10 years ago, I started a relationship.
It has single handedly been the most rewarding, most
difficult, and most challenging relationship of my life
The relationship hasn’t always been easy.
It’s had its ups and downs.
There were times it felt like my partner in this
relationship’s sole purpose was to beat me down and make me feel utterly
defeated just to build me back up stronger than I ever was to begin with.
There were times that I clearly took this relationship for granted and abused it. I took the beauty of this relationship and turned it
into something detrimental and unhealthy.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I fell in love that day.
On May 13, 2002…. I joined the gym and I haven’t looked back
since.
I’m legitimately addicted to it – it’s the best thing I do in any given
day for my mental and physical health. As cheesy as it sounds, I know that no matter
how stressful my day is I can get a workout in and burn some of that stress
away. I know that no matter what I’ll always leave the gym feeling better than
I did when I entered it. That’s the biggest benefit I’ve found from working
out all these years – it has made me so much stronger mentally and physically
than I ever thought I could be. It’s weird to think that I only joined because mom wanted to
and asked me to go along. In retrospect I know she really wanted to join to get
me the physical therapy and stress relief I was in such dire need of.
In the midst of these last 10 years, I was diagnosed with diabetes. Sometimes I think the adjustment to living life as a PWD might
have been slightly (only slightly) easier since the healthy diet and consistent
exercise part of things was already part of my lifestyle. Sometimes I think
that made it harder since the news of my diagnosis was often met with “well I
guess all that working out wasn’t good enough, gotta work harder” an intense desire to strangle
said responders, and an internal feeling of failure that maybe they were right.
10 years ago I found myself beginning a relationship would enrich my life in a way that I never expected. And I'm SO glad I did.
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