, we are finally here. If you are still reading, thanks for stopping by.
Here's to 2022!
