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"It's sprint time!" the instructor warns the class.
I very ungracefully get up off the mat, soaked sweat towel in one hand, asthma pump in the other and robotic-ally move towards the dread-mill.
"Be careful, your treadmills are flying" he warns again.
Without hesitation I change the speed to slower, fitting my level of perseverance and amount of expenditure committed. Knowing full well I could do better, I hop on for a thirty second jog. On either side of me are people running for their lives, keen and head strong. With two sprints to go I up my speed each time.
"... three, two, one. Shut the treadmills down and make your way back to the mat"
Well I certainly didn't die and could have probably run faster, to be honest I never really want to get off the treadmill at this point. It's the point where I actually want to do better and persevere a little longer but I miss the fucking boat every time. Metaphorically for my life as well. The ship sails and I'm ashore with what if's, could have's and should of's.
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Eyes adjusting to see leaves and sticks and feathers, all swirled up and wasted around me. My right cheek is now ice cold from the floor and my hip numb from weighted lying. To move would mean to differentiate myself from that that is wasted around me, but sometimes I want to be a leaf, a stick or a feather only moved by wind. Sometimes I only feel deserving of movement when it is not I that is moving me. Can the wind come back, either to sweep us all away or to make us into something different? Would the wind know how to create something using leaves, sticks, feathers and me? I would forfeit my breathe for it to move me once again however lying on the floor for a bit longer is an alternative not worth living for. The aches get too unbearable, my short legs and their muscles cramp, shoulders built from swimming and surfing can no longer take the stillness. So unlike all that is static around me I heave my body up off the floor, standing sorely and somewhat lifelessly. My eyes blink slow and any facial expressions left when the wind did. When my mind decides to reclaim its position the rush of thoughts just about topple me over again.
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Drenched and stretched, feeling healthy and important to myself I leave gym happy. This lasts well through the first, second and third cigarette I chain smoke upon getting home. Gulping water like I don't know what wine is, sitting outside to cool off my body and its elevated awe, I book upcoming gym classes while I'm riding this wave of elevation. Just like that, after the classes are booked and my phone turns back into a platform for comparison, longing and superficiality I lose my muster. Between the images of couples in love, the singles who explore and the world at war I become so very tired. 05h45 creeps closer as I routinely shower, eat and try to sleep. I think to myself how much better or worse is it to receive a goodnight text or to share my bed with someone? To have someone there or right here... I couldn't choose so perhaps I have neither. To chase love and not know what to do with it when you get it is reflective of human nature. Always choosing misery and misconception over getting to really know oneself. Why during that time of night all appears discernible, like I'm running for my life, keen and headstrong? Sprinting through thoughts, deciding directions and concluding relationships. Metaphorically I need my asthma pump, working my thoughts up to a suffocating amount I lie in savasana, corpse pose, and channel my focus to breathing.
"Inhale for three two one, hold for three two one, exhale for three two one..." repeat.
Only to be reminded at 06h30 when it's sprint time again.
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With my mind leading my body I walk away from the storms remnants, the air is quiet again and the sea has no horizon. Nothing is clear but at least my pieces have moved themselves in search for something. Aimless but movement nonetheless. Configuring themselves into a human shape, five foot two with small feet matching small hips, we become a little more useful. I talk like I am fine, even with high pitched expression and curiosity. My words appear to be off the floor but I am actually standing on them, kicking them and wishing they weren't cutting me with every sharp contact. Entering the room my heartbeat is muffled by other sounds and my eyes distracted by other sights. There is a busyness about the older bodies that I struggle to relate to and there is very little connection to the younger body that sits idle with itself. Although the room is warmer with us in it, with hot breathe and amicable sighs, I rarely feel avidity with anyone.
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It's been three days and four hours since I last went to gym but who's counting? It's been weeks since I last stilled my mind and body in a precarious yoga pose, it's been months since I last immersed myself in saltwater under, over and on waves and it's been almost a year since I rode through sugarcane on a horse that can sense me better than any person could. So I am counting but not all of it literally, I count on these things to feel less of time and more of myself. You know the feeling of immeasurable warmth and rightness that seems to beam from and through you? That's what these things do for me.
"The sun will set without thy assistance" Talmud says.
Yet I continue to say that time is at fault not I. Without asking when, because time is actually irrelevant, rather asking why do I let these things slip away from me? Half of which are free and the other half carry on without me anyway. Uncertain if this is another excuse but perhaps I rebel against what I know I need in defiance for having to need anything at all.
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"The sun will set without thy assistance" Talmud says.
Yet I continue to say that time is at fault not I. Without asking when, because time is actually irrelevant, rather asking why do I let these things slip away from me? Half of which are free and the other half carry on without me anyway. Uncertain if this is another excuse but perhaps I rebel against what I know I need in defiance for having to need anything at all.
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Sitting on a couch that is heavy to move and positioned for lethargic purposes, I lift my feet up off the floor to distance myself from it further. That cold steady floor seems unfamiliar and frighteningly contrasted to what is burning inside of me indefinitely. There is superficial lighting making the night darker and the people inside brighter, the home of people and things with dysfunction and dreams. I sit wondering if the lights should fail and the television turn off would the family know what to do? With life and love and the bridge between them. I rub the tip of my thumb over the edge of my nails and fingertips, making one OK hand symbol per hand with index finger to thumb, ending with three solid Nil, Zero hand symbols with the remaining fingers down. I sit doing this motion for quite some time, in reverse and repeating. Noticing that this family go from okay to nil just as frequently. Becoming overwhelmed with my hands and the nail indents I had made I grab the television remote and change the channel.
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Continuing with my rebellion to activity and the things that make me feel good, I seem to be otherwise quite capable of actively doing things that make me feel, for lack of a better word, bad.
"You get rid of that boyfriend of yours now, no good" said by my quirky new gynaecologist. I laugh a little in politeness to his peculiar Polish-ness. Also because although my legs are widespread it's not my normal situation. Disease free apart from an acute case of sleeping-with-men-I-don't-really-know. Neither the gynaecologist nor I have a sensitivity gauge, so we go about our own business in a matter of fact manner. Of course my personal business only becomes his when I'm paying for it. He's a professional and gets the Mirena in place quickly and for the most part painlessly. Genuinely I feel very little down there and more in my mind and heart. It's as if my ability to physically feel down there is measured on the same level as my connection to things, people and the universe connecting me to them. No doubt that is the only pleasure I seek, that connection. But whilst my legs may be open my heart is seemingly otherwise impenetrable. My mind is fully aware of this to my orgasmic detriment. I leave his office feeling only slightly better in the fact that mistakes can't happen for the third time.
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Continuing with my rebellion to activity and the things that make me feel good, I seem to be otherwise quite capable of actively doing things that make me feel, for lack of a better word, bad.
"You get rid of that boyfriend of yours now, no good" said by my quirky new gynaecologist. I laugh a little in politeness to his peculiar Polish-ness. Also because although my legs are widespread it's not my normal situation. Disease free apart from an acute case of sleeping-with-men-I-don't-really-know. Neither the gynaecologist nor I have a sensitivity gauge, so we go about our own business in a matter of fact manner. Of course my personal business only becomes his when I'm paying for it. He's a professional and gets the Mirena in place quickly and for the most part painlessly. Genuinely I feel very little down there and more in my mind and heart. It's as if my ability to physically feel down there is measured on the same level as my connection to things, people and the universe connecting me to them. No doubt that is the only pleasure I seek, that connection. But whilst my legs may be open my heart is seemingly otherwise impenetrable. My mind is fully aware of this to my orgasmic detriment. I leave his office feeling only slightly better in the fact that mistakes can't happen for the third time.
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It's bedtime so I peel myself off the couch, feed my dog treats and shuffle to a room which is far too large for its lonely requirements. At least it's pretty enough, even with the mess of heaped up clothes on the day bed and the hoards of empty pill packages under the bed. Pretty enough when you don't look too closely and if the lights stay off and I navigate blind all that mess is unseen. The moon filters through on the left of my bedside as I roll over to face it and sink my hurt organs deeper into the mattress, which under the sheet is surely stained with tears, sweat, semen, coffee and blood. Life-sources for the body of a twenty eight year old female who wishes she weighed less than the fifty two kilograms trapped by her skin. Hearing the television continually entertaining my parents I shut my thin eyelids to the world only to be met by a parallel universe behind them. Night escapes from my clutches with tense hands relaxing their hold on my second favourite pillow. Without wondering where my favourite has found itself because that requires more tears and a reality I'm trying to fall asleep from. The after hours, when time ticks down the hall on the Grandfather clock compelling all to be silent so it can be heeded, obscurity is heightened. Rings of the scene in The Nutcracker where evil mice come out to torment and taint all that is charming, the hourly chimes contending for morning to come and dreams to be discarded.
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Abandonment, what I let myself do to things and what I expect people to do to me. When I focus on breathe, without clouded thought while asking what it is that I feel about feeling, this is the word that pops up from the crevasses. Instant gratification exempt of commitment and endurance is by definition how I have treated most things. Manifesting to include but not limited to my hobbies, my loves and relationships, my body and if I'm being really honest, my spirituality. Rooted to a four year old with a short albeit significant time without a father, losing brothers in the process. Branching to an adolescent having to detach from her sister as countries and oceans separate, but gaining a brother-in-law. Flowering into a woman that gives her heart to another, who relinquished it all and returned it back to her forsaken. Imaginably, because I acknowledge my flaws and own them completely, it's now time to change them.
"Be prepared each day to confront your own self sabotage" unknown.
There comes a point after sitting in limbo for days that I seem to snap back to getting shit done, that point is reached when stewing deeper into wounds only brings about ineffectiveness and stupor. Frustrating myself so, that productivity and action are the only answers to questions of inner awareness. I refuse to abandon myself and the soul that has purpose within me, having dreams and goals with the ability to reach them and beyond. It takes the low point to reassess, reassure and redirect with keenness and to keep running, less likely to miss the boat this time likewise to do better.
Between seasons the birds aren't chirping when I wake as they're far too comfy in their nests to search for the early worm that too sleeps soundly. Internally I wake up first, blue veins startled with a subservient craving for inhalants, a concurrently numbing and stimulating placebo to me. This is done in the dark with habituated hands. If it's a good morning I wont see the pigmented skin that is usually under my mask, that which is my face without the need to impress. Mostly because the light has not surfaced and neither have my insecurities. Given that, I'll perceptibly make-up my body, especially the chubby bits in fluctuating workout clothes. Dressed, first cigarette and black coffee as my fuel, followed with toothpaste I leave the home into the dawn alone, bewildered slightly yet convicted. The desolate streets are interrupted by high heart rates and strangers I comparatively relate to simply because we have the same attire on our bodies. There is an alertly cold eddy of air that flows into my car, prickling the hair of my unguarded skin and plunging to my bones. Should the dimmed stars see into my sunroof they would view me writhing, conflictingly sculling undercurrents of inertia and persistence. I bid the obscurity of night adieu as persistence wins and it is now 05h45, almost sprint time. If the horizon looms of wind and transformation... let it as I'll do better for longer this time.
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Abandonment, what I let myself do to things and what I expect people to do to me. When I focus on breathe, without clouded thought while asking what it is that I feel about feeling, this is the word that pops up from the crevasses. Instant gratification exempt of commitment and endurance is by definition how I have treated most things. Manifesting to include but not limited to my hobbies, my loves and relationships, my body and if I'm being really honest, my spirituality. Rooted to a four year old with a short albeit significant time without a father, losing brothers in the process. Branching to an adolescent having to detach from her sister as countries and oceans separate, but gaining a brother-in-law. Flowering into a woman that gives her heart to another, who relinquished it all and returned it back to her forsaken. Imaginably, because I acknowledge my flaws and own them completely, it's now time to change them.
"Be prepared each day to confront your own self sabotage" unknown.
There comes a point after sitting in limbo for days that I seem to snap back to getting shit done, that point is reached when stewing deeper into wounds only brings about ineffectiveness and stupor. Frustrating myself so, that productivity and action are the only answers to questions of inner awareness. I refuse to abandon myself and the soul that has purpose within me, having dreams and goals with the ability to reach them and beyond. It takes the low point to reassess, reassure and redirect with keenness and to keep running, less likely to miss the boat this time likewise to do better.
__________________________________________________
Between seasons the birds aren't chirping when I wake as they're far too comfy in their nests to search for the early worm that too sleeps soundly. Internally I wake up first, blue veins startled with a subservient craving for inhalants, a concurrently numbing and stimulating placebo to me. This is done in the dark with habituated hands. If it's a good morning I wont see the pigmented skin that is usually under my mask, that which is my face without the need to impress. Mostly because the light has not surfaced and neither have my insecurities. Given that, I'll perceptibly make-up my body, especially the chubby bits in fluctuating workout clothes. Dressed, first cigarette and black coffee as my fuel, followed with toothpaste I leave the home into the dawn alone, bewildered slightly yet convicted. The desolate streets are interrupted by high heart rates and strangers I comparatively relate to simply because we have the same attire on our bodies. There is an alertly cold eddy of air that flows into my car, prickling the hair of my unguarded skin and plunging to my bones. Should the dimmed stars see into my sunroof they would view me writhing, conflictingly sculling undercurrents of inertia and persistence. I bid the obscurity of night adieu as persistence wins and it is now 05h45, almost sprint time. If the horizon looms of wind and transformation... let it as I'll do better for longer this time.
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